Happy Anniversary to me!

One year ago, I moved into Torre Fuerte! That's the longest I've lived anywhere other than my parents' house up to this point. It's been a year full of changes.

One year ago, the night we moved in, our living room looked like this:

Now, it looks like this:

This was my bedroom a year ago:

And this is what it looks like today (other than the desk is much neater in this photo)

Definitely an improvement for the better.

Of the five of us who originally moved in, I'm the only one left. Then, there were the others who spent some time living here- the boys lived with us for 2 months, Abi spent about 6 weeks with us. My new housemates started arriving in July when Rae Ann moved in. Peter moved in in October, and Jessica moved in last week.

I've loved this first year of turning a house into a home and having a place to show hospitality. Countless lunches and dinners with friends, many unplanned, overnight guests, parties, hosting women's Bible study have given me a sense of belonging, right here, despite the endless traffic noise, the drunks outside my window, the homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk.

Today also marks another anniversary- 2 years since I arrived in Bogotá! Somehow it seems like it's been longer than 2 years (probably because our 3rd school year already started), but in other ways it's hard for me to believe it's already been 2 full years.

Here's to another year full of learning, loving, and serving!

Poor kitty

Our kitty Misha didn't make it through her last bout of sickness. She died the morning we officially started back to work here, which was not a good start to the work year.

My friend Emily's cat had kittens back around Thanksgiving, and we had already offered to take one, so on Saturday she dropped off a little calico. Despite the fact that we all had our reservations about getting a new cat so soon, she's won us over with her ridiculous cuteness.

We've been spoiling her all weekend long as she gets passed from one person to the next, cuddled and played with. Today, we were gone all day. As soon as we walked in the door, I went to check on her. She was meowing, loudly, indignantly. I checked in her basket. It was empty. Behind the washing machine where Stephen says she likes to sleep. Not there. She sounded closer though. Then I looked down. We have a utility sink in the laundry room, and I couldn't get it to drain the other day when I was cleaning. It has an inch or 2 of nasty water at the bottom. And there was our sweet kitten, standing in the water, bedraggled, wet, smelly, and shivering.

I fished her out, brought her upstairs, dried her off with a blow-drier, and then sandwiched her between my shirt and my stomach so she would warm up. She stayed there for a long time, shivering anytime I peeked to look at her, but now she's back to her happy self, curled up on my lap and cleaning off the nasty water she fell in.

Isn't she cute?

Around the table

One thing that I looked forward to as I moved into Torre Fuerte was the opportunity it would give me to have guests over. This past year, the moments I've spent around our table, laughing with friends over food, have been some of my favorites.

Coming back after spending time with my family, one of the things that made it easiest to come back was the community we've built around the table. My first week back, there were only 2 days that there wasn't someone sharing a meal with us at home. Friends called to see if they could stop by. All of us who'd been out of the country brought back things for those who couldn't travel, and we got together to catch up, give gifts and packages that had been sent to us for them, and just hang out. As the afternoon stretched on towards evening and we all started getting hungry, we naturally gravitated towards the kitchen and started cooking- a trip to the corner store to pick up missing ingredients, more laughter as we cut and stir and taste. "where there's enough for 4 there's enough for 5 (or 6, or 7. . .)" has been heard many times here, as another friend drops by, or a housemate not expected back until late walks in as we're setting the table.

Of course, once we settle back into our work schedules and we're with kids again, we'll be busier; I doubt we'll have another week with friends around our table 5 days out of 7. But, they'll still be here from time to time, and as we enjoy each others cooking, we'll share laughter, work through our struggles, encourage one another, and grow in community.

"Always be eager to practice hospitality." Romans 12:13b

Christmas in Colombia

I love Christmas. Every year, the mystery of God come to earth as a helpless baby astounds me. What unimaginable love and creativity. ". . .Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." Philippians 2:5-7

Not only do I love the mystery though. I love the traditions of Christmas. And this year, for the first time, I'm celebrating them, and making new traditions here in Colombia.

Our whole "family" met up one Sunday after church, went out for lunch, and then went Christmas tree shopping. I love real Christmas trees, but, despite the prevalence of pine trees here, they're a different kind of pine, and Christmas tree farms are non-existent. So, we had to satisfy ourselves with an artificial tree. I wish I'd brought my camera with me on our shopping expedition, but petty theft rises around Christmas time and I didn't want to risk it. But, imagine if you will, 4 straight blocks of Christmas stores, every one selling trees, ornaments, decorations, nativity sets. . . In the street, vendors sell Christmas tree skirts and Christmas doormats. People swarm everywhere, looking for the best deals on Christmas decorations. After looking at our options in 4 or 5 stores, we finally settled on a 2 meter high Christmas tree, brought it home, and then left for a week long retreat.

