Granja (Farm)

The kids' school owns a farm some ways outside the city (I believe I have mentioned this before...!) and a few Saturdays ago they had Parents' Day there. Just parents, no kids, so not everybody was able to come due to work or not having other child care. Terry stayed with the kids and I joined the van caravan out of the city.

This area is just gorgeous.

 They have a llama! Named Pepe!

And a dog! Named Luki!

 Poultry!

 After touring the property, we were put to work in small groups - two groups built foot-bridges to go over this small creek running through the property, two groups planted heliconias (aka false bird-of-paradise), one group created a tile mosaic, one group tied up bean plants, and another painted signs to label different kinds of compost and plants. (I painted signs)

 The kids have a field trip to the farm about every two weeks throughout the school year, except when it's very rainy - then they take them places in the city. But the school really invests a lot in the farm, with gardening and reforestation projects. I'm guessing it's around 40 hectares? of reclaimed pasture (although some of it is still kept as pasture for the two cows and llama).

It's so nice for the kids to have this quiet, fresh, green place to spend time. At the same time it was really strange to me to be there with this group of city people - they were so enraptured with every green leaf it was almost comical. If you've spent any time around farms and farmers, you tend to lose that romanticized notion pretty quickly (am I right, Vince?). It was also strange to be in this group of upper-middle-class parents who are so insulated by their wealth from the violence and displacements going on in this country, the fierce battles over land... one couple casually took down a phone number listed on a "for sale" sign for the adjacent property, talking about how they'd like to build a weekend/vacation home outside the city. So separate from the people that we support through our programs here, yet it's all connected.

I think it's incredibly valuable for our kids to learn about where food comes from, to interact with the "natural" world, soak in these quiet green spaces. The air was so fresh and clean. I'm glad I got to see it so I can ask them better questions about what they do and see there. About all I got before was that there's a rooster that goes "Kok! Kok!" In September there will be a family day for us to go with the kids, too. I'm really looking forward to that!

Retiro en la Costa - Retreat on the Coast

We just got back from our team retreat on the Caribbean Coast - so nice! Hot, but nice. (In unrelated news, I just got my birthday camera - thanks Dad! This is almost the last batch of photos with that ugly black corner.) We flew 1 hour to Monteria, then took a van about 2 hours to Coveñas. These kids are getting to be very seasoned travelers!

It was kind of nice that Valerie insisted on wearing long sleeves, long pants, and socks the whole time, as that helped limit her sun and mosquito exposure. Nonetheless, she got 17 mosquito bites on one hand alone (not to mention 7 on her face and several on the other hand).

It was very hot. The hotel pool was so nice. We had a mix of work, relaxation, and worship (on Palm Sunday).

Monday was a quiet day spent re-acclimating to Bogota (Valerie said "I'm so happy to be back in Colombia!") and receiving the Jantzi grandparents, who arrived here a few hours after we did Sunday night!

Unfortunately Valerie woke up sick today and has been throwing up and shivering. Right now she is sleeping, thankfully. Gabriel is fine, full of energy, and Terry has gone to the office to do a little work while the grandparents putter around helping me do small tasks at the house. I'm so glad it's holy week so we can rest up a bit.

Wow

A lot has happened since I last posted! I keep hoping that I will get back into the swing of things here on my blog, but somehow it's not happening. I'm glad to know though that people are still reading :-)

A few updates:

• Terry went to Afghanistan for 2 weeks, to do a training for World Vision. Although he was gone for 16 days, he was only in-country for 10 days because the trip is so long! He brought back lots of fascinating stories and photos, and a beautiful hand-woven rug he bought from a women's cooperative. I'll post some photos ans stories once I get that organized and cleared for public consumption.
• Meanwhile, at home in Colombia, Gabriel learned to use the potty!!!!! We had tried about a month ago during a long weekend, but he just wasn't cooperative. Then the aide at his preschool asked me to bring her some extra pants and underwear because she thought he was willing to try, based on how he watched the other boys go. Luz, our afternoon babysitter, was really excited about this and jumped on board quickly in support of the process. By day 3 I was coming home in the evening to find him in the same dry pants and underwear I'd dressed him in the morning! There are still accidents, and he's still wearing a diaper at night, but I'm very proud of our little dude for mastering this skill, and grateful to our child care providers for taking the initiative to work with him and actually do most of the work for me!
• I turned FORTY. Happily, Terry was back in time for my birthday. Unhappily, I got sick that day with an evil sore throat that felt like knives every time I swallowed. I took a sick day on Wednesday, and today I feel pretty good. My energy is back just in time for some friends from work and church to take me out!
• We also hosted our first "learning tour" delegation, a group of Mennonite Brethren pastors seeking to connect with and learn from Colombian MBs about how their faith shapes their responses to the armed conflict in this country. You can find their reflections here.

