Maggie's Birthday

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Every birthday seems to turn into more of a festival and this year Maggie's was no different. Beginning Friday with the new puppies life has been busy working up to today. The puppies are doing great! The kids seem to be doing really well learning how to train them and, though they have a lot to learn, it is all much calmer than I expected.

One tradition we've had for a few years now is going horseback riding for Maggie's birthday. This all started way back when she was three or four on a Retreat to the Hills and since then every fall we've found somewhere to go horseback riding. I thought with the new puppies there was no way we'd be able to afford to go this year. God hears the prayers of little girl's hearts! Maggie has a friend at school, Toño who lives up in the mountains near a stable. We were able to go riding on Monday evening. It was amazing!

It had been raining a good part of the day and we almost didn't go. When we got up to Toño's house it was still raining and we really thought we'd just let the kids play for a while before heading back to the city. But the rain let up and just after 5PM we went to meet the horses. It was beautiful. It was right at sunset/twilight when we left and as we rode it got darker. There we were, under the stars, riding through the mountains of Colombia. Breathtaking!

Today we took a cookie cake to Maggie's class and brought in the puppies to visit. Poor puppies, after the kindergarten teacher asked Corey to show them to her class they were a bit traumatized! But Alex and Maggie were both thrilled to show off their new pals.

We had a quiet evening eating Maggie's favorites - meatloaf and chocolate cake. And as I look at the clock now, 10:03PM, I realize that my little girl is now officially 9 years old!
~Tona

Plan B

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We had a plan. Maggie has adjusted to Colombia fairly well, but she still tends to be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. After consulting a professional child psychologist...oh, who also happens to be my sister...and doing some research we read and heard a lot that a pet can help a child feel more adjusted. Maggie has been begging for a puppy since she was about 3. If you know her at all you'll know she's horse and dog crazy. So here was the plan, we would get everything together and Tuesday, on her birthday, when she came home from school we would present her with a new puppy. Sounded good. We had done a lot of research and decided a beagle was the best breed for our family at this point (although Corey and I would have loved a lab or retriever). Anyway, what we didn't know ahead of time is that the kids also have Monday off of school and because of some other scheduling issues when we got home from browsing pet stores today Corey suggested we go ahead and get a puppy today so that the kids would have the weekend and Monday to play with it before they had to go back to school.

I called a breeder we had been speaking with and asked her about seeing the puppies tonight. She said she had three that she would bring over and we could pick which one we wanted. We didn't tell the kids what was coming (so should have thought that part through better). I asked Corey if we should go ahead and explain to Alex what was going to happen and he said Alex would be fine...read on.

The puppies were all adorable. We played with them for a while and finally Maggie made a choice. All was well, so I thought, and Corey paid the lady for the puppy. I was talking to her about some details when I turned around and saw Alex's head buried in Corey's chest and his shoulders heaving. He was balling! Corey looked a bit glassy-eyed and said, "I can't do this to him" and, what do you know, I'm bartering with the lady for two puppies. Plan B.

So we now have two baby beagles. It's been an early Christmas...lol. Alex just kept saying, "I don't need any gifts for Christmas or my next birthday. Thank you so much for the puppy." Good thing he's so understanding! And so along with the beagles we have two very happy children.

****Update...Alex has named his Cookie and Maggie has named hers Angel.

~Tona

Construction of a school in Cienega (Corey's Blog Part Two)

Ricardo had dropped Francisco and I off at the hotel and took the van to the apartment where Mike was staying. I was tired and confused as the owner unlocked the front door and showed us to our room. 90+ degrees, no air conditioning, the beds had by far the hardest mattresses I had ever felt and at that point I really didn’t care. We were out very quickly and up even quicker as 5 am rolled around. Time for our first day of work. We got dressed and walked across the street to where the vendors were selling breakfast foods. If I didn’t know that God would protect me I would have been very nervous in this area and even more so ordering food here. I had a fried egg inside of a cornmeal batter deep fried and cup of coffee in a plastic Dixie cup.

After breakfast we walked 10 blocks to where the job site is. The school already has a first and second floor but no roof; there are half walls for the exterior and full brick walls for the interior of the first floor. At this point I have no idea what I need to do, I’m not familiar with this style of construction which is mostly utilizing concrete. Our goal is to have the kitchen and restrooms ready for tile and cabinets to be installed. Francisco and I started brainstorming on the best layout of the kitchen, where we would need wall partitions and counters (concrete). Francisco wanted to run some temporary lighting for the three rooms so we used two wires and attached them to the second floor concrete and dangled switches, not something that looked extremely safe, but he assured me it was temporary.

When Mike arrived he and Francisco huddled and Mike then asked if I could do electrical work. I said yes but I only knew the standards of the states. I worked for a few years as a designer and manager in the telecommunications division of an engineering firm. With that experience I understood the design portion and I installed wiring in houses as a general contractor years ago. Finally something I was comfortable with. I planned the layout of the three rooms and developed a shopping list. It became a tool as I started teaching one of the local guys how to do basic wiring. We finished the wiring of the kitchen and restrooms and they were ready for the lights to be installed and temporary power to the panelboards (fuse boxes).