The next Saturday, we decided to decorate. Cookies were baked, hot chocolate was made, friends called last minute to see if they could come and cook dinner with us, and before we knew it, we had a tree decorating party on hand. The extra ornaments we picked up at 70% off when we ran to the store for more ingredients for dinner made the tree just about perfect.

Thursday was a national holiday (Las Velitas, it's called here, celebrating the immaculate conception of Mary). Rae Ann and I headed over to Luz y Vida around 11 to get a head start on mixing cookie dough. By 1:30, 7 of the Luz y Vida girls, Rae Ann, and Ingrid had showed up to help. We made peanut butter, gingerbread, chocolate chip and empire cookies. By 5 o'clock, we sent some happy girls off each with a plate of cookies, and collapsed exhausted on the couches. Later, we set aside cookies for 2 parties and 5 businesses in the neighborhood that we frequent to say thanks for being good neighbors.

On Saturday, a group of people assembled again for what will hopefully be the first annual Torre Fuerte Christmas party. After a tiring afternoon at the Jungle, swinging kids in hammocks, corralling rowdy teenagers, and making dozens of angel crafts, we were all ready to crash when we got back to the house. The good thing is, Sara and I cooked before we left- Mashed potatoes were warming in the oven, the roast was ready in the slow cooker, and glazed carrots waited to be heated on the stove. After a relaxing dinner and a comical time of multi-lingual sing-along karaoke Christmas carols, we started in on our gift exchange. Gifts changed hands over and over, everyone got a good laugh, and in true Colombian fashion, most of the edible gifts were shared and almost gone before the guests left.

Sunday Rae Ann, Ingrid and I headed up to the farm to help Bibiana celebrate Christmas Venezuelan style. Hallacas are a traditional Venezuelan Christmas food, and we spent the day helping to prepare them. Corn dough is spread on banana leaves, topped with a spiced meat filling, tied into pretty little packages, then boiled for an hour over a wood fire. I became an expert at tying the hallacas.

We spent the night so we would be there bright and early the next morning for the staff Christmas party. After a time of Christmas carols and games, we celebrated true Colombian style with asado (a cook-out) followed by an overwhelming variety of desserts. Stuffed and tired, we headed back down to Bogotá, getting stuck in lovely traffic for over 2 hours.

Last night was Rae Ann's last night here before she headed home for the holidays, so we had one last "family" dinner together. Afterwards, we decided we really needed a family Christmas picture too, so we posed in front of the Christmas tree. Here we are, in our Christmas best.

And that, I believe is the end of the Christmas festivities, at least for me, here in Colombia.

a random collection of thoughts

My blog has been neglected this month. I compose in my head, but nothing ever makes it to paper, or I suppose, the computer screen. So here, in no particular order, are some thoughts and happenings from the past few weeks.

I went to an all day workshop, part of which was about personality types. I am a task oriented person. I realized something about myself and my job at Luz y Vida. When I am completing tasks like putting together a modified schedule for a week with changes, or working on a reading curriculum, I feel productive and accomplished. I am working towards completing my end of year goals. When I am doing a people oriented job- talking with a child who's having a rough time, listening to a teacher who is looking for a better solution in the classroom, although I know that what I am doing in the moment is important, and I enjoy it, I feel less productive. I can't cross anything off my list, I'm not reaching those year long goals. I wonder how I learn to value more my people-oriented moments and not feel like they are somehow less valid.

I love cooking for and with people- having friends over for soup and salad last Saturday night before going to see a play, making pizza at a friends house on Thursday, making pancakes for breakfast for my housemate and a friend who spent the night yesterday morning. I love the moments spent together in the kitchen, and the talk and laughter around the table. And food, I love to eat too. :)

My cat is getting better. Her scabs are almost gone, she unfortunately lost most of her hair when they scabs fell off, but it's growing back in. She looks a bit like a tiny jackal.

I added "the final touches" to my bedroom over the past month- a desk, a rug for the floor, pictures on the walls.

My 4th and 5th graders finished reading their 4th chapter book. They did horribly on their test, and I realized I never taught them how to study. We spent an hour going over some basic study skills and making flash cards, and when they did a retest, their grades improved substantially.

