Yawn

Well, as you can tell I've sort of given up on this blog a little bit... or you might say it has gone dormant. So consider this post something of a snore.

We spent 10 days in Bolivia last month for regional leadership meetings, which was very fun - Terry's and my old stomping grounds, where we met in 1996! Terry's parents were able to be there also so the kids had some fun grandparent time while we were in meetings. But my camera battery died and so I only have the photos that Vern took with his iPhone.

Somehow, though, Gabriel always manages to get sick when we travel. This time he got pink-eye, which came back 2 days after I finished the full treatment. So we are doing it all over again and had to keep him out of school this week.

The kids were super-happy to get home and be re-united with all their toys, their own beds, and their routines.

Some funny things they've been doing lately: they invented an imaginary place called "Chetten Mall" that exists somewhere on the other side of outer space, in "Daytime Land." You have to take a rocket ship to get there. There are lots of riding toys and pizza. They can spend long minutes elaborating tales of Chetten Mall.

Well, March was a crazy-busy month, I'm hoping April will slow down but somehow there seem to be all these little crises erupting throughout our team. Never a dull moment!

Blur

Wow, it's been a while. I still haven't uploaded my photos from our trip to Peru! It was fantastic. I will blog about that soon.

January was kind of a stressful month, as we tried to figure out where and when Valerie will be starting Kindergarten (called Transición here), and I tried to figure out when it will work out to defend my dissertation. Both ends of the academic journey: she just beginning, I hoping to finish, both stressing me out of my mind. I think things are juuuust about settled... but I'm still holding my breath until I feel more absolutely certain about both things.

Meanwhile, Terry and I are back to work... and greatly appreciating more time with my parents who are staying in an apartment a block away from our house! It's been great.

The other day I made a list of the top ten things I like about Bogotá, that I thought I'd share with you:

10. The Transmilenio. People complain about it all the time but we love it. It helps that we live conveniently close to two different lines.

9. Parque Simón Bolivar. It's huge, it's green, it's peaceful. We love taking the kids there.

8. Monserrate. We can see the lovely white cathedral atop this mountain shining in the sunlight from our street, from the office, from pretty much everywhere we go.

7. Street art.

6. Speaking Spanish all the time (even if it is a much more formal version that what we're used to!) I love that the kids are learning Spanish!

5. The smell of eucalyptus as we walk past the university grounds near our house. I know it's not a native tree species, but I still find the smell really relaxing. Since it's been planted all over the Andes, it makes me feel connected to mountain cities I've lived in in Peru and Bolivia.

4. Small parks with playground equipment easily available in every neighborhood in the city. I don't think you can actually find a spot in a residential neighborhood that's more than 5 blocks from a park!

3. Our office building - it's an old and gracious home with hardwood floors and water damage (well, we don't love the water damage... !)

2. Our team/work community

1. Our church community

There are definitely a lot of things I DON'T love, like the human misery we see on a daily basis, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor, and our super-slow Internet service at home (Ok, that last one is a trivial martyrdom...) but on the whole I do feel like we're pretty well settled here. I still feel like a foreigner, but Bogotá no longer feels foreign to me. I wouldn't say it feels like home, really, but we feel at home, if that makes sense.

Year in Review, more or less

As we draw close to the end of the calendar year, our family has passed the 1-year milestone in Colombia. It's been quite a year. The first year of school for the kids, the first year for Terry and I working in this job, living in Bogotá... a lot has happened. The other day someone mentioned to me something that happened in March and I couldn't believe it has been 8 months, it felt like 2 months ago.

I'd say that overall it's been a good year. A year full of learning. Not, sadly, a year full of blogging... I think I was just too busy.

Highlights of 2013 for our family:

• Kids starting preschool in February (and finishing their first year last Friday!)
• Gabriel getting potty trained in April
• My food revolution in May
• Albania vacation in July 
• Valerie losing her first tooth in October
• My 2 weeks in Guatemala in Oct/Nov - the longest I've been away from the kids

It's hard for me to form an overall mental picture of this past year. It's been an incredibly full one, with so many changes. So I conclude with some recent photos from family outings and home.

