upcoming road trip

 

 

 

 

These are just a few more pictures from our afternoon at the market and one of Roman enjoying a new little pet. He only kept it for a day and then let it go.

I need to get off the computer and start getting ready for our mini Mexican road trip tomorrow. I need to pack, the problem is I only have one tiny suitcase and no where to put the boxes and bags once they are packed. Our trailer is too small and our car is currently in town getting electrical work done. Thus the justification for my procrastination. We aren't taking our trailer and we are taking along two friends so we will need to pack light. Our SUV is going to be crammed full.

We are planning on driving about another 5 or so hours down the Baja Peninsula and cross over to the other side to the gulf of Mexico also known as the Sea of Cortez.
The water is far warmer and calmer than the Pacific ocean. Bahia de Los Angeles is our destination. It is a little beach side community of about 500 people. We have looked it up online and there are places to sleep and little restaurants. It will be a bit of an adventure I'm sure. The pictures I found online look beautiful.
It makes me feel a little more secure about the trip knowing we are going along with a couple Mexican friends. It will be good practice for my Spanish skills.

Sooo...now to pack swimsuits, towels, clothes, first aid kit, sunscreen, sunhats, allergy meds, drinking water for 7 people for 3 days, snacks, toiletries, and some bedding just in case.....

I'll bring back lots of pictures for you!

Shopping Baja Style

Every Tuesday several blocks of the town of Colonia Vicente Guerrero turns into a market. We go quite often to buy our vegitables and fruit for the week. This week the kids and I went to do our grocery shopping and browse through the stalls. In case we didn't stand out enough already Silas decided he needed to wear his Spiderman clothes. One benefit of looking like a freak show is the kids are easier to spot in a crowd. Back home if someone were to see something that looked odd or somewhat unusual they might inconspicuously glance or even rudely stare. Here they exclaim , point, even run after and pet my children. It's quite funny actually. We do our best to blend in, not to look like tourists (ok the Spiderman outfit doesn't exactly qualify as blending in...or a tourist for that matter). I leave my backpack, water bottles, camera back at the trailer and I don't own a fanny pack. I made an exception this time and took my camera. I did feel like a bit of a freak taking pictures of fruit and beans but given the fact that Silas was already looking like a side show...I figured people wouldn't notice his touristy mother.

Roman spent 12 pesos (about 1 American $) of his 20 peso allowance on a bandanna.

"When I'm wearing this people won't know that I'm not Mexican! They think I'm Americano because of my blonde hair but now they can't see my hair. They will think it's black!"

I didn't have the heart to tell him that his unruly blonde hair was still sticking out all over the sides of his disguise and his white freckled face was still looking fairly Americano-ish. He happily skipped along absolutely content that he was looking like everyone else.

 

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I doubt anyone has noticed that my pictures have drastically changed quality, other than me. Our camera spazzed out and stopped working a couple weeks ago. It was less than a year old and we really liked it. We sent it back to Canada in hopes that some friends of ours will take it to London Drugs before the warranty is expired. I had the forethought to pack along our old clunker camera, just in case. I'm trying to be thankful that we at least have a camera, even if I have to remember to use it outdoors, in perfect lighting and to ask the subject of my photo to "hold that pose" for several seconds (you know how well that captures the moment with busy kids!).

On another technologically challenged side note. I changed our browser to Google Chrome and my blog is working much faster and my spell check is working again. I still have some silly filter things to deal with while I'm down here but I'm hoping that I won't be loosing my pictures anymore.

missed pictures

Here are the pictures that didn't show up yesterday. We spent the day Saturday house-sitting for the Casa 5 kids. Details in the post below.

Lunch time in Casa 5.

