Summer in the tribe

We have been on summer break for three weeks now.... getting creative with how to fill the hours...

Cooking lessons... Elijah is learning to make mac and cheese, and Caleb is learning to turn on the stove... 

Our annual Summer Reading Contest....

The boys have to write out their books and add up the pages (like how we get some math in!?)

Bugs have been popping up all over the house... thankfully the plastic types. :) But I have been scared more than once....

 The boys even laced them into the screens... notice our new railing on our back porch!

Monday is "Cooking Day" and we do a project... last week was Salt Water Taffy. Quite fun & tasty, but we decided that all future candy making will be on hold until we return to a less humid climate. :):) I told Brant that making Salt Water Taffy was a twice in a lifetime experience... once as a kid and once with your kids. :) 

I love the cool evenings and walking the airstrip before dinner. The sunsets are beautiful.

Shots, Parties and Trashy Cucumbers: Pics of our week

Saturday morning coffee cake: the only time we allow toys at the table... so they all show up.... 

A nurse flew in this week to give measles vaccines to the villagers... 

This is our trash heap where we burn our trash... Jason came over to help Brant investigate a vine growing out of the side...

Turns out we have cucumbers growing! Two huge ripe ones and about 50 baby cucumbers that are just dying to be turned into pickles... our most successful gardening venture to date! (And we didn't do a single thing to the stupid plant... maybe we should stop trying so hard with the bell peppers and watermelon!)

Yes, those are cucumbers.... right next to a tuna can lid and a plastic bag...

Last day of school... we invited our co-workers' kids over for a movie night to celebrate...

It's officially summer break in the tribe!

Routine & monotony

I get emails often asking when we will be “settled” into our life here. I am not sure how to take that question... either 1) the person thinks we have boxes still to unpack, not realizing that unlike normal Americans who move into new houses, we are actually building our house with our own bare hands and unpacking the boxes takes second place to building the shelves to house the stuff or 2) living in the tribe will feel “normal,” assuming that I can toss out 34 years of previous life experience and suddenly feel normal seeing malnourished kids on my front step and having neighbors with no electricity or clean drinking water. Yeah, not sure that’s ever going to feel “normal.” 

But if the inquirer wants to know if we are into a routine and surviving daily life, yes, we’ve got that one down. I love routine and order and am thankful that within just a few weeks of moving in here (had to get some bookshelves built first!) we had gotten into a good routine as a family and our days have a good rhythm to them. I actually love our life here. There are few interruptions; and the ones that we have fall into very defined categories: “death or craziness in the village” “somebody in our family sick” or “plane coming in today” ....that’s about it in our small world. 

So a glimpse at our day....

5 am - Brant is up and starting language study and Bible study.

6:30 am - The sun is up. Every single day of the year. Living on the equator is pretty boring on the seasonal patterns.

7 am - We have radio call in to town. The noise and the having to yell to be heard always wakes the boys and I up if we’re not already awake.

7-8:30 - Breakfast. Granola (homemade) or oatmeal (instant) every single morning. Some mornings we have eggs or leftover pancakes and every single Saturday we have coffee cake. Boys do their chores and we all get ready for the day. I wipe counters clean from the previous nights' dead bugs, clear the rafters of spider webs and sweep the entire house.... every. single. morning.

8:30 - In theory this is when we start school. But I’m really slow going in the mornings and so are the boys, so sometimes this gets pushed til 9 or 10. :) We do school all morning, with a short snack break. School is actually going really well. It’s SO easy to homeschool when no one can call you on the phone or drop by your house unexpectedly or when you don’t feel the pressure to run to the store. Our mornings are quiet and peaceful and usually decently cool. We’re studying American history together this year and it’s been really fun. We’ve also been working on science units together - last semester we spent all semester studying the human body and this semester we’re doing outer space. Brant studies language and deals with people who come to our porch and goes to the village to visit and get new words and phrases. Sometimes he works with a language helper on our front porch and I can steal outside for a few minutes and sit and listen and learn new words.

In the mornings, I also try to get all the laundry done and also house cleaning and all my food prep and baking. I can usually keep up with that while I’m working with the boys.

