The Halfway Point

As Wednesday comes to a close, I kind of want to take a bit of time to reflect on the fact that I'm already halfway done with this service trip... so far it has gone by really quickly, but I feel like I'm finally starting to get something definite out of it other than community building. Today some things of note:
1) We cooked breakfast this morning (as in team Dino). I love cooking!
2) I went to a construction site with my group (where we established that we were definitely officially group Dino (cause we couldn't decide between Dino: -mite, -saurs, or -sty (as in Dynasty (I know, that one is a huge stretch)))), where we first sanded the walls and then painted the ceiling, so that the place looked a little bit better. It was a very satisfying experience, because not only were we able to make the house look better than it had when we first arrived, we also got to hang out with two of the residents of Lewis County who were working at the site, and got to learn a little more about the area through them. As well, painting is even better for good conversation than hammering nails, so I got to learn more about the people I was with than I had in the past couple of days. I know I've said that a lot, but when you've only known someone for a couple of days, that tends to happen. I've still got so much to learn about them, that even though I feel as if I already know them really well, I really don't, and keep finding out new things, as their level of comfort with the rest of the group increases (at times it is a bit of a problem, assuming I know them so well, because I keep running into the issue that I forget that I don't know them that well and anticipate reactions to things, only to see them react completely different than I expected).
3) When I got back to the farm, I learned from one of the other ND people that our site leader, Cath, had to leave due to a death in the family. This was an unfortunate happenstance that I really don't know much about yet, but I trust that God will watch over her and get her through this rough time. In the meantime, her friend Matt essentially took over the site leader's position, and is ensuring that everything runs smoothly.
4) My group did the reflection for tonight. We focused on encouraging further interaction at the group level, encouraging everyone to go around in a circle and say positive things about each of the other people. The other groups seemed to thoroughly enjoy this. We then challenged the other teams to come up with a team name (each group was originally assigned a letter (our letter was D)) that reflected something they had gotten out of the experience so far.
5) We are going to a protestant church service, so I've gotta run.

Peace!