I love this city. I love 50 cent snacks, knowing how to get around by bus, knowing which section of the city to go to buy office supplies, appliances, shoes. . . I love the hustle and bustle downtown, the quiet, quirky, gritty, or trendy neighborhoods that change their feel every few blocks.

Working with at-risk kids is heart breaking.

I dream and I plan, but I have no idea what I want to be "when I grow up".

And, I'll be home for Christmas!

My latest project

With my Chinese party over, my afternoon decoration making project is over too. So, on Monday when I found myself with some time on my hands, I decided to see what I could do about the chairs in our living room. They were donated to us and were dirty when we got them; being used as step stools during our painting and cleaning when we moved in probably didn't help. This is what one of the chairs looked like on Monday.

I headed to the new mall by my house and bought 2 brown duvet covers and some cute pillows and came home and ripped out seams in the duvet covers. Tuesday after work I walked downtown to where all the fabric stores are to buy beige colored ribbon and then got to work on transforming our chairs.

Step 1- Center the fabric over the chair

Step 2: Tuck the fabric into the cushion

Step 3: Pull the fabric tight around the arms

Step 4: Sew the crease on the arms of the chair in place and strategically tack the extra fabric on the sides of the chair in place.

Step 5: Tie a ribbon around the chair

Step 6: Add some bows and a decorative pillow

Quite the transformation, isn't it? Our living room is looking more and more home like. Now I have to figure out what to do with the other couch. . .

Chinese Mid Autumn Harvest Festival

When I was home in December to visit family, I decided that despite the fact that I would be missing my family's Chinese New Year celebration, I still wanted to celebrate Chinese New Year, so, in my crowded luggage, I packed my 12 pairs of special chopsticks, ginger candy, Chinese snacks, and my Chinese dress.

The weekend of Feb 4 was the first weekend of Chinese New Year. In the States, my family had a party at home, went to the Chinese New Year celebration at church and the local Chinese association. Here, I moved into Torre Fuerte which still had a lot of painting and cleaning before it would be ready to host a party in. By the end of the month we were to the point where we could think about hosting parties, and then B&C moved in with us and all party plans went on hold and shortly after they left, Sara and Stephen went back to the States for the summer and I didn't want to have the party without them. So, finally, with most of my housemates here and the house looking good, I decided to pick back up the party idea, but I couldn't very well celebrate Chinese New Year in September. So, I looked for Chinese holidays and discovered that today is mid-autumn harvest festival (or moon festival).

So, invitations were sent out

decorations made

help recruited for cooking

and on Saturday Torre Fuerte hosted its first ever "Fiesta de la Luna China"

Our house was fuller than I've ever seen it, with over 40 people there. We played games

ate lots of delicious food (on the menu: dumplings, beef and noodles, fried rice, garlic ginger green beans, sesame chicken, sweet and sour chicken, egg rolls, and curry)

And chatted

When the majority of guests were gone and there was space enough, we finished off the evening with dancing. After all, what truly self-respecting Chinese Mid-Autumn Harvest Festival doesn't end with some salsa, merengue, and vallenato?

Progress!

Two weeks ago on Monday, Abi was home and there was a knock on the door. It was the man from ETB, our internet provider. "FINALLY!" he said. Apparently he'd been trying to get into our house and check our internet the last 7 times I called. Which is ironic because each of those 7 times I told the person on the phone, "isn't it time to do an internal revision? They've already done (5, 6, 7) external revisions and nothing changes." And the person on the phone would tell me, "no, it's an external revision. No one needs to be at home". But, finally, after 2 and a half months of having internet an average of once in every 3 days, our internet has worked every single day since the internet guy was here.

When Sara and I bought paint we couldn't decide on a color, so the hall never got painted. We did decide what color we wanted one day while out together, but didn't get around to buying it. The unfinished hall was starting to drive me crazy, so I spent a week after work and 2 weekends painting. It looks so much better now.

Friday, Stephen and I went dryer shopping. Saturday, they delivered the dryer. And yesterday, the gas man came, spent two and a half hours drilling and installing a new gas hookup and hooking up our dryer. And now we have a dryer!

We're getting closer and closer to finishing off our Torre Fuerte to-do list. Though, even as I type that I realize there are still dozens of things we'd like to do. But, it is becoming more home like and comfortable week by week.

Why does it have to be so complicated?

My sweater smelled like mildew yesterday when I pulled it on, not because I’d left it sitting in the washer for too long but because with the rainy, cold, damp weather and our much too dark area where clothes hang to dry, it takes so long to dry that some things just smell like mildew.

