Let the Adventures Begin!

Finally, the time has come and it's time for me to head off to Thailand!! This trip has been in the planning stages for so many months and at last, here I am, sitting in the Starbucks in the Lima airport waiting for my plane to depart.

Did I really just say goodbye to the boys this morning? It seems like ages ago. Jeff took me to Cusco to the airport, it's about 4 hours from our house in Abancay. Nathan came with us while the other 2 boys were "forced" to attend school for the day. It was a two-fold mission in getting to Cusco, not only to drop me off, but to pick up Bryce & Pat (Jeff's parents) who flew into Cusco this morning. My family will be getting pampered by the Grandparents while I'm gone and I've got to say, I feel such a relief leaving (er, um...abandoning) my family knowing that Jeff's parents are there to help out!! Thanks "Papa & Ama Krohn"!!!

So you're wondering why I'm flying all the way to the other side of the world, leaving my family behind, missing both Jonathon & Brandon's birthdays, and basically going as far away from Abancay as I can possibly get?? Well, I am going to be attending an SIM workshop on Multi-Cultural Training. It's a workshop designed to help us work together better as an SIM "entity" within the many cultures that we represent. It's going to be fascinating and I'm really looking forward to hearing great insight from the other women who will be there. We were asked to prepare presentations, in light of a certain topic. I was also asked to give the devotional on Monday morning (others will cover the rest of the week)--I can't believe I said I would do it...I mean really, give the devotional the FIRST day of our workshop???? UGH.

So I got up at 5am to leave Abancay at 7am. I arrived in Lima at 3:30pm and have been spending the afternoon/evening with a good friend and now find myself sitting under the full blast of the air conditioning in Starbucks in the Lima airport. My flight to LA leaves at 1:05am, it's now 11:15pm...just 2 more hours to wait. I will wake up on U.S. soil without my family...which is just weird. I get into LA around 7:30am tomorrow morning and a friend will pick me up and we'll spend the day together. Then tomorrow night (Thurs the 16th) I will leave for Bangkok!!! How weird to think I leave LA on the 16th and arrive in Bangkok on the 18th!! What happens to the 17th??? While everyone else is experiencing a Friday, I'll miss it completely. Strange.

I hope to keep you updated as I'm in Thailand, as much as I can. Meanwhile, be praying for safe travels, for my family back in Peru, and for this little baby who gets a free ride to ASIA--in utero!!

Putting on our homework hats

One thing I've loved about this school year is that all the boys are in the same school. It's a small, private Peruvian school where all of their instruction is in Spanish...well, all except for the English classes I teach twice a week. If you don't know about life in the Southern Hemisphere, our school year goes from March through December. March is our fall (though sadly enough we've never seen any leaves changing colors and we miss that), and December is the beginning of the summer. So now that we are into October, our boys only have a couple months left of school, and yes, they are counting down the weeks! Brandon is finishing 2nd grade, Jonathon will finish Kindergarten, and Nathan will finish preschool.

Homework is part of any student's life, and we are not exempt here. When the boys get home from school we eat lunch (at 2pm which is quite late and we are quite hungry by that point), and then we sit down at the table and do homework. They have at least one page of homework every afternoon, sometimes up to 3 pages. Nathan's homework mostly consists of coloring something, gluing something, or tracing something. Jonathon is learning to write in cursive, yes, you read that right, cursive! Here in Peru, they introduce cursive in Kindergarten, so he's learning the strokes and how to move his hand in more of a circular motion. He also gets pages to color or glue or draw. Brandon usually has either math (he's learning multiplication through the 12's) or writing, in which he's given a long sentence in cursive and has to write it over and over until he gets to the end of the page.

It's so cute to see them concentrating on getting their work done, and one thing I've loved watching is Nathan's tongue!! He concentrates so much that his tongue slowly creeps out of his mouth while he's doing his work--I've seen it at home and also at school when I teach English. I didn't capture Jonathon doing his homework the day I took some pictures, he was too quick to get his work done by the time I had decided to take pictures. Enjoy!