New Things

So I'm hoping the cuteness of my subject matter will compensate for the poor quality of the photos... maybe I can get a new camera for my birthday next month :-) (This is a test to see if anyone is still reading this neglected, abandoned blog!) 

 Yesterday the kids had their first school excursion, to a farm the school owns just outside the city. I had to send them off with their special-ordered sweatsuits, complete with the school logo and embroidered with their names on the pockets. I also had to buy them rain boots, rain ponchos, and pack it all up with a change of clothes and shoes in a backpack.

 There was some ambivalence about all the newness, sort of dread mixed with excitement.

 Valerie asked me never-ending streams of questions the two or three days leading up to the outing.

They both cried when I dropped them off that day, but I think they ended up having a really fun time. They came home exhausted, full of stories about a sandbox and a white cow and a llama and how the farm was dry, and it didn't rain!

I think next time it will be easier to get them into their outfits than it was this time. I hope! New things are hard, the second time is usually easier.

Lluvia, Shiu, Rain

I spoke to soon - as soon as I remarked on the sunny weather we've been having, the rains began. It's been raining almost every afternoon and one day I had no idea what to wear because all my shoes were wet from walking home in the rain for three days in a row. I need to get some rain boots!

The kids have been settling in to school. One of the teachers told us they seem to be understanding more and more Spanish. Gabriel says he likes "the music place" and Valerie loves the jungle gym. I'm looking forward to being able to sit down with the teachers at some point and hear more.

Today and tomorrow I'm in Cali to talk over budgets and MOUs and worker evaluations with one of our partner organizations here. It's not as boring as it sounds :-). The part of this job I've enjoyed the most has been supporting personnel, even working through some really difficult situations - for some reason it energizes me. I feel like this context, this work, this organization brings out the best in me and makes me a better person, and that's been incredibly encouraging.

Parque Simon Bolivar

One place we've enjoyed exploring here is a huge park called Simon Bolivar. There's a lake with ducks and fish, playgrounds, walking paths, a little "train" that goes around, lots of food vendors. 

I have to say again, we've been pleasantly surprised by the weather here - we didn't realize there was a sunny season, we thought we were in for five years of cloudy drizzle! A taxi driver told me that this is coffee-drying season right now. We have had a little rain, but I'm still really surprised by how green everything is given how little it has rained in the last three months. Another person told me "Colombia is a very wet country." 

Here Terry is buying some corn-cakes stuffed with cheese and guava fruit paste - yum! Guava fruit paste, which in Guyana they called "fruit cheese," is a very popular snack/dessert food here. I love it. It's usually sold in little blocks, sometimes with cheese, sometimes with blancmange, called "arequipe" here ("Manjar blanco" in Peru).

School!

 The first two days of school, parents and other caregivers were instructed to come with the kids in order to get them acclimated. My mom was able to come with the the first day, too!

There are lots of murals painted all over the building. We liked this one a lot. (The photos where Valerie is wearing a blue shirt and Gabe has green stripes are from the first day. Pink shirt and grey hoodie are from the second day.)

The blocks are in the workshop area where the kids also help sand boards to refurbish their own little chairs.

The indoor jungle gym is Valerie's #1 favorite room in the whole place! Behind it is a toy room that they both like.

Facing the slide is this carpeted area where they played Bowling.

Snack time!  The school has a no-sugar policy. Gabriel liked the fresh fruit juice. V wouldn't touch it!

 Drawing room upstairs. The mural on this wall depicts the school's farm where they go on field trips once or twice a month.

More soon - someone needs me!

Tomorrow...

... is the first day of school for my two littles! I will take lots of pictures.

Their preschool has a process for easing in kids the first year.
Day 1: The children (just the new kids, not returning) come for 1 hour, with their parents, and explore the place.
Day 2: The children come with their parents or caregivers for 2 hours, with a little more structure - snack time in the middle.
Day 3: The children are dropped off for 1 hour. (We were asked to please keep it simple when we drop them off, assuring them we'll be back soon, and to be PROMPT in returning)
Day 4: The children are dropped off for two hours.

* weekend *

Monday: Toy Day! Each child is encouraged to bring a clearly marked favorite toy from home (not too big and not too tiny). They are dropped off for four hours.
Tuesday: Regular schedule commences (some kids are half-day, some are full-day, etc...)