It was still a couple days before the construction team would arrive so I continued to wire most of the first floor. As the team arrived a scary situation arose, I was asked to translate. Kids were swarming the job site and a lot of the team members were sponsoring kids at that school. “Corey, can you translate for me?” That is probably the strangest question in the world. I fumbled my way through many conversations and the team had no clue. Bartering with street vendors was especially interesting as they bartered down to one price for the Team and offered even lower prices to me for helping. By the end of the week the kitchen and bathrooms were totally finished. Over all, my first trip went very well, thank you God.

Corey's Blog - The Journey to Cienaga

(Yeah, you read that right....Corey has finally blogged!!)

So, we’ve been in Colombia for 2½ weeks and I’m needed on the coast to help with the construction of a school. I don’t think nervous quite fit the fear that I was feeling. Sure I studied Spanish for 8 months. That doesn’t quite make me fluent. It just means that I can say my name along with a few common greetings and I know I know how to conjugate verbs and proper pronunciation, of Costa Rican Spanish. Well, first of all I’m not in Costa Rica anymore and Spanish is such a fluent language that its difficult to tell when one word ends and the next begins especially when they speak at the speed of light.

We need to take the van and we are leaving at 3 am. Oh yeah, I’m not traveling with anyone that understands English! (Francisco is a construction contractor that has worked with Mike (my boss) for more than 10 years and Ricardo, who is a student in the Master’s Commission program.) We drove until the first sign of daylight before we stopped for breakfast. …or at least I think it was breakfast. (A bowl soup that contained brown sugar and water along with a chunk of fresh cheese on the side and the cheese was nothing like cheese in the states. Straight curded milk!) As I understood, it was a very typical meal for the area. We spent the next few hours traveling on extremely windy roads through the mountains. Bogotá is 8,600 feet above sea level and Cienega is just barely above sea level along with the fact of crossing another mountain range. This is definitely not a good trip to take for anyone with a weak stomach.

We made another stop later in the morning for a bathroom break and brunch. No, of course they don’t know what “Gallo Pinto” is, a very common breakfast in Costa Rica and about the only brunch meal I understand. I stumbled through ordering and got scrambled eggs, rice and a plantain patty. Meanwhile, Francisco and Ricardo laughed a bit with me but both showed incredible patience with my version of Spanish, or Spanglish is more appropriate. We finally hit flat land mid-afternoon when we stopped for a late lunch-early dinner. Oh yes, I know how to order a steak in any language, well at least English and Spanish, along with yucca sticks, which are similar to French Fries but better.

My turn to drive again as its getting dark we just arrived to about the twentieth toll booth of our trip as the police wave me to the side of the road for a quick check. Not a good time to discover that my license is back in Bogota. I had my Colombian ID card but hadn’t had time to get a Colombian license yet and my Costa Rican and Michigan licenses were in a box with the family passports. Thanks to Ricardo doing a whole lot of begging, we were able to leave 20 or so minutes later. (More laughing at the expense of the “Gringo”) Around 10 pm we arrived at the hotel in Cienega. Yes, 19 hours of traveling in a foreign country and I was exhausted.

Familiar Faces!

We had the priviledge of spending time with Shan and Annie Wallace. Waaaay back in the day (nearly 10 years ago) we were all youth leaders together at Calvary. We've still been in touch over the years and it was great to see the Wallace family again! Annie is from Colombia and her family still lives here. They came for a visit and while they were here also had a chance to visit Valentina, an LACC child that they support. We went to the school twice. Unfortunately I forgot my camera the first time, so there are no pictures of Shan. He went home a few days before the rest of the family. However, the first day we went the family was able to meet Valentina. She showed us around the school, her classroom, friends, brother, etc.

The next time we went back Annie and the girls came prepared to share with the school. Annie did a short English lesson with every class and they taught the classes either the Hokey-Pokey or Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in English. They also collected the names of every student so that when they went home they could pick a name every day to pray specifically for that child. The girls were a little bit shy at first, but the kids in the school were having none of that. You can see in the picture they were more than happy to surround them and chatter away!

It was wonderful to see familiar faces, but even more so to see the meeting between sponsors and thier students. I hope more out there will come to visit!
~Tona

This and That

Here's a few experiences that have been interesting of late...

1. Lost and found - the kids and I thought we would venture out to the store. I was told there was a shortcut and I thought I had understood the directions. However, nearly two hours later when we arrived we realized that I needed quite a bit more work on directional skills. In my own defense, however, Bogota roads are laid out so that you can almost never turn left, which means it's very hard to turn around once you're going the wrong way! A few days later I victoriously made my way to the same store in a very short amount of time with no turnarounds - I guess getting lost really does help you figure things out!

2. Pampered Chef - I went to a Pampered Chef party on Friday which was an incredibly surreal experience. I had a very "American" day which just felt kind of weird. It was really interesting, though, because the demonstrator taught us to make some of the recipies with ingredients we can find here. It was a fun day with a flavor of home!

3. Corey's home!!! Yesterday Corey came home and we are all loving having him back!

~Tona