 (still not sure where the giant Christmas lizards come into the picture.... but the overall effect was pretty!)

40 hours

In about 40 hours I'll be home, assuming Saturday's travel all goes well. Right now I'm wrapping up 2 weeks of a program evaluation process as part of a team of three. The lead evaluator is a guy who lives in Nicaragua and worked with MCC there in some way shape or form for about 12 years; prior to that he went to our church in the US and we know his family well. The other man on our team is the local counterpart, a seasoned veteran of NGO work and of the armed conflicts in this country. Our task has been to give feedback to the new country directors of MCC Guatemala/El Salvador on a few keys points, as well as a general assessment of the health of the program and team here.

It's been an absolutely fascinating process - and exhausting - and I've learned a ton. It might have made more sense for Terry to be here than me, given his expertise in evaluation, but I think I was a better (more balancing) fit for this particular evaluation team. I'm definitely ready to be home, though. I miss my family and my team in Bogotá.

Terry has been bravely holding down the fort with help from his parents; there was a lot going on this week including submitting a thick file of paperwork as we apply for Valerie's admission to a new school (for next year), trips to the dentist, canceled field trips due to rain, etc. etc. I have a sneaking suspicion he's going to be glad to see me on Saturday!
 

2 days in El Salvador

This is a coffee farm owned by a church that partners with MCC. The idea is to resettle up to 200 families whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Ida. It's a work in progress!

This clinic is part of an integrated development project that MCC partners with near the capital. 

 The guy on the left is our driver, Raul. He helps make the many hours in the MCC truck pass quickly!

We're now back in Guatemala City and have three more days before I get to go home to Bogotá and be with Terry and the kids again. It's been an incredible journey here, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. It occurs to me I never explained on the blog what I'm doing here - I think I'll save that for the next post!

I'm in Guatemala!

Park Day!

We stayed at this park for like 4 hours yesterday - if we had packed a lunch we could have stayed two hours more I think!

This Milestone Feels Like a Big Deal

Look - just look at those two precious teeth! Remember all the chewing, the drooling, the restless nights as they emerged from the gums? 

Look at this little 5-and-a-half-year-old girl, so grown up in her ladybug boots and pigtails 

Valerie lost her first tooth Monday morning while eating an apple at breakfast. She had noticed it wiggling the Friday night before and was utterly distraught. She got used to it, though - following our normal routines seemed to be reassuring - but then when it came out she just burst into tears. It took a lot of cheering and celebrating from her dad and I before she calmed down. We put the tooth carefully away in a small container with a lid, labeled very clearly. She is fascinated by the new look of her mouth and likes showing the gap to people because they get all excited for her.

My beautiful daughter. She is growing up so fast.

Urgent Action

It's been a hectic couple of weeks and blogging, once again, got away from me. We've been fairly preoccupied with a crisis involving one of our partner organizations on the Caribbean Coast (these photos are all from my visit there last November). In  nutshell, a community leader and organizer who has worked for decades to promote non-violent social change is under threat, and another has been imprisoned.

I remember as a young(er) person, staying with my Grandma Beth in NY, and seeing her at her desk late at night writing letters for Amnesty International. As a budding social activist type I remember feeling so impressed and so proud of her. Now I feel grateful - to her and to the many people who take time for this kind of action. It might not seem like it makes much of a difference, but it can - the difference between life and death.

I won't try to explain the whole story here - in fact, there are aspects of the story that cannot at this time be made public because to do so would put people's lives in further danger. I've been spending most of my work time in the past 10 days working with an amazing network of people (who understand much more than I do about the situation and about international advocacy processes) to discern what exactly can and should be said, and to whom, and via what means, under a strong sense of urgency to have it all done three days ago.

So here are some good things to read:

• The MCC Action Alert which has a clear and concise telling of the story (the two young women named at the end are part of our team here).
• The Amnesty International alert
• A personal first-hand account from one of our MCCers, Anna (you should follow her blog, actually - it's awesome on a regular basis!)

It's been incredibly humbling and moving to see the responses beginning to flood in. Like over 1500 signatures collected online already. Ricardo is a dearly beloved and greatly respected in peacebuilding circles around the world. And in Colombia.