Holiday Notes From a Hammock

If I were in the States today, I probably would be running around town, spending gift cards, making returns, and eating out after cleaning out the last of the Christmas leftovers. One of the nice things about being in Guatemala at this time of year is a slower pace of life. I slept in until 8, did some household chores, talked with Chad about some ministry/business related items and necessary property repairs, and then put on my big 'ole sun hat and sat in a hammock that my husband has ingeniously strung on our rooftop terrace. For an hour the intense sun warmed me as the chilly wind rocked me. Everyone has been curious about how our holidays have been so far away from "home." I would say like most things over the last six months, it has been good, if not a little bittersweet.

Part of the joy of the holidays is the comfort of the familiar. Going to my grandma's and to church  on Christmas Eve (and then eating Chinese food at the Rohs!), or waking up to gifts and cinnamon rolls and leftover Christmas cookies on Christmas morning with our kids. And even though we have Skyped into several family gatherings, there have been times when I craved that familiar comfort. A few times I had a big lump in my throat and wanted to go pull the covers over my head and cry because I miss my mom, and because my nieces and nephews have grown so much in six months, and one has even been born who I haven't gotten to hold. But those moments were few and fleeting.

The joy of this year's holiday has been recognizing the friends around us who are like family that we can celebrate with, and learning that this adopted culture of ours really knows how to embrace celebration. After All Saint's Day on November 2, with no Thanksgiving to celebrate in between, it is time to start he Christmas partying! Beautiful displays of lights, delicious specialty foods, and you probably know what I'm going to say next…FIREWORKS. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I moved to the right place, because I love fireworks. And you just can't overstate how amazing the Christmas Eve fireworks are here. It is as if the entire city explodes for over an hour. It is awe inspiring. Guatemalans typically start the celebration late in the evening, eating tamales and ponche at midnight, enjoying the fireworks, then staying up late into the night or all night exchanging gifts, eating, and doing more fireworks throughout the night. We enjoyed a good time with great friends and a spectacular view of the city,  but made it in bed by 1:30 and woke up to our usual gifts and cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. So, we truly enjoyed both traditions.

Having Mammaw Krena and Pappaw Tom here has really helped the kids enjoy the holiday without missing a beat. They've been loved on and spoiled as per usual. Even in the States, we tried to be conservative at Christmas, usually giving each child three gifts. And we tended to stick along the lines of "something I want, something I need, something to wear, something to read," or close to it. This year we prepared the kids to expect even less than usual, considering our major life transition and drastic changes in family finances. But, of course, the grandparents, aunts, and uncles stepped in, and they had one of the greatest Christmas hauls ever. I sat wrapping presents in my room crying because of everyone's love and generosity that was literally delivered in suitcases to our doorstep.

Our school vacation is a little longer here than in the States, and it has been a huge blessing to get to spend a lot of time at home relaxing. We've been able to show Chad's parents a lot of what we do here and do some fun tourist things as well. The New Year promises fun celebration as well, and of course more fireworks, and Sterling turns three this week! So we have a lot more cross cultural celebrating ahead. We thank everybody for all your love and well wishes from afar. We miss and love you. Hopefully, at some point we'll get to enjoy the holidays nearby, but you are welcome to come and stay with us and experience the beauty of Christmas in Guatemala.

El Mol (The Mall)

I'm a schoolteacher-turned-missionary who cares deeply about the struggles of people around the globe who were born into political/economic/religious circumstances in which they have no say. I'm passionate enough about the orphan crisis to pretty much make it my life's work. And this is what's on my mind: the mall.

I have this illness that is difficult to live with. I spent almost 40 years as a typical American consumer. And although I've let go of a lot to lead this current lifestyle, it is absolutely sick how happy and normal going to the mall makes me feel. Let me explain a couple of important things.