How much I save on veggies by living in Peru!

When we were home on furlough a few months ago, I nearly had a heart attack when I went to the store and saw the price of fruits and vegetables!! Granted, in the United States they are MUCH cleaner and look much more appealing to the eye than what I buy at the market here, but I thought some of you would appreciate a look at what I pay for my produce.

Side note: I buy per kilo which is approx 2.2 lbs. Also we pay in soles which is approx 2.9 soles to the dollar-almost 3/1.

Green apples: 3 soles per kilo, or $1 for 2 lbs
Carrots: 1 sol per kilo, or 0.30 for 2 lbs
Tomatoes: 1 sol per kilo, or 0.30 for 2 lbs
Lettuce: 50 centimos for a small head, or 0.15 per head (leafy)
Mandarin oranges: 2.5 soles per kilo, or approx 0.80 for 2 lbs
Bananas: 1 sol for 5 bananas, or 0.30 for 5 bananas
Green onion: 1 sol for a HUGE bunch, or 0.30 for a HUGE bunch
Celery: 50 centimos for a medium bundle, or 0.15 for a medium bundle
Sweet potato (for our dogs): 1.5 soles per kilo, or 0.50 for 2 lbs
Potatoes: 1.2 soles per kilo, or 0.41 for 2 lbs

So those are some of the vegetables I buy in the market and the prices I pay for them. Though honestly, what I wouldn't give most days for a big bag of pre-washed lettuce to just throw a salad together. You see, not only do I have to buy the produce from a market, but I have to bring it home and then wash each piece in an iodine solution to soak all the bugs off and disinfect the produce. It's soooo time consuming, as are most things here, but well, it makes me appreciate the clean, "thunderstorm", softly misted and washed produce in the supermarkets in the U.S.! However, my total market trip, plus the cost of a taxi to bring me home, was 32 soles, or just over $10. Read it and weep.

Godly Protection!!

So as you can imagine, there is always some sort of drama going on in our house. With three boys, life is never dull nor is it ever NOT an adventure. Yesterday afternoon, while Allen & his kids were over playing, we heard a loud "thud" and then a scream. That is never good to hear. Allen & I rushed outside (Jeff was upstairs) and to our horror, Nathan (our 4-year-old) had fallen through the screen and out the window of his 2nd story room!!! It's very high from the window to the ground, and what broke his fall was the screen (and Nathan) falling against a 2-ft high brick retaining wall.

We brought him inside, thankful that Allen was here (he's our colleague/SIM doctor). Immediately there were 2 large bumps on his head and he was complaining of his leg/groin area hurting. He couldn't walk and was very scared. I gave him some Tylenol and Allen kept checking him out. Finally Nathan decided he wanted to go lay in our bed and immediately fell asleep. We woke him up an hour later so Allen to give him another look over and then let him continue sleeping. He slept through the night with me, waking up off and on, but did tell me about 3am that his head hurt, but that his leg was feeling better.

We just feel like God really protected Nathan from more serious injuries; a fall like that could have broken various bones, and he is literally up running around today. Though his head hurts a bit (and with good reason), and his neck is stiff, he is doing fine. I'll post a picture soon of the window/screen so you can get a good visual.

Mama's corner

I've threatened for months to start my own blog. Jeff's posts are always so well done that I don't want to take away from what he is doing. Plus, a mom needs a spot to call her own, especially in a house full of boys who invade every corner with their toys or presence. Of course they invade every corner of my heart as well.
Living overseas isn't always conducive to keeping family and friends updated on what goes on in our daily lives. But blogging is. So...I'll blog. To help you see what you are missing by living so far away! lol No, not to see what you are missing, but to see into our corners. To see these precious boys who mean the world to me and how they are growing, the teeth they are missing, and the silliness they are creating. From my corner...to yours.