It was the last straw. Sara and Stephen and I have been talking about buying a dryer, and Sara and I decided to go after work to buy one. In Bogota, everything has it’s own section in town. Sara had just happened to run into appliances while looking for shoes the other day. So, we set off in a drizzle that soon turned into a downpour, feeling thankful that soon we would have a dryer and wouldn’t be worried about damp sweatshirts.

On 15, shop after shop of gleaming appliances waited for us. We walked in and out of stores, comparison shopping. It wasn’t until somewhere around the 7^th store that we ran into trouble. “Sure we have electric dryers”, the man said, “for 220 voltage”. We looked at each other, confused. “Is there any other kind of voltage here?” we asked. Turns out there is- 110. We had no idea what kind of voltage we have, so we called our friend Tony who’s done some electrical work for us. We have 110. Turns out they don’t make dryers for 110 voltage, and if you try to run a 220 dryer on 110 voltage you won’t get good results (I’m not really clear if it takes longer, costs twice as much, doesn’t fully dry the clothes or all of the above)

Between the 3 salesmen we talked to on our way back (as they helpfully asked if we’d found anything after all) we learned we basically have 3 options- 1. Learn to live with mildewy clothes and waiting days for dry jeans and towels. 2. Get a gas run dryer. Call the gas company to come out and give us a quote on what it would cost to put in another gas hookup, then have them do the physical labor. Or 3. Get a “trifasica” which is some sort of converter operation or something which changes your voltage.

I’m frustrated because I was hoping to have a dryer delivered today, and instead now we have to make phone calls and do research and hope that notoriously slow service here doesn’t mean we don’t actually not end up with a dryer for months. We’ll also end up spending more money since neither the trifasica nor the gas hookup sound like inexpensive options.

Oh well. Such is life.

Introducing the 2 Newest Members of Torre Fuerte

We bought 2 kittens today! We figured they would keep rodents from being a problem. They're also super cute. :) We haven't named them yet. Any suggestions? The top is a girl, the bottom is a boy.

She's still shy and nervous, but seems like she'll be affectionate.

He's full of energy, mischievous, and playful. As I was typing this, he jumped on top of my laptop and somehow managed to start a slideshow with music in iphoto which I couldn't even stop without force quitting iphoto (and while I was typing that sentence he again jumped on the keys and made the screen go black. . . he's going to be a handful).

Leave name suggestions in the comments!

Home Sweet Home

I've lived at Torre Fuerte for almost a week now, and I'm loving it. There's still little things to do around the house: a room to paint, some trim to finish, curtains to hang, a toilet to replace, a cat to buy. . .

But the big things are done! The main living spaces are cleaned and painted, all our broken windows have been replaced, internet and phone were installed and activated today, our gas is on (and the copper tubing hopefully won't be stolen again since the repair man built a secure box and the locksmith soldered it shut), a water heater has been installed in the shower, our tampered with lock has been replaced, and as of today everyone has moved in!

Here's some pictures of our much more home-like house. We have a few finishing touches we want to do before we have our house-warming/(late) Chinese New Year party.

My room! I love my hammock chair. I sort of bought it by accident when I went to buy "necessary" items for the house. Because, you know, everyone needs a garbage can in the bathroom and the kitchen, a shower curtain, and a hammock chair. An ambulatory salesman saw me looking at it as he walked by. He told me the price was 180,000 pesos. I offered him 60,000 figuring it was low enough he would realize I wasn't really thinking of buying one. But, he said, you tell me the maximum you'll pay and I'll tell you the minimum I'll accept. I agreed, he told me 120,000, but that he would really reduce the price to 100,000. I told him 80,000. He started to complain about what a low offer that was, then started packing up the chair, I though to leave. Then, he handed it to me. I hoped I really did remember correctly and still have 80,000 pesos in my wallet. I did. 81,000 to be exact. Good thing all my necessary shopping was done for the day. :)

Our bathroom, looking slightly more colorful than before.

Making pancakes for dinner our first night in Torre Fuerte.

Our living room and dining room. It still looks pretty empty.

Though, we got some more furniture donated and that has helped.

See our china cabinet or sideboard, or whatever you call that piece of furniture? On Tuesday night, I was looking at our very empty dining room. "What we need", I said, "is a long, low table or cabinet or something". Gonzalo said, "God will provide." Wednesday, Sara called me while I was at work. "I'm over here cleaning" she told me, "and we dropped of some furniture that was donated that was at the Other Way" When I walked in after work, sitting exactly where I wanted it, was pretty much the piece of furniture I had imagined. God is good, isn't he?