12:30 or 1 pm - We usually do lunch late because I’m trying so hard to cram in all the school stuff and get the boys finished up. Lunch is the hardest meal for me here. All bread has to be made by hand and lunch meat is outrageously expensive and has to be ordered from off island.... so sandwiches are out. We do PB and J once a week, but again, bread making is a pain. Cheese is very, very expensive, so mac and cheese is not a good option (though I’ve been ordering cheese powder from the States by the pound and doing mac and cheese once a week.) We can get dried kidney beans here, so I make a huge thing of refried beans once a month and freeze them and we do beans and tortillas once a week. We do leftovers from dinner a lot as well. Seriously, if you have any easy lunch ideas that don’t involve anything frozen you buy at Cosco, I would love to hear them. :) 

1:30 or 2 - The little boys and I are done with school and morning jobs and they play and I get my afternoon stuff going.... I do my Bible study time during the afternoon. It’s hot and I’m usually tired and ready to rest, so I love just laying on my bed and reading my Bible and resting for a few minutes. I also get my language study time in during the afternoon - on a good day I get about an hour of computer work done (listening to recordings and reviewing words/phrases I’ve already acquired) and then I can spend about an hour out with the people practicing talking and getting new words. Brant continues to study language; sometimes in the afternoons he takes a break to exercise or get in a short nap or work on a house project.... anything to keep his focus sharp.  

5:30 - The villagers love to come out in the evenings and play ball on the airstrip or sit and hang out. It’s cool and beautiful and the kids run everywhere and play. It’s hard to make ourselves come in and get the evening going - dinner, brush teeth, reading time, bed... The boys are in bed by 8 pm. 

I would love to say that leaves Brant and I a couple hours to ourselves, but we are toast by the end of the day. We immediately shower and crawl into bed. We talk some and try to watch a TV show (already downloaded) or read before lights out by 9:30. 5 am comes early and we have to start the whole thing over again...

For the birds

The boys' latest venture in the tribe is bird hunting with their friends... both our teammates' kids and the tribal boys. They use a combination of bows and arrows, air soft guns and this type of boomerang wooden stick thing... I think the current kill rate is tribal boys - 1 million; white boys - zero. :)

I cringe every time they came back with a dead bird. We live in a tropical rain forest, people. The birds are bright green and red and beautiful and would be in a zoo in America. The boys aren't killing annoying black ravens or pigeons. :( I saw a huge white cockatoo that a tribal boy caught a couple weeks back.... it was gorgeous. It also fed his entire family for dinner that night. 

Ethics aside, hunting has led to obsession with all things bird. We're researching bird houses, bird traps, mating seasons and nest building. Last week the tribal boys came by in the morning and we (uncharacteristically and very graciously!) allowed the boys to skip school to go hunting. They came back an hour later with two "kills" that all 10 boys plucked and gutted and roasted and ate... I think each boy got half a bite of meat. That afternoon, I kid you not, we opened our history lesson to the life of John James Audubon and the founding of the Audubon Society. (Yes, I get the irony.) 

So on our vacation last month, when we gave the boys the option of visiting the zoo or visiting a bird park, they, of course, chose the bird park. 

The bird park was SO cool. I was surprised. :) The birds were everywhere but in cages. Wandering on sidewalks, perched in trees. It was literally like a big bird resort where the birds just kinda did their thing and we wandered around and tried not to get stepped on or pooped on. 

 Ever the ham....

After a show on predator birds....

Feeding time.... and no, we didn't get any white splotches on clothes or hats. :)

We did have to shush the boys at times.... "Look, Mom, we've caught one of those before!" "Oh, look, I've eaten that kind - it tasted really good!" Not sure Audubon would have approved. :)

Vacation

Vacation. So, so much fun. It's kinda funny taking a vacation as a missionary; the first time we did, we got a nasty email from a supporter saying they hadn't had a vacation in 5 years and why should we get to take one? So I understand it can be a sensitive subject, but there are a LOT of things about life overseas that don't make sense to someone who's never lived outside America. 

