Traumas!

So right now I have 2 girls that are trying to get out of studying: The exchange follows...

Them: Why do we have to study?
Me: My mom made me study a little bit every day in the summer, so that’s a value important to me.
Them: You need to get an appointment with a psychologist, b/c the psych says that parents who make their children do things b/c their parents made THEM do things must have been traumatized during their childhood.

Them: Are you sure we have to study 4 whole hours?
Me: Yes
Them: Well, when I get to heaven God’s gonna say, what did you do with your time on earth, and I’m only going to be able to say, “just studying, nothing else!” Do you want that to be your fault? Life’s short!

I’ve been back in Mexico about a week now. And it’s been a mostly cloudy week. It’s really a big tease, all the clouds but never any rain.

C—got her second hearing aide on Thursday!!! That was a lot of fun. She wears them both at the same time, one in each ear.

Jacob taught me how to drive standard last week. I still think it’s scary to go from neutral to 1st, and I can’t imagine parallel parking in a standard.

Danielle’s homemade pesto is soooo good. I should learn how to make it. I suppose it wouldn’t be that hard.

If I can have grace for others, and recognize that I’m no better than them, then life would be much smoother. I’m trying to work on that. Just like Paul called himself the chief of sinners I can't forget that I have had moments of laziness, flirting, lying, etc. I just need to love and forgive and guide in the right direction and not be prideful about NOT being that way.

A woman and her husband are visiting Mexico for 2 months, trying to plug into ministry opportunities. The woman, Liz, was telling me that she had free time, and was curious if we needed anything. It turned out she sews!!! Johanne had 3 dresses to make for graduation and things, so they’ve already knocked out two of them ☺ That was a really big blessing.

It’s 6th grade graduation next week, so two of my girls have learned the waltz, but they won't show me!! I have three girls graduating 6th grade! yay! One of them is graduating from a "special" school, so we are thinking about putting her in regular 2nd or 3rd grade, since she finally has hearing aides in both ears and could learn her basics. Her special school has offered vocational training (cooking) and speech therapy, so that's a possibility as well. It'll be a tough decision.

My house smells gross, which is probably entirely my fault. I put out a bunch of mouse poison and now it smells like dead animals. It/they probably died in the walls, so we just have to wait it out, eh?

Lunch is ready, so this is me jetting.

a little potpourri

Things I enjoyed in the ol' USA that I miss in Mexico.

-The smell of warm rain, impending summer thundershowers.
-Asphalt to drive on!!!!!!!!!!! that was so fun!!!! (unfortunately I haven't gotten used to driving SLOW again)
-how beautifully green it was :)
-my friends and family

Something that scared the CRAP out of me in Mexico.

-driving in the rain, driving in heavy rain. I hadn't done that in more than 6 months and it was super scary.

a hard part of the flight back to San Diego was sitting next to a brother and sister. They were both grown ups (read: my age) and treated each other like my brother and I do. My favorite part of their conversation was when she was eating out of his bag of something, and he was like "don't take all the good ones. You get what you grab." hehe.

Yesterday I saw a regular Nissan truck with a cap on it FUUULLLLLL of dead chickens. very full. definitely not a sight I expected to see.

I do think translating/interpreting is in my future. as well as library work. I'm not sure how they go together, but I'm thinking.

I have 6 girls now, in case ya'll didn't know. And it's much crazier with 6, but still delightful. One of them is very clean and mature, and I'm hoping it rubs off on the other girls naturally. Some of them have weekly appts with the psychologist, but they are always trying to get out of it! I don't understand not wanting to accept help.

My "deaf" girl is improving improving improving in speech with her hearing aide! I'm excited to take her to get one for the other ear, now we just need to make an appt.

Since we don't have school this summer we are hoping to fill their time with enough good activities that they are not idle and "bored" (oh do I hate that word! I'm never bored! and cannot sympathize with people who are.) We have some service activities planned, and hopefully will be able to fill our time with fun stuff too. This will involve other people who are willing to work with us, and let us help them out. I don't want to be a hinderance, or a headache to them.

I have to make a new chore list to more evenly divide our work. that's something I DON'T want to do, but it is necessary.

time to get to work!

(oh, and if you want to keep your eyes and ears open for people that would want to work with me/us down here that would be great. The woman that cared for my kids on my time off has went back home, so I need another helper! or even someone to replace me when I eventually leave. thx.)

oh, P.S. and I'm really enjoying The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.

edit: 11:35 am. soooooooooooooo.

we just had bible time. It was tough with 6 giggly girls. what an adventure. It took us like an hour and a half to do what should take half an hour they were so giggly.

One of my girls, J, just learned to read in the last year, but the two new girls we got are advanced readers. So now she's ashamed to read in front of them. sigh.

and it's also cool to be "emo" now. so I need to figure out how to handle it without making it a big deal.

Last but not least, the girls really enjoyed reading Ephesians 6. "Parents, don't provoke your children to anger." They told me, oh, listen up, this is for you! so helpful of them :) I think I did that when I was young also, so children are children where ever you are, eh?

I write everything down except what's on my mind...

Cleveland was fun with Carrie.

I think the best part of Cleveland was eating at a restaurant where we could see our hotel from, but then spending twenty minutes trying to get to our hotel afterwards b/c the roads were confusing and under construction. :) to our credit, we had no idea we were close to our hotel. National City Bank Tower is beautiful!!!

I spent $80 on gas in the 9 days I was home!! (not counting trip to Cleveland.) So I guess I can understand everyone's complaints. I didn't even drive to a lot of places. at least it didn't seem like I was in the car a lot.

