Dear Readers,

Lots of you have been asking about care packages. Can you send them and how long will it take and what happens when they come through customs. Your concern and care, just in the asking, is hugely encouraging and supportive of us. Thank you!

Here’s the deal: right now we are going through culture shock. Everything is new and different and it all (or a lot of it, anyway) rubs the wrong way. This is normal. It is not something to run away from but something to work through. In order to do this, we have to slow way down, be flexible, and focus on the heart of what matters, i.e. being together, bed time read alouds, eating healthy, getting good sleep.

Perhaps this is one of the drawbacks of blogging. You get to see the hard stuff much more quickly and closer up than you would if I were corresponding via snail mail. (And if I was doing snail mail, I’d be sharing these details with only a handful of close friends and family.) So there’s that.

Also, maybe I am being too honest? I want to tell it like it is, but I don’t want to come across as a complainer. Transitions are hard for me, and they are super hard for at least one of our children (the one who just woke up and is informing me that she’s not going anywhere today).

What we are going through affects you—I need to be aware of that. No one likes to watch someone else flounder about like a fish, and for those of you who know us well, listening and watching without being able to do is a yucky place to be.

Which brings me to the point of this post: what you can do.

By far, the most important thing you can do is just listen and offer encouragement. Your emails and Facebook/blog/twitter comments are HUGELY encouraging. Knowing that you’re following along on our journey gives us strength, more so than I thought possible.
 

But some of you want to do more than that, something concrete, like care packages. I adore care packages, but in the name of honesty, let me be perfectly clear: we don’t need anything. Almost everything can be found in this country (if you’re willing to pay). I mean, Walmart is here (not that we intend the shop there). People live here all their lives and manage just fine. There are Twix bars and excellent coffee and rolling pins and whole wheat flour. There are drills and shoes and clocks and detergent.

True, at first glance many things are hard to find, things like baking soda, cocoa powder, forks (I found some and I bought a whole pack of 36 [they didn’t have smaller quantities]—let’s have a party!), long ignitors, easy-to-light matches, sturdy clothespins, floor mats, good DVDs, lactaid pills, etc. But that doesn’t mean those things aren’t here!

Still, if you want to send care packages (and I have no idea how long they will take or what will happen in customs or how much they cost), we will jump all over them.

Our mailing address is:

c/o Comite Central Menonita
19 Avenida 5-94 Zona 11
Colonia Miraflores
Ciudad de Guatemala
Guatemala

(Keep
in mind that all our mail goes to the capital, and once it arrives, it
might sit there for a couple more weeks until we get into the capital.)

Another option is that MCC has opened a personal drawing account (PDA)for us. This account is for our personal expenses like vacation, ice cream, clothing—all things we need to pay for ourselves. You can write checks to MCC and put our names in the memo line and the money will go into our PDA. Contact MCC to confirm the procedure. Also, money gifts (in this format) are not tax deductible.

Yet another option is that you can just give money to our church (Community Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Virginia) with “Guatemala Project” in the memo line. This money will help cover unanticipated expenses, give us some funds to work with at Bezaleel school, help pay for child care and Spanish studies for the children, cover our medical costs, etc. This money is tax deductible.

And yet another option is to donate directly to MCC. This will not help us outright, but it will help the agency we work for. And it might be a healthy outlet for your care and concern for the people here and in many other countries where MCC does relief and development work.

Much love to you all. You guys rock.

Love,
Jennifer

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon. Luvia just left. The chairs are sitting upside down on the table and the floors are still damp from her vigorous and repeated moppings.

My husband and all four kids just left to do some errands. They have to go get more minutes for the phone, stop by a sewing shop and drop off some fabric to be made into curtains. The children are also expecting a treat. Maybe they’ll bring home some sweet bread for a bedtime snack.

There is granola in the oven and some potatoes. We’ll have fried potatoes and eggs for supper.

I am sitting in my bed, propped up by two pillows, the computer on my lap. Next door (on the other side of the wall), the carpenters are tapping away on their project (an addition to this house, but not for us). A bus just roared down the road. The fan in the far room is whirring loudly as it attempts the impossible—to dry some clothes. I am eating Wilbur Buds and fighting to keep my eyes open.