Yesterday afternoon we drove up to visit our friends on the hill in Santa Fe (the ones with the new red house). Nathanael had a couple quick finishing touches to do. It was nice to see how they had settled and moved into the house. It was really nice to have a place to hang out and visit with them , especially given the rain and mud outside. We were served supper much to my surprise. When we arrived Minerva and her mom were making tortillas and they re-heated a pot of beans to go with them. It was delicious. Fresh and hot off the new stove. I am still learning how to effectively eat a bowl of soupy beans with nothing but a tortilla for a utensil, but I managed to get it all in my tummy. She was rather generous with the portions though...I was bursting by the time I finished. It was a really nice time , eating and visiting with the family. I think it's the most we've seen and visited with Italia , the mother. She was very hospitible and friendly. It was good. She is doing well.
In that little new house there were also 4 cousins along with my 3 kids and her 5. The picture above isn't of our time there though. I didn't have my camera yesterday. Over our bowls of beans and fresh maize tortillas , three different languages were being spoken back and forth. Spanish being the main language of conversation but also a very fascinating native Oaxacan language, Triqui. It sounds nothing like Spanish at all. In fact I find Italias spanish hard to understand probably because it is her second language too. A majority of the migrant field workers in Baja are native Mexicans from the mountians of Oaxaca. There are many languages and dialects spoken among the melting pot of people that make up the Baja. Of course there were side conversations and intructions being given in English as well. When we are surrounded by people who don't speak English we try our best to use Spanish even when talking to our own children, but once the English still sneaks out once in a while....being as we are not yet fluent in Spanish. The kids understand quite a lot though.

I am so glad that in all this resurgence of rain that there was enough of a break to build a roof over their heads. Poor little Louisa has been running a high fever and coughing for 3 days now. Ramiro had quite the cough too but his fever was gone now. Minerva looked like quite the little mother with sick little Louisa wrapped around her on one hip and flipping tortillas with the other hand. I'm hoping that we don't catch whatever cold it is that they are fighting. I doubt our immune systems are as hardy as theirs.

Another reason to stay healthy is that we have a mini vacation planned for next weekend! We are going on a Mexican road trip with a couple friends here. It will be an adventure. Any guesses where?

15 kids!

This Saturday we house-sat for Casa 5. The tally of children included 10 kids from the orphanage, 2 kids that belong to the house mother, and our 3. For a whopping total of 15!
Our hopes of a day spent outside running around at the playground and playing soccer was foiled by heavy rains and a lot of mud. So we watched movies. I think about three of them over the course of the day. We were there for about 9 hours. Ironically the favorite movie that we brought was Annie. I wasn't sure if it was insensitive or funny to show Little Orphan Annie to a group of kids living at an orphanage. Ironic maybe. We brought a book full of movies and thats what they picked. They loved it. I know for a fact that there aren't any Ms. Hannigans here but I think every kid dreams of a Daddy Warbucks. I don't know if I spelled those names right ...but you know who I'm talking about. I'll be singing "manana, manana..." (Tomorrow, Tomorrow) for days to come :)

My hubby testing out his house parenting skills for a day. He did very well considering he was exhausted from a crazy busy weeks work, and considering his limited Spanish skills. Timeouts and the 'I mean business' eyes tend to cross all language barriers. We didn't have too many problems though, nothing more than a few meltdowns and little boy fights to break up. They were all really good...surprisingly good even.

The girls pooled their Barbie supply and had a good time playing and making houses.

What else can you do on a rainy day with 15 kids? Make a yummy chocolate mess!

My new bakers apprentice Arnoldo. I had so much fun showing him how to dump in ingredients and stir it all together. He wanted to do it all!

Little Tino enjoying the finished product. Brownies fresh from the oven. People here don't do a lot of baking, probably because most people don't have ovens . When they do they aren't really accustomed to using it to bake. Tortillas are the bread of choice here and they are cooked on top of the stove. Baking brownies was a pretty new experience I think. If I looked after all those little ones day in and day out I certainly wouldn't have time for home baking but since I was a house mom for just one day I could have some fun with them.

Victoria had a turn at stirring the batter too.

mmmmm....

I just realized this is the exact same pose and the same clothes as I was wearing in the other picture in a previous post. I don't make it into very many pictures...you would think I could at least be more creative :)

Lunch time with that many kids is a major event. We even had to cook since the cafeteria was closed. The house mom, God bless her, got up very early to prepare and cook a chicken so all we had to do was some vegi's. We had kids sitting all over the place. The actual living area/table kitchen area in this Casa is pretty small. The rest of the house is bedrooms...which don't usually double as play rooms. It's a bit of a constrast to the huge houses with whole basements and bedrooms full of toys that kids have at home....usually with only a couple kids. It works for the most part though....when its not raining :)

We had a really good day over all. I am wondering, actually, why we didn't do this with each of the Casa's earlier in our trip. Maybe because my Spanish is only now decent enough to parent with. Not good enough for deep conversation and couselling kids through troubles but I can get them doing what they need to do and warn them to keep out of the mud with not too much linguistic trouble.

