Reunión a la escuela OR Parent/Teacher Conferences

So Miss M has been in Peruvian school all of two weeks (mind you, of that two weeks, there have been 7 school days, 1 holiday, 1 wind day with no school, and 1 day classes were cancelled due to a transportation strike.)   And yesterday, the school told us they wanted to move her up a grade because she already has all the things in Año 4 down (numbers and letters, they have worked on 1 through 5 for the past two weeks) and more importantly, because a kid who signed up at the beginning of the school year but never showed up came in last week and wanted to start.  Keep in mind, we're three weeks into second semester and they haven't heard from this kid's parents until now.  :)   Anyway, we reviewed the curriculum (not that hard, outside of the fact that it's in Spanish which is the same problem she has now), found out there is another English speaking girl in Año 5, and M is just 3 weeks past the age cutoff for the school year anyway.  So, it looks like she is going to be moving on up.  Uniform.  Fortunately, the same for both grades.   Today, I had a reunión urgente (or IMPORTANT) meeting.  I assumed this was a parent/teacher conference 1:1 with her teacher, but it ended up being an all parents meeting entirely in Spanish.  Turn on your listening ears, K-girl.  Thankfully, Dave came along to the school and took the girls home so I was free to concentrate. An hour later, it wrapped up and then I had a few questions about things.  So, about thirty minutes after that (I let the Spanish speakers go first, knowing I would be kind of long), I headed back for home.   What was the meeting like?  Well, the first part was like a public service announcement about limiting our kids' TV, video game, and computer time and the dangers of overdosing on those.  Check.  We don't have a TV or video games and computer time is pretty minimal.  Next, the teacher talked about the importance of bringing your kids to school on time and picking them up on time.  School starts at 8am- please bring your kids in by 9am at the latest.  And parents who have been picking your kids up at 2:30 or 3:30 when school ends at 1:30?  Well, that is bad for the kids as they are hungry and tired and bad for the teachers who have enough work to do.  Check.  We get our kid there on time and it's never occurred to me to pick her up two hours late.   Then, the teacher talked about an upcoming all school event in a couple of weeks (I get the impression it's either a fundraiser or families contribute donations/buy things so the rental fee is covered).  Anyway, I followed well enough to sign up to donate a homemade pie (hey, some skills are transferrable- I plan to make an Apple Pie in the style of the United States.  Hopefully that goes over well.)  But I didn't understand the part about chickens and bingo.  Could you win chickens as bingo prizes?  As it turns out, no.  Each family is expected to buy 5 chicken meals at the event.  They cost 8 soles each (about $3 total) and so it would be about $15 per family for the event.  We've only got three and a half full plate eaters, so hopefully Dave brings his A-game.   A portion of Thanksgiving Pie-Fest 2011   Also, I learned that the kids need to wear their colored t-shirts.  We have a white t-shirt for her uniform and that's it.  I asked the teacher about that and she said I have to ask in the office.  Turns out they have 4 or 5 different colors of t-shirts which are assigned by a super special group of teachers who picks what you get.  Yellow, for example, is a yellow shirt but also the lions group.  This completely reminds me of Hogwarts and the sorting hat.  The special teachers were in a meeting when I stopped by the office, so we have to wait until Monday to find out if M made it into Gryffindor.  And then I've got another thing to go and buy.  At least the mom of the kid who is starting is buying M's next set of textbooks and swapping for the ones we already got for her for Año 4!  And she can take all the things I already bought up to Año 5, even though they are the wrong color for that age, so I don't need to spend the next week doing school shopping list round 2.  Just another day in the life.

 

 

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Transportation Strike!

I assume that in the future, a transportation strike won't necessarily seem quite so odd to us.  In fact, protests are such a part of life here that it's sometimes part of the preschool curriculum.  But for this week, the transportation strike of combi (small bus) drivers was novel and new and also meant that Miss M didn't have school. 

She and I took advantage of the break to walk downtown in search of some specific items- containers for homemade puffy paint and some waterproof fabric for the girls' dining room chairs.  Success on both fronts!  On the way, I decided to take a few pics of our day-to-day life.  Here's the Plaza de Armas, which is in the center of downtown.  Pretty, huh?  And also normally populated. 

Miss M talking on her pretend cell phone.