#1 Guatemala has REALLY nice malls. That sounds understandably bizarre. Isn't Guatemala one of the world's poorest nations? Yep. Don't you work in indigenous villages where people have no electricity, running water, or furniture? Yep. So, what gives? We do live on the outskirts of a huge city. There does exist a concentration of Guatemala's wealthier people here, so there are parts of the city that have great entertainment. There are several nice malls, and the one that is closest to us, about 30 minutes away, is Centro Commercial Miraflores. Rumor has it that this was once the largest mall in Central America. I tend to believe it; it is by far the largest mall I have ever experienced. There are palm trees and fountains in this mall. It is gorgeous, not our familiar run-down hotspot-of-the-eighties. There is a carousel and other children's diversions. There are TWO food courts, multiple restaurants, hundreds of stores, and the piece de resistance: a great movie theater (more about that in a minute). It abounds with familiar American delicacies like Dairy Queen and Chili's. and lest I forget one of the most amazing parts, let me tell you about the parking garage. It is huge, clean, well-lit, the spaces are luxuriously large, the parking fee is minimal, and there are lights on each space that indicate whether the space is available, with a lit number at the end of the row indicating how many spaces are free. GENIUS, I tell you.

#2 I cannot afford to shop at this mall. As much as I love walking around, with a coffee/froyo/etc. in hand, window shopping, occasionally looking at a price tag for fun, I seriously couldn't buy something there if I wanted to for the most part. Most things are imported and even stores I would've occasionally shopped at in the States are out of reach for my current budget. And since this mall is a half hour drive into the city, I'm not wasteful enough to come here often just to walk around and eat fast food treats.

We usually go to the mall for the movie theater. One great thing about Guatemala is that movies are cheap! People have to able able to afford to go, right? It's about $5 per person. There's popcorn, which is also cheap. And even though our family can all go see a recent release in English for about$25, this is still a rare treat. Both kids chose to go to the movies with friends for their birthdays. In all, we've really only been three times since we moved here. Hopefully we will again soon, because we need to see Catching Fire!!

In the mall I feel more like my normal consumer self. It feels good. As long as I don't think too much.  Because there is also guilt. These malls are built primarily through drug money, or mob money, and just generally by bad guys. And if I pull out of the posh garage and drive a couple of blocks I'll be right in a typical poor neighborhood. How can this extravagant wealth and this dire poverty coexist right next to each other? It's maddening. I would like to give you nice tidy closure here. A story about how I had a talk with God and he told me it he was cool with me going to the mall. Alas, no. Here's all the resolution I have. This mall employs thousands of Guatemalans. This mall provides some (relatively) safe and inexpensive entertainment for our family. And sometimes when you feel like you're a fish out of water, culturally speaking, it feels good to jump back in the water for a few minutes.

Gringogiving and a Visa Trip

In a culture with no Thanksgiving to celebrate in November, the celebration of Christmas is already in full swing. We've witnessed some amazing Christmas themed fireworks and seen some beautiful Christmas displays already. At first we were ambivalent about celebrating Thanksgiving because it seemed sort of like going backwards. Do we really need turkey? As it turns out, we will be out of town Thursday anyway (more about that in a minute) so we were even less inclined to celebrate since we won't be home. Interestingly, since there are a lot of gringos in the city, local merchants have figured out they can sell frozen butterballs, cranberry sauce, Stove Top, and canned pumpkin to a captive audience with little competition. Said Butterballs are quite expensive, however, which was another discouragement. But then, this week as I thought about the last year of our lives, my thoughts were how could we NOT celebrate Thanksgiving, whether we had turkey or not? Everything we have in our lives right now is just pure blessing. We definitely needed to take a time out and return some thanks in a specific way. In the end, I found a small budget friendly turkey breast, and today for Sunday dinner we enjoyed a few of our Thanksgiving favorites. We invited a couple of friends, and we prayed and ate and talked through a quiet afternoon. We even watched a little football this evening which seems fitting for Thanksgiving as well.

Our Thanksgiving ended up as kind of a holiday mash up as we decided to get a Christmas tree today. We went to Novex (our Lowe's like store) and bought a base model slightly better than Charlie Brown's and a few inexpensive decorations. So decorating and Christmas music accompanied our meager feast. Even though the weather hasn't changed much here and our Ohio brains aren't sure it's November, today helped put us all in holiday spirits.