Being home was hard, I realized how much I miss my family, and possibly how materialistic I am, or how much I miss the things I own. or how much I own that I had forgotten I own. or how much I miss spending money without worrying about how much I'm spending. or how much I miss going out to eat.

I was with people 24/7 while I was home, and there were a lot of days I ate out twice (people took me out b/c they love me) so I'm pretty much sick of eating out for now.

The ride down the coast from San Diego to Mexico was beautiful as usual. I'd forgotten what a scenic drive it is.

I really enjoyed the flight, I always forget that topographers and map makers really make exact versions of our world, and thought it was beautiful that the mountains and landforms really did look like ferns and that nobody was making it up!

As tired as I was from traveling the last couple weeks and trying to catch everybody (which I didn't :( ) I was still slightly tempted when I saw an ad for Dubai, and then for Cape Town South Africa. suh-weet. sometimes I think the travel bug has stopped biting, but then sometimes I confuse myself. :)

more later. I'll be late for church if I really proof read this and add the other things I wanted to write about!

France?!?

so Carrie graduated last Friday, yay!

I had always wanted to take her to France upon graduation, so we're going to ....

drum roll please!


Cleveland. (I have less time and money than before. thus the SLIGHT change in plans.)



...then I fly back to Mexico on Friday.
It's been a slightly hectic visit.
But still good.

Hopefully, if you read this, I've seen you in the last week and a half.
(I've also seen my eye doctor, dentist, and general practitioner.)

more to come when I have more time.

(oh, and I got a new 17 year old while I was home, can't wait to meet her! Sounds like she wants to learn how to play piano...)

Vacay.

so I'm on a little vacation right now, and so far it's been more than eventful.

the ride up was bliss, took a different route than usual and went through Tecate.

Got spoiled by some grandparents, saw The King and I.

Borrowed Irresistible Revolution by Claiborne from the Grandpa.

Flew from San Diego to Seattle.

Became really confused about the whole sun setting thing.
really confused.
In Mexico it's been setting at 6:30.
as we were flying north, really north, like ridiculously north, I thought, that's funny the sun hasn't set yet, it feels like we've been in the plane forever.
then someone said it's 8:40, we're almost to Seattle.
It still didn't dawn on me yet that the earth tilts, until two other things happened, then it was like big light bulb! oh, it's summer time, and we're in the northern hemisphere, so the sun sets later.
sometimes I feel like because I live in Mexico I should get more sun than, say, cold, rainy, snowy places like Seattle ;)
even though this wasn't what I expected I'm not gonna complain!
Mandy and I have spent a lot of time in the sun the last couple days, that has been such a blessing.

I also got to go into work with her and chill in the flower shop, my idea of a good time :)

Her housemates have 3 chickens, 2 cats, and 1 dog, so not too much different than my home in Mexico.

*** But last night I thought I was going to be stuck in the coop. ***

We were moving the chickens from outside to inside and I stepped inside the coop and the door shut behind me! Luckily there is a release for the latch on the inside, but I didn't notice that until I had a moment of panic.
I love going to church with Mandy, partly because she's one of my spiritual sisters, and partly for the nostalgia of how our friendship started out. After church there was Applebees, which was also dripped of nostalgia.


interlude
__________________________________________
I think incarnate is the buzzword for our generation. I've been reading books related to religious thought/practice and three of the authors have talked a lot about Jesus being incarnate. (lauren winner, claiborne, schmemann)
(and then in church yesterday they talked about Jesus being incarnate as well. Something I haven't really noticed before.)
The only thing is Schmemann wrote his book 40 years ago. The other two are recent writers. It also strikes me b/c he was an Eastern Orthodox priest, Winner is anglican/former Jew, and Claiborne is an ordinary radical (his own label).
that's just got me thinking recently that's all.



ok, done with that
_______________________________________________
Today we slept in. I didn't get out of bed till 9:30, but hadn't gone to bed till 1. I'm hoping all this staying up late and sleeping in, will condition me to be ready for my flight to the midwest tomorrow.
Although, it might be a hard transition once I'm back in Mexico.

We explored Pike Place Market, which is where the first Starbucks is.



Bright colours at the market...


It was a nice day. But I'm tired now.

and I really like having mountains AND sea. so nice.



so I realized that I haven't been tackling classical literature recently, and that I feel silly for thinking I am well read if for now I'm sticking to Memoir and "Religious" Non Fiction. (although in the fall I was reading current/best seller fiction) I haven't avoided it b/c I want to "learn" but I think because I want reading fiction to be relaxing, and I'm not sure how much I can relax when reading classical lit. or maybe it's too many scars from HS english. I mean, I didn't even finish LISTENING to that Jane Austen book that I got on cd in the fall. and that's a pretty lazy way to ingest media. (I'm tired, and this is why I'm blathering on and on and on and on....)but there are seasons in our life, and I did read more literature-y literature in college. sigh. maybe I shouldn't be disappointed in myself. blech.

here's a toast to being more balanced in my reading selections in the future!

They've fed me really well!



(yogurt, chocolate, hamburgers, PBJs, Applebees, Thai)

back to eating!
Happy Memorial day.

call me! or text me!!

I'm in the states today.
You know the cell phone number :)

We just got a new 13 year old.

We received her today. No one knows her whole story yet, but the parts the social worker told us were in front of everyone.
She has an eating disorder, and doesn't like to bathe.

anyways. we'll see how this works out!