We continued on to try to find the fabric and plastic squeeze bottles.  The stores here tend to be clustered.  Meaning, if you can find one person selling curtains, the whole street of shops is selling curtains.  Same with baby clothing, hooks for the wall, light bulbs, kitchen things, and plastic ware.  It's not entirely exclusive, but the last time I was out I found the fabric I wanted at a fabric shop but made into an apron- they sold only the apron, not the actual fabric and I didn't understand where they said I could get the fabric itself or what it was called.  No stores near that store sold the fabric, either, though they were all fabric shops. Today, we struck gold.  I found one shop and knowing there must be more, we continued on to see if we liked their patterns better.  The first shop emerged on top, and we had just stepped back into the shop when we heard muffled voices through a bull horn and saw a dad sprinting down the street with toddler in arms.  We retreated to the back of the store while the two shopkeepers moved toward the door.  They glanced back at us and started to close up the wrought iron gates (very normal here- we've got two gates between the street and our front door).  They didn't lock the gates but just stood watching as the protest parade made its way down the street.  Police decked out in riot gear walked along the edges and people were carrying banners and flags.  We stayed in the shop until the parade passed and I still don't know what the actual protest is about- the shopkeepers said it isn't because they want more money.  I couldn't actually see any of the banners to read them and I had no chance of understanding the amplified voices.

Shopkeepers closing the gates.

Well, we continued on our merry way, found some squeeze bottles, and walked back through the Plaza de Armas.  At least, that's what we tried to do.  Remember the relative openness when we first passed by?  Well, now the plaza was PACKED and getting through looked like it would be a bit tricky.  Then, we heard the garbled voices again and the parade had circled back and was pouring into the plaza!  The police peeled off and stood on the side while the protesters moved into the center. 

Police waiting near the Plaza de Armas.

 

M and I did the only thing left to do.  We went into an ice cream shop and shared a cone while we waited for the crowd to thin and checked out the action.  Everything seemed pretty straightforward- some speeches over the loudspeaker, people selling food and beverages to the bystanders from little mobile carts, and enough action to keep a 5 year old occupied (now that she had gotten over her fear).  The police were watchful but not concerned and the whole thing broke up with people streaming out of the plaza within an hour or so. 

Plaza packed with protesters!

With a face like that, no one will bug us.

Our house is opposite from the direction most people were going, so once we were two blocks from the Plaza it was smooth sailing.  Oh, but look....here are three combis picking people up.  Isn't there a strike today?  While there was much less combi traffic than usual, we saw plenty going on our walk in and out of downtown. 

Some combis were still running.

All in all, we were just fine and had a memorable interaction with our first protest march.  Oh, and the puff paint squeeze bottles?  We're two for four that actually work.  But that was enough to get one painting done after the first painting was wrecked by an exploding bottle.

Interesting Cultural Observation- Mail

ICO *Interesting Cultural Observation* 

Mail is a little different here.

Oh, look- we got something thrown through our front gate. Let's see what it is. 



Mail!

 Hmmm....a restaurant advertisement AND our electric bill. Without an envelope. 

Restaurant.  Looks yummy!

Good thing we're home and there wasn't a wind storm!

Rescued!

Settled in and happy after some sleep

There is no other word than RESCUED to describe how we came to leave the United States and get on a plane bound for Houston.  In the month before we left, and even before that, our families were fantastic.  We had so much stuff to sort through with regard to our house and that is really hard to do with little munchkins.  Both grandmothers took time with the kids so Dave and I could prep.  That was exceedingly helpful.

We sorted out several garage-fulls of stuff to give away and time was getting short.  So, Hannah (intern at our church) rescued us in the form of making arrangements for a Karen church to come and pick up the extra household and clothing items we had for distribution to newly settled refugee families.  They ended up coming three or four times over a couple of weeks, and not having to take those things somewhere else was such a blessing to us.  It was also fun to see people looking through and their excitement over things they could use.  They also picked apples off the crabapple tree (which normally just fall on the ground and serve as bird food).  Seems that this type of apple is used to make a special Karen food and they were mighty excited to be able to get some.

In the last week, Dave and I didn’t really get a lot of sleep as we tried to finish up our jobs, clear out the house, and pack.  And that is when the rescue truly began.  I don’t remember much detail, as I got far less sleep over a prolonged period of time than I think I ever have in my life.  (College = 9 hours of sleep per night for me, plus naps when needed and even with newborns I could nap.)  This was full out nose to the grindstone.  We culled, moved, stacked our stuff in the basement, and tried to set things aside to pack without really knowing how we would fit all our stuff in the luggage allotment. [It didn’t all fit.] We got fewer and fewer hours of sleep each night, were so thankful to Nathalie (our au pair) for staying with us until just before we left and people like Rachel from SALT who offered out of the blue to take the girls for a few evenings.  My mom came to stay with the girls the last few days to give us a chance to keep working.