I'm staying home from work Tuesday and Wednesday, and working limited hours the other days to support them in this transition. They're really excited about it though. Yesterday Valerie asked me "is it Tuesday yet?"

~ :: ~

My parents are also leaving this week - Thursday morning - and I'm glad that they are here for the first few days of school; I think it will make the transition less abrupt, perhaps, on both fronts. Maybe. I could be wrong. In any case, it's been great having them here and I don't know what we would have done without them, during the month our babysitter was on vacation! Well, worked less, probably!

Just Kid Stuff

I think the kids, for the most part, are settling in. We have an interesting challenge ahead of us in February when they'll both start going to preschool half-days - I wasn't planning to put G in school so soon, but after visiting the place I kept thinking - he's going to love this. They have an arts and nature focus, and own a farm outside the city that I think Valerie will love visiting - there's even a llama, apparently! I think G will enjoy the music workshop they do with all kinds of musical instruments. It will still be an adjustment for them since they haven't picked up a whole lot of Spanish yet - but I expect that will change soon with immersion.

The kids are both growing like weeds. When we arrived, G didn't have to duck to go under the rail that surrounds the playground near our house - now he does. Sleeves that were overlong last summer are now just right. And I keep having to trim the hair out of their eyes.

G is talking a mile a minute, he's a natural mimic so picks up a crazy amount of vocabulary from us and his sister. There are still adorably "baby" things he says - like reversing word order ("Where's my little own toy!") or sounds ("Pliget" instead of "Piglet"). Another phrase he says that I love is "no many" (e.g. "The dog is sad because it has no many friends.") He's also really into mamas and babies - every toy he can, he puts into big/little pairs that are then Mama and Baby - like mama and baby tow trucks, mama and baby cement mixers, mama and baby helicopters. They must then stay together or they get sad.

Valerie continues with her acrobatics - she has excellent balance. Yesterday she climbed on the back of the couch to get more traction for pressing play-dough flat on an end table - her feet in the air, her middle balanced just so on the couch, one hand on the play-dough. She loves monkey bars and basically climbing anything and everything she can. She often talks about Tirana but tells me she likes it here and is happy.

We've had opportunity this month to check out some kid-friendly fun things in Bogota, including the children's museum, a huge park surrounding a lake in the middle of the city, and exploring a big mall in hopes of finding an indoor play area for rainy days. The park was pretty awesome, you could buy fish food for the carp in the lake, as well as all kinds of other finger foods, and there was a huge playground for the kids. The Children's Museum and Mall were both pretty expensive, we thought (my parents have been kind of shocked at food prices here as well, compared to Peru). So I'm not sure how often we'll be doing those things. But the park was great. Anyway, I do have photos of all those things just not on the computer yet, so I'll save them for a future post.

Our sitter has been on vacation for about a month so we've been relying completely on grandparent care! I don't know what we'd do without them!

Hello, 2013

Well. A year ago I promised you all 150 posts in 2012... I didn't even break 100! The last quarter of this year was a doozy... we moved to Bogotá, Colombia, on November 1, and pretty much hit the ground running. Things didn't really slow down until after Christmas. 

Well, I'm not sure to what extent I'm going to be able to catch you all up on the past two months... but at least, here is an assortment of photos that I finally got around to downloading and prettying up on my laptop (my camera suffered a rain-related mishap in October, so the lens cover doesn't open all the way anymore... which is why a lot of my photos have a dark shadow in one corner. Those that don't, it's been cropped out.)

This is the view out our bedroom window. We don't actually get direct sunlight in our apartment, but we are close to some green spaces - the trees you see there are on the National University grounds.

Another nice green space nearby: this is a sweet little park half a block from our house. This neighborhood is referred to by some as the "Mennonite neighborhood" because so many Mennonites live within a few blocks of each other!

For the past month, my parents have been visiting us here in Bogotá while house-sitting for a Wycliffe missionary who is in the US right now. These roses are from her garden - a sunny little backyard patio where the kids have been having a ton of fun playing. The "Fancy House" (as we've been calling it) is quite a distance from our apartment, so we've been dividing our weeks between the two places, staying 3-4 days at a time over there. Bogotá is seriously huge... although the TransMilenio bus system does a lot to facilitate transit.

We spent Christmas Day relaxing at home, and also at a team Christmas party in an apartment complex that had its own little grassy area with a playground, which the kids vastly enjoyed.

For New Year's, we went to Montserrate - a local landmark with a wonderful vista of the city. We took the Funicular - a train built at a slant to go up steep slopes - to go up, and the cable car to come down. At the top we enjoyed the view and had a delicious lunch at an Italian-themed restaurant there. 

