good byes, syncretism, Vivaldi's Gloria

Friday the children cleaned out their desks, scrubbed stickers (and germs) off the tops, and loaded their back packs with a year's accumulation of school work. At eleven in the morning, the final bell rang, and the 2008-09 school year ended. What a year it has been! While preparing the Powerpoint that I will be sending out in June, I reflected on how different this presentation will be from last year's. This summer I will be one of the few American missionaries not returning to the States. Instead, on June 21st, I will be marrying my best friend, and the two of us will be staying somewhere in Puebla - although we still don't know exactly where.

Both on Friday and on Saturday, we had farewell meals. Friday was a hamburger barbecue at the PE field, and Saturday we met for a buffet brunch. Each staff member received a Puebla team jersey to remind us that this year's focus was team building. Five of the team members will be gone next year. Two of them will hopefully return the following school year, but three of them are leaving permanently. Saying good-bye is never fun. There are other missionary families also leaving this summer for home assignment or permanently.

Saturday after the brunch, Abraham and I took a bus downtown to take care of some errands. While walking past one museum, we noticed it advertised free entrance. Since the place is rarely open, neither of us had been inside before. We decided to enter, and enjoyed the tour of the mansion. The family had been extremely catholic, and many art pieces showed their religion. Curiously, they also had a Buddha and several Zeus busts. When Abraham pointed out the incongruity of the beliefs, the guide didn't understand. "They gathered art from many cultures," he agreed. Not exactly what Abraham meant.

In the evening, we had the wonderful opportunity to see a free performance of Vivaldi's Gloria at a Baptist church downtown. The Puebla Symphony and choir played and sang beautifully. They opened with Pachelbel's Canon in D, one of my favorite classical music pieces.


Because of a comment on the blog - Where I was standing with my husband and a friend, we didn't even feel the earthquake that happened recently here. The only way we knew it happened was that people came out of the school asking, "Did you feel that!?!" No, we didn't.