For our first Thanksgiving outside the States, we will be on the road. I used to hear missionaries talk about "visa trips," and thought it seemed kind of inappropriate. Were they all taking vacations on credit cards? But now in my cultural education I have learned what a visa trip is. Every 180 days, we have to leave the country to renew our Guatemalan visas to be in the country. Eventually we will apply for residency which will alleviate this requirement. Long story short, if we're not planning a trip to the States, our closest choices are Mexico and Belize. So, we will be heading out Thursday morning to spend a few required nights out of the country in Belize. In know, poor us, we have to go check out the Caribbean. And for those of you who are familiar with our history of road trips in Guatemala, you will be relieved to hear that a Guatemalan friend who is a mechanic is driving us. So, here's wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family, whether you're in Cincinnati or at the big parade in New York. We thank God for you all and how you've touched our lives. We thank you for all your love and support that sustain us here. Thank you to amazing friends here in Guatemala where after only six months we have awesome friends to take care of our dog, house, church, or anything else that needs taking care of. We love you all! And if you see a picture of  us on the beach, we are not vacationing on our visa, but getting our 90 day visas stamped.

Those Crazy Kids

Most people's first concern when talking to us is the kids. We thought this would be a good experience for our kids, but in the back of my mind I could picture Caleb in his therapist's office saying "when I was 12, my parents sold everything we owned and moved us to another country..." I am happy to report that our kids are amazing. They are tough and resilient. Hiking across Antigua with backpacks to the grocery, living three different places, starting with zero Spanish, they have overcome some difficult circumstances and are thriving. They miss their grandparents, cousins, and friends, but rarely dwell on it, and are happy to talk to them as often as possible. Everyone has had a moment or two of homesickness or cultural frustration, but fortunately they've kind of taken turns which makes it manageable. Our pastoral care team, the Burgers, visited us a couple of months ago, and they said we appeared to be doing well, but that our kids seemed to be outshining even Chad and I in their ability to adapt to their new environment.

Here's a quick run-down:
Caleb, more than any of us I think, LOVES his new school. He is playing soccer and really sharpening his trumpet skills. He is active in youth group, enjoying learning Spanish, and has a lot of good friends. He is maturing into a teenager  who I really like a lot.

Aleksandra has good grades, is playing the clarinet, has a beautiful Spanish accent, and has several good friends, including a fellow Russian adoptee! Her middle childness is somewhat appeased by being the new kid in school. If you know her at all, you know what I mean. She is loving life.

Sterling is growing so fast! She is talking all the time and really starting to pick up Spanish quickly. Recent additions to her vocabulary are "zapatos" (atta girl) and "No me gusta!"She goes to child care at school while I'm teaching, and she loves it. She looks forward to playing with her friends every day. She is also like the honorary CAG mascot. Everyone on campus adores her.

Visits from church friends and grandmother have helped along the way, and looking forward to more grandparents visiting (soon!) and more friends in the spring and summer help us all from getting too homesick. I'm pretty amazed when I see how well the kids are doing, even though there are times when life here can get intense and I know they see Chad and I under stress. But they are also seeing as God provides for us time and again, and they are developing servant hearts toward the people here. The education they are gaining in this cross-cultural-spiritual adventure is greater than anything I could possibly teach them, so I'm just grateful. For awesome kids, for their good transition, for the opportunity to be here. So thanks for making it possible because if you're reading this you are probably a part of it all in some way.

How are we really?

Lately I've gotten a lot of messages from friends that all say the same thing: how are you?  And they seem very insistent that they want to know how I really am. Not just the happy stuff that goes on social media. We've been gone long enough that I think people really do wonder what it's like to be in our shoes. It's been 6-9 months since most people have seen us, and what must it be like to be here this long? Many times I start to tweet or post about how amazing/beautiful/scary/overwhelming it is here, but I just stop. It's too hard to communicate in so few words, pictures, etc. and who would understand anyway? But I feel a tugging that I need to give some of the real stuff. The nitty gritty day-to-day stuff. And if only my friends and family who really want to know read, that is fine. If nothing else, I figure I need to find a way to record some of this incredible experience, because I'm not keeping track of all those thrown away thoughts that have never become social media sound bites.

There's also this looming shadow of a really great blog that somebody else in this house puts a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into. He's an amazing writer who is philosophical, theological, poetic...and then some. He tells our story so beautifully that I almost don't want to interrupt it with the mundane. But then I take another deep breath and acknowledge that there's not too much about this life that is mundane. So, I'll take this step out of my nicely protected thoughts. If you really want to know: we are good...except when we're not. But God is good all the time, and our life here is a testament to that. So, if you care, stay tuned. Daily life of ordinary people living in a place where they don't know from one day to the next what might happen...that's all I can chronicle for you.