Dan and the kids are working on their Spanish homework so I’ll give a brief (?) update on the day. I feel like I hit my stride in a few areas today. We managed to have breakfast, lunch and dinner in our apartment. It wasn’t food we normally eat but it seemed to be fine. I tried to make a tuna sammich for Dan but when I opened the can to drain it, an orange liquid came out. He likes orange, but not that much. It was tuna with vegetables (carrots and peas) and he was having none of it. So I ate that and he had a grilled cheese sammich like Zoe. Soon we will buy fresh tuna and surely that won’t be orange!
I failed at my second attempt at rice and am desperately seeking a measuring cup, which I did not find today despite being in two different stores. How can it be so hard to cook rice???
Homeschool also started today. Haley was not quite on time but Zoe and I got started without her. I had the girls focus on math and reading (non fiction) and when I worked with one on math the other would be reading. That seemed to be fine until we had an impromptu science lesson when we found a fuzzy caterpillar in our outdoor classroom. The girls had to research that. Turns out he bites so I’m glad we didn’t keep him or handle him too long. I really enjoyed home school. I think I could be pretty good at it once I get into a routine.
Spanish school is going really well. Have you ever had the experience of attending school with the whole family? It’s odd but pretty cool. It’s kind of like a small community at the school. And we are a family of 4 in 3 different classes with 4 different teachers and the only ones with kids, so we become known. There’s a professional poker player who joined my class today. Daniel was very interested in that. Daniel had one of the teachers make a phone call about his broken phone so that was helpful. Hopefully tomorrow he’ll get that figured out with the help of our English speaking cabbie.
I’ve been really pleased with how much Spanish I remember. Our class is entirely in Spanish, not a word of English is spoken and I am the most talkative of the 6 people in my class. I am so happy to be able to communicate relatively well. Other than complicated transactions that are unfamiliar, I can get around well enough. I had a nice conversation with the lady at the fruit stand about when I’d see avocados, why I can’t buy the rice from her (it was for the animals) and how much did the donuts cost. That last one was for Haley.
Speaking of food, we had some new veggies with dinner (yuca), and Grape Nuts ice cream is yummy. Who knew!?
Today we learned that we need to throw our bath towels in the dryer, otherwise they are still wet from the day before. Toto, we aren’t in Arizona anymore.
Tomorrow is more of the same: homeschooling, Spanish lessons, home for dinner and then homework. I had a momentary panic this weekend when we got here that we’d be bored. Uh. No. We seem to never have time to just sit and watch TV or even play a card game! Maybe once the weekend comes we’ll have some down time. But then again we might be looking for a car to buy. We need transportation!
Someone asked “Are you enjoying yourselves?” and the answer is unequivocally YES. It’s different, it’s harder, it’s unexpected, it’s frustrating, it’s tiring but it’s what we wanted. The girls are doing so well and really adjusting so nicely to a very different lifestyle and environment. They’ve had their moments of melting but for the most part they are just taking it all in and rolling with the punches. We are still in the honeymoon phase, though. The other shoe will drop eventually but we’ll muddle through.
Here are a few pictures of the day.