Well, 2012 held a lot of surprises. We'll see what 2013 will bring!

pictures!

 Beautiful landscape outside Bogota, where our team retreat was held in November.

 This butterfly mask was at a clever ad for a resort near where we stayed!

 Carport/ patio where the kids enjoy playing. 

 Park near our house

 Baby bananas! This photos is from my trip to the Atlantic Coast a few weeks ago.

Apres bath!

Assembling our Christmas Tree! Valerie is currently fascinated by how things work. She pretty much put together the whole tree by herself, a big 3D puzzle!

Trip!

No photos yet... but I just got back from a trip to the Atlantic (or Caribbean) coast of Colombia, visiting one of our partner organizations and several MCC volunteers placed there. Miraculously, I feel more rested upon returning than I did before I left! Part of that is due to the fact that I ate something that disagreed with me - rather violently - on my second day, and couldn't keep anything down, not even water. I know that doesn't sound particularly restful - but my hosts became concerned enough that I was actually urged to lie in a hammock and nap at every opportunity. Plus, I had a double bed all to myself for three nights... try co-sleeping with a nursing toddler for a few years, and then you will know exactly how bountifully restful sleeping alone can be! So despite the heat, despite long meetings and despite bumpy road trips to visit projects in the rural communities, I returned to our home in Bogota feeling amazingly rested and restored.

About ten years ago, paramilitaries devastated this area of Colombia, displacing thousands of people, mostly farmers of Afro-Caribbean descent. Slowly now people are returning to the land and trying to re-establish community. Personal trauma, issues over land titles, and basic agricultural livelihoods are all struggles these internally displaced people are working to overcome.

Many aspects of the context on the coast reminded me of my childhood in the Peruvian Amazon - the heat, the parrots flying overhead, the tropical fruits - but in other aspects it's an entirely different context. Different lingo, different music, different foods and ways of being. Our first month in Colombia has been exhausting - dizzying, even. I feel like right now things might be slowing down enough to catch a breath.

Home, Sick

Well, I'm back in Bogota, with some kind of bug - sore throat and bone-tired. Hit the ground running but then took the day off yesterday to just be at home with the kids. It was good. And only coincidence that it was Thanksgiving! We ate noodles, canned beans, peanut butter and jelly, yoghurt. It was a quiet and peaceful day that I think we all needed.

This morning we walked to a private preschool nearby where we're thinking of enrolling Valerie for the coming school year, which starts in January. I have to meet with the director soon to learn more. After that I took the kids with me to the office for the weekly Bogota-staff lunch we share together. It was fun for them, and apparently the whole adventure wore them out because they both fell asleep around 7 p.m.! Amazing.

Off to bed myself.

Sojourner

It was crazy-strange, less than two weeks after landing in Bogota, to get back on a plane and fly to San Francisco via Houston. By myself. This is the longest I've ever been away from Gabriel. Terry's been sending me nightly updates. I have to say that I've been vastly enjoying my time at the conference, just soaking up all this intellectual and social energy. But it's been tiring too and I think I'm beginning to get sick. My presentation is tomorrow so I should probably get some shut-eye.

Less than 48 hours til I'm back in Colombia again!

New Home

Here are some photos of our apartment. It's very much a work in progress... I didn't include photos of the bedrooms because the level of chaos is just unreal. 

The door you see is the front door we come in. Opposite this door, on the other side of the wall you see by the table, is the big bedroom. Just behind those hat trees is the small bedroom which we are only using for storage right now (we inherited a lot of MCC detritus...)

To the right of the dining room table is the kitchen/laundry area (you can see the top of one of the dining room chairs there at the bottom left). Clothes take forever to dry inside; smaller, more frequent loads seem to be the thing to do.

To the right of the laundry area, on the other side of a dividing wall, is a little nook where we put this couch. The view out this window is actually prettier than what you see here - you can look down into the patio garden, and to the right you see the trees from the small park and the University grounds nearby. The kids LOVE playing in this little nook.

Opposite the nook is this small fireplace, and a painting we inherited from someone. (The butterfly wings were acquired in the States and have spawned a really fun series of bedtime stories about Caterpillar and Butterfly and their adventures in the garden. Opportunity to insert morality tales about sharing and taking turns!!!)

 Wider angle view - another play area (imagine that!) The two doors you see there are both bathroom doors - why we have two adjacent bathrooms, I do not know. But it works. One or the other is always running out of toilet paper. 

Like I said, I've been impressed by how well the kids have been doing (so far). They are very much looking forward to visits from their grandparents, though!