Just one of our sorting piles

It became evident to us on the Friday before our Tuesday departure that although we had made great progress, we still had an awful lot to do.  I put out a request for help on our church email list and lo and behold- we got a couple of helpers.  And this is when the rescue (for me) really hit home.  You see, we’ve given things before when help requests have gone out.  That’s pretty easy.  But giving of time- that’s something we don’t have an awful lot of, especially with small kids.  Usually when a time request goes out, I am already booked and it’s not feasible.  We had two people come from church to help with just the right skills and willingness to help at just the right time.  One cleaned our bathrooms and the other helped with mowing the lawn, moving our beds, and whatever else needed to be done.  My in-laws helped by moving things to their house and doing part of the mowing and my mom and sister took the girls.  A friend took the girls for a time and took my business clothing donation to a non-profit.  Our brother-in-law came and trimmed a hedge and disassembled some furniture and our wonderful neighbors down the street took over our recycling and reclaimed construction materials.  It is not an exaggeration to say that without the help, there is no way we could possibly have finished what we needed to get done.  I had a few moments of near panic, but then someone would stop by or something would happen that made me think we could really make this all work somehow- little by little.  I felt just as I have during this whole sabbatical process- that the way was being made straight before us and somehow it would all work out. 

In terms of rescue, I’m typically a pretty capable, competent person who doesn’t ask for or need a lot of outside help.  (Or else I hire it out, but then I’m still in charge.)  This was a situation where we literally could not do it in our own power.  Likely and unlikely rescuers came forward, some bound by friend or familial ties and those with no obligation at all.  I’m not used to being in that position, but I am so very thankful to those who helped us. 





After the 24 hour trip

The rescue carried through to the trip- Dave and I stayed up all night packing and sorting our final stuff into suitcases, weighing them, making decisions about what to leave behind.  My in-laws agreed to take care of storing/sorting/delivering the last bits of stuff and then drove us to the airport, where we showed up an hour and a half ahead of our domestic flight.  It wasn’t enough time to get through security.  The email from the airline said to get there an hour ahead….but we weren’t reckoning on the amount of time needed for our luggage.  After some harried waiting in the security line and a literal sprint to the gate (security needed to check our baby food to make sure it was really baby food after we finally made it to the checkpoint), we found out we’d missed our first flight by 5-10 minutes.  But even that ended up being a rescue with a hidden blessing.  We were rebooked (at no cost- I don’t think they had to do that) on a direct flight to Houston, where we would catch up with our bags that had gone through Chicago en route to Houston.  We had a couple of hours to relax, repack our carry-ons, Dave caught a short snooze, and we were off to Houston.  We had some lounge passes once there and our flight was delayed due to mechanical problems.  We ended up in Houston for about 5 hours longer than we should have been, but that meant we didn’t have to spend those 5 hours in the Lima airport (which has no lounge).  All in all, it was another mistake that ended up being a blessing (and netted each of us 7,000 frequent flier miles as an apology). 

Arrival at the airport found us with not one but two rescuers- someone from the school that owns the house we are renting (I didn’t know they were planning to send someone for us) and the people who generously offered to pick us up (a family living in Arequipa).  We got a pack and play from them and a pan of delicious scones and the college driver got the house keys and dropped us off.  We had beds and sheets, having purchased those from the previous occupants of the house and we crashed in our new, tidy home.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been truly rescued from something, but the feeling of helplessness followed by the intense relief of being rescued is a feeling that will not soon leave me.  Thank you to all of our rescuers, and if you had a part to play and I didn't mention you, please forgive the oversight. 



Finally in Arequipa!

We're here!

I will be posting more information and pictures soon, but we've been in Arequipa for just over a week, we got internet in our home today, and Mirabel is starting school on Monday.  Dave has a job interview next week for teaching English, and so far things are pretty good.

Stay tuned for more to come in the near future!

It's coming....

We're moving closer and closer to D-date and things are falling into place quite nicely.

Dave and I are both working hard at getting our work stuff done and our house in order.  Our cars have been relegated to the driveway as we're staging stuff to sell, give, and donate in the garage.  (The unseasonably cool spring has made that a real joy...I didn't expect to be scraping the car multiple times in mid to late April!) 

Our basement is slowly coughing up 10 years of accumulated stuff.  We're attempting to get rid of 25-50% of it.  We'll see.  Getting rid of the baby stuff is helping somewhat, and it's been easier for me to let things go than other times we've attempted to clear out. 

So many thanks to our parents who have helped with babysitting and also my sister, T, who has been helping get the electronics ready (giving me her old iPhone and helping to load it (and the Kindle I got from her) up with things for Peru).

Big things are falling into place as well, like a house in Peru, rental applications for our house here, and a response back from an English language institute that might hire Dave.  We've made connections with expats who already live in Arequipa and feel like we're in good hands.

We're getting really excited and are living with a foot in both worlds right now.  Excited for the future and still very much embedded in the present.  More to come!

A grand adventure....

We're prepping to move to Peru this coming summer!  So I'm making some tweaks to the blog, which I will be updating more regularly as we get closer to moving and for sure after we get there.  Stay tuned!