Our first Texas style rodeo!

Dan and I have now been enjoying Dallas, Texas for a week! We started class on Monday and have begun to learn a lot. We have a small class of 15 people. Some are like us and headed out for the first time with Wycliffe, and others are home from being overseas. It is a great mixture of people and we look forward to getting to know them. In addition to our group there are people here studying linguistics in order to be translators and to perform many other jobs. We were reunited with many folks from our training camp who are here for that purpose!

You may ask what are you studying?! We will have several weeks of different classes. The main focus is on management skills. This first week has been on self management. We each came up with a personal mission statement and also had to decide on a self management project this semester which we'll have to present to the class in December along with a paper. (It has been so long, I don't remember what to do with homework!) We haven't finalized what we'll be doing, but we'll let you know how it goes! Along the way we'll be covering many topics, along with having an internship in the afternoons. Dan has already recieved word that he will be in the Discovery office, which is where they plan and design short term trips from here. That will be perfect for him! My internship placement hasn't been chosen yet!

Aside from studying, we are making it our mission to explore Dallas! Tuesday, we went downtown and saw about 30 huge bull and cowboy statues in one park and last night we went to my first rodeo! It was the Mesquite Rodeo which is world known. We saw bull riding, barrel racing, other events and tons of people in cowboy boots and hats! My favorite event was the mutton busting. This was the opportunity for 7 kids between 4 and 7 to take a try at staying on the mutton (also known as a sheep:)!) The other kiddy event was they let any child under the age of 8 into the arena. Then, they let loose two calfs; one with a blue ribbon attached to their tail and the other with a pink! The kids had to try to grab the ribbon! It was very entertaining to see a couple hundred kids chasing these calves! More adventures in Dallas to follow!

Here we are enjoying ourselves!