It was a crazy busy, exhausting day trying to keep track of, entertain, and keep that many kids out of the mud and rain but it was so memorable too. I was a "good tired" at the end of the day. It felt great to be of use, to give the substitute housemother a much needed break (the usual houseparents are on break this week). I can't imagine how she does it all week alone. It was crazy busy with two of us there parenting!

It was nice to be useful for a change anyway and to do the one thing I know how to do...be a mom :)

I have such a huge respect for the houseparents and the substitute house mothers here. What an enourmous responsibility and task to love and parent this many kids. They are all kids with difficult histories, issues and often backgrounds of abuse and neglect. Not unlike the kids in the foster system back home in Canada. They are not only providing all the normal things parents do but they are dealing with kids who have attachment disorders, food issues, hording issues, displaced anger and emotions, and all the symptoms of a childhood thats been interupted.

Pray for our houseparents here. They are called by and used of God to work miracles in these kids lives. All the houseparents love these kids and work to make as normal and healthy an atmosphere here for them as possible. It's a challenging, selfless, stressful and often lonely task.

Kids that make me smile...most of the time.

I love how Silas so easily entertains himself. When he gets in the zone he will tinker and play for hours by himself.

Javier isn't so much a kid as a young man but he still makes me smile. I think he makes every one who knows him smile. Why? Because this young man is the friendliest most cheerful boy I know. You can't walk by him with out a big smile( even though its difficult for him) and a good solid greeting. I don't know that if I were in his shoes, watching my own body waste away from Muscular Dystrophy, I would be able to pull myself out of self pity long enough to greet anyone much less do it with a huge smile.

Martin makes me smile just because he's so darn cute.

And these two? They are so full of life and mischief that they can't help but make me smile. Last Sunday Carlos (red jacket) and I spent almost a full hour playing with a lady bug and an empty M&M package. Arnoldo has a lot of issues and a past full of things that no child should have to experience but he still has the resiliency to reclaim his childhood. That makes me smile.

New Shoes!

A few weeks ago the Childrens home recieved a shipment of new shoes. I have no idea who donated all of them (the people in the office probably do) but I do know that there are a lot of kids running around with cool new shoes on....including my own kids.
My boy Alejandro with his new runners.

This is just some of the many kids here who received the sporty new footwear.

Some more proud new owners of fancy shoes. No one deserves them more than these kids ,who work so hard everyday to do the things that we take for granted.
So, who ever you are and where ever you are.......THANKYOU!!

Kids with kid stuff

It all started with these two. Alvaro and Minerva. I had no idea , when we were forging a new friendship and falling in love with these two many months ago ,that it would take us to this place or that we would have the privalege of seeing them in this house. We assumed we would continue our normal role as sponsors "Tia and Tio". Once we returned home would write to them, send them little gifts and tokens of our prayers and love for them. Our role changed and suddenly we lost what we thought we would be able to keep with them. God had other plans. There weren't just 2 kids that were in desperate need of an auntie and uncle , there were 5. I feel so humbled and honored to be here at that moment in their lives. I never would have guessed where this would lead us, that last week we would be standing with all 5 kids inside their new house.

These are some neighbor kids and a woman I was visiting with. She has four beautiful little girls. She followed Silas around petting and playing with his hair. The poor kid is getting used to being caressed by amused strangers.

My shy, timid , little princess Louisa.

Carmela and Louisa having some fun with the little gifts the IDT group left behind for them. I just noticed the floating foot in the picture. I think it might be a Silas foot. He was SO filthy that day. He ran around with the pack of neighborhood kids through dirt and the black remnants of old cook fires. Its kind of amusing how easily he fits right in. He's my little albino Mexican. At that age he has no idea he's experiencing a completely different culture or witnessing poverty. He's just a kid playing with other kids.

In the childrens room, the group of youth that came from Lethbridge Alberta , left all kinds of treats, some hand knit sweaters, and little toys. The kids had a blast looking through all the treasures and hiding them all away in the drawers of their first dresser.