We go to beautiful resort places because that's all that's offered..... regular local people don't stay at hotels, so there are no Best Westerns in this country. But because of the exchange rates, we pay less to stay at a beautiful 4 star resort than we would pay to stay at a Best Western in America. So some of our vacation pictures do kinda look dreamy, but that is one of the (few!) perks of living in a 3rd world country. :)

Back to vacation... this was our first one in several years. Somewhere between the last family trip we took and this one, our babies grew up and turned into real kids who could handle "real" vacation stuff like renting bikes and riding to Starbucks....

And going to a real water park and riding the "scary" rides....

And who had their "own" money that they could use to buy souvenirs. As the boys have ZERO opportunities to spend money in daily life, it was really fun for them to have some cash to actually exchange for toys and trinkets and souvenirs. We learned a LOT about their little money personalities (one a spender, one a saver, and one who carefully considered and then bought only really nice, expensive import toys.... that one had better grow up to be a doctor or lawyer!) 

Brant bought the little boys these hats.... love this picture.

We do not go on vacation for the beaches.... our beaches here are much more beautiful with zero tourists, but we still feel obligated to visit the beach at least once or twice.... especially when your fancy 4 star resort has its own private beach...

We go on vacation for the air conditioning, the shopping and the food.... which I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed....

This was a pirate themed restaurant where we ate up in a tree house, Swiss Family Robinson style...

This was an amazing new Texas BBQ joint that definitely exceeded the hype.... it just opened two months ago and is run by a kid from Austin, Texas, who looks like like he dropped out of UT and whose goal in life is to befriend every BBQ-starved ex-pat in the Eastern Hemisphere. :) 

And this was a fancy tea house we had reservations for our last day of the trip. And by "reservations" I mean, I booked the table, and Brant had serious reservations about taking 3 little boys to "high tea" with real china dishes. :) He gave the boys such a talking to before we entered the place and I was a bit scared when I saw the glass goblets and flowers and china.... BUT, it turned out to be such a fun meal! Each boy got his own "child's tea" complete with mini kid friendly sandwiches (PB&J and ham&cheese cut in fancy shapes) and trays of tiny desserts - towers of them! The boys literally squealed and clapped their hands when they saw all the food brought out. And "tea" for the boys turned out to be milkshakes for them and cappuccino for Brant (I was the only one who got real tea!) It was a fun last meal. 

So yes, we just ate the whole vacation, and I think we each gained 10 pounds. (Not an exaggeration, but already falling off with our regular chicken and rice tribal diet.) We also got some really fun things for our house - rugs for the boys' rooms, light fixtures to cover our bare bulbs and a good stock of ham, cheese, nuts and frozen berries (yes, we carried a huge cooler back on the plane!)

So thankful for our vacation!

Chalk another one up to "I never thought this would happen"

The big feast is today…. so last night the drums and dancing started in full force. Hundreds of people. Crazy, crazy loud. We slept with earplugs and Advil. This morning at 5 they were still going strong, so Brant went down to the village to watch and take pictures. I kinda crawled out of bed, watched from the porch a bit and decided to go down and get the experience. I threw on some clothes, not evening taking the time to wash my face or brush my hair, and went outside, where Brant was motioning for me to hurry up. All of the sudden I was surrounded by tribal people in headdresses and drums and painted faces…. singing and chanting and painting ME and putting a headdress on me! It was a TAD crazy, to say the least. 

They painted and dressed every member of our team and danced around our houses, and yes, we woke up the boys to get painted and dressed. They were troopers.  

Enjoying coffee now (all 5 of us!) and the lull before they start killing the pigs, which should be.... um, fun?

You know, really, this is the stuff nightmares are made of.... being woken up and taken outside to a group of loud, scary looking people who surround you and cover you with mud. :) It was a tad bit much for Caleb, who stayed in my arms the whole time, but didn't cry.  

I don't have any pictures of Ezra with his headdress on! Hoping our teammates got a few good pics and will add them later.

Turtle Bread

A rite of passage in our house is making Turtle Bread. I am not sure how we got started, but between Saxon's "following a recipe" lesson and the first grade reader's "Pam and Lee Bake Bread" story, we have little boys who look forward to the day when they get to learn how to bake Turtle Bread. 

Friday was Ezra's day. He was so proud.

Caleb.... back in 2013. 

And Elijah, when he was a little bitty guy in 2011, with the original Turtle Bread. Where has the time gone?