Our First Jungle Christmas
Memorable first:
*First fake Christmas tree
*first year for colored lights (they could sing and were all broken by Christmas morning)
*first Christmas morning with no working lights on tree
*first time in years all the kids didn’t sleep around the tree (Gabe needed his own bed and insisted on sleeping. We had to stop him from showering before presents, that would have broken too far from the few traditions our family does have.)
*first time decorating the tree in shorts and sweating
*first Christmas without Walmart and Target
*first Christmas Eve spent in a lake tubing
*first time we planned presents a month ahead of time (Christian bought many of the kid’s gift while he was in Lima over Thanksgiving.)
*first time ants invaded the candy stash
*first time we froze boxes of Nerds (brought from Lima) to kill ants and picked them out
*first time our kids were happy to receive candy mixed with dead frozen ants (we only missed a few . . and what didn’t have ants did 12 hours later when they forgot to close the Ziploc baggies their candy was in.)
*first time our dog ate a nativity scene and ornaments off the tree (Libby is cute but she eats everything – we are starting to think she is partially goat . . .which is good and bad. I’ve always wanted a goat)
*first time my oven didn’t cook well and after 4 hours we had to cut off the turkey breasts and cook them in my neighbors oven
*first time the turkey feet and head were included with the turkey (Libby ate everything we didn’t . she loves turkey feet.)
*first time our kids have been in a Christmas program at church . . . their debut was in Spanish.
All-in-all, it has been a great holiday . . .difficult at times missing family and friends, but amazing when we realize the friends God has given us here. So glad he came to earth so we could know him.
FELIZ NAVIDAD!!!!!!!
We wish you all a very merry Christmas and a wonderful 2010. We had a great evening with friends and the kids got to go out on the lake at the airbase, tubing, for Christmas eve. That is a first and a great memory for years to come. We are planning a meal tomorrow for friends and we will be cooking a turkey, flown here from Lima. Can’t wait.
Santa has presents to wrap before they get opened in eight hours . . . .so buenas noches a todos.
p.s. Gabe found the camera cord so I will post pictures soon.
Bus Trip Observations
Christian just recently returned from an unplanned, short notice trip to Lima to help import our crate of belonging that recently arrived from the States . . . For those of you wondering why he had to go back to Lima so shortly after arriving, know the timing of everything has not been in our control for months. The trip was a very frustrating one but it is over now and Christian is home and our crate finnally arrived at our house yesterday. As difficult of an experience as it was it was wonderful to open boxes and rediscover our belongings. One million Matchbox cars again litter our floor and Grandma’s quilts once more adorn all the children’s beds.
One really great thing is that Christian took notes while on the bus for the first several hours. They were hillarious and we thought we would share the laugh with you.
” With-in the first 10 minutes they served cow’s stomach for food and some warm chicha stuff. I only ate the rice and one bite of stomach.
It looks a lot like Pucallpa so far.
The junge is beautiful!
The bus smells like urine and cow’s stomach.
A boy was begging [ouside] as we drove buy a 5 miles at 5 mph.
They handed out barf-bags. Not a good sign.
Tried to text Dan (Lawrence in CT) about construction methods.
Wow. White brahma bulls on a green hill.
We just drove through the river because the bidge half feel down.
We just passed a dog and a pig hanging out on the side of the road together.
A man just got off the bus to guide it over the river and he took a rifle with him.
We just got a speach about the about the dangers of the road because of robbers.
I paid the man with the gun s./20 ($7).
Thus end Christian’s notes. He had a good chicken dinner on the bus and when he started to here the noise of people vomiting he took his sleeping pill and prayed to sleep through the worst. He woke up on the other side of the mountains.
Life in the bayou
READER ADVISORY: Please don’t interpret any of this entry as complaining. . . I simply want to give you all an idea of what life is like here.
The best way I can describe our move from Arequipa to Pucallpa is to put it into perspective of where you live. You could say that we just moved from Manchester, CT to Woodstock, CT; or from Ada, MI to Lyons, MI; or from Fort Mill, SC to Union Mills, NC . . . . only not only are there very few places to shop in your new town you can only park your car on the street in front of a few of them (lest it be gone when you return) and you can’t really go there after the sun goes down, and down town is only 2.5 miles away but it is an action-packed 10 minute drive.
Our house is very nice. It is on the SAM property where we have a huge concrete wall, a watch man and a remote control gate for our cars to get in and out (the remote is new since we arrived). The surroundings give us a good sense of security that the kids can run around and play like they could in our yard back in the States, but we still have to bring in laundry at night, lest it get stolen. We don’t usually lock our doors during the day while we are around, even if we are not in the house but they are well locked on Sunday morning during church hours . . . everyone knows you are there and that is when a lot of theft occurs. Our house is the back half of what used to be the girl’s dorm way back, when SAM Academy functioned as a boarding school. To most of you it would look like a glorified summer cottage but as a missionary friend put it, “we have a real house” compared to their small rental in another neighborhood.
The house has screens and bars for windows, no glass. Ceiling fans in every room, but no a/c anywhere. Cockroaches were regular visitors for a while but the two huge ones we killed the other night were the only ones we’ve seen in a while . . . however you know you’ve seen a lot when the kids can calmly come out of the bathroom and tell that a roach is in the shower or in their toothbrush container (our very first night). You can’t put down your empty lemonade glass and forget it for an hour or two because it will be crawling with these little tiny clear-ish ants that are super fast. I am going to start charging them rent because there are so many in the house. I set a “trap” for them the other day and have been watching the steady stream of ants to and from the plate of boric acid and powdered sugar. Either I have just nourished the entire colony or they will soon all be dead. I am hoping for the latter.
As I sit here and type the drop in temperature (to 93 degrees F in the house) and the high setting on the fan are making me chilly . . . normal daily temp here is about 90 . . . in our house today it was 103. All and all Pucallpa is really a neat place to live. The jungle and lakes are beautiful. The city is very dirty and everything looks half built. The people are very friendly for the most part, but we have also found people here to be the most critical of our Spanish (which is interesting since everyone in Arequipa warned us about the improper jungle-Spanish spoken out here). After living in Arequipa I kind of feel like we went to a fancy prep-school and have now just returned home to the reality of our back woods home in the Louisiana bayou. We have a lot to get used to.