This is the second time I’ve made granola. The first time I used oatmeal that I got out of a bin in an upscale grocery. There were a few dried beans in the oatmeal (from the bins next to the oatmeal), but I thought nothing of it and just picked them out before proceeding with the recipe. However, when we sat down to eat our much anticipated meal of regular granola mixed with cornflakes, we kept biting down on something hard.

“There are rocks in this granola!” my older daughter exclaimed. She spit out a piece into her hand and we studied it.

Rice! Bits of rock-hard rice were all through the granola! I had to throw it out, much to my dismay. I’m not used to ever throwing food directly into a trash can, but here there are no chickens to feed…yet.

I mixed up a second batch of granola today and then burned a small bit of it. I’m still working out the kinks of the oven. It has some pretty violent hot spots. Luvia asked permission to take home the burnt parts.

“Do you have chickens?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ll grind it up and turn it into a drink.”

She also took two of our empty milk jugs home with her. For carrying coffee, she said. I’m glad things aren’t going to waste, but it’s awkward, having our trash be someone else’s treasure.

The rainy, cloudy, cold weather continues. Someone told me that here the cloudy days aren’t as oppressive as they are in the states, but I beg to differ. Here, they are equally oppressive. The difference is that here the streets are crowded with people walking everywhere, regardless of the weather.

I am so glad I brought my twinkle lights (yet to be strung up), little lamps, and votives. Also, we bought two lamps to reduce the strain on our eyes—the bare, overhead light bulbs don’t provide sufficient lighting and we’re constantly squinting.

The inside of our house is very wet. Water seeps in through the concrete walls and runs down. They are wet to the touch. We can’t hang anything on the outside walls because of the moisture. I asked Luvia if this is how all the houses are and she said no. This house wasn’t built properly. Houses are supposed to be dry inside. Which is both encouraging and discouraging.

(Note: I said that we can see our breath and that is true. However, I’m figuring out that it’s not because of cold—though that may be true sometimes—but because of the wetness. It’s so wet that in the act of exhaling, steam is created. At least that’s what I think might be happening.)

We are looking for another house to live in. I actually really like this house—the size and layout is quite nice—but the lack of outside space, privacy, and natural light, not to mention the leakiness and mold, constitute some pretty big drawbacks. We are going about fixing this place up, buying furniture, putting hooks in the (inside) wall, though, because it may be a little while before we can find another place (if we can find another place).

A couple days we walked into town to do some more shopping. We do this almost every day. We buy what we can carry, get some groceries, discover a few more shops (oh, they sell chicks here! here’s a carpenter’s shop—let’s order some chairs! here’s where I can get flats of eggs! here’s the ATM machine! forks! I found forks! etc.) Some kids had to go to the bathroom so we stopped at a hotel.

While we were waiting, I suggested to my younger son that he burn off some of his energy by racing to the far end of the courtyard and back. So he did…several times. And then when the littlest one was at the far end, my older son asked if he could run, too.

“Fine,” I said, “just keep your head up and watch where you’re going.”

The boys took off, running at breakneck speed towards each other with their heads down. At the last minute, they realized they were going to crash, so they both swerved. But, oh horror, they swerved not around each other but into each other—BAM, they hit head on and both went down. My younger son bounced off his brother, spun around and smacked the pavement, nose first. My older son landed beside him, gasping for air and whimpering.

The older boy was fine, but the younger one had a bloody nose. The bridge of his nose had a red-purple mark, and at first we wondered if it might be broken. (It’s not, we don’t think, and though it was still a little swollen and sore in the morning, he didn’t complain about it anymore.) What a fiasco! (But at least I got to meet the hotel owners and learn the prices—it’s a nice place to stay. Visitors, anyone?) (Actually, if you come visit us, we won’t put you in a hotel. We’ll hold you hostage in our house and show you all our crazy and never let you go.)

PS. The granola turned out perfectly. No rocks. Yay.

I’ve pretty much stopped reading other blogs. Tooling around on the computer, sucking up the internet access, is a pleasure of the past. (I’m hopeful that I’ll someday be able to sit in my cozy bed and peruse the web, but at this point, sitting on a hard-back chair in a damp room full of dirty laundry and nothing else simply isn’t conducive to anything pleasurable.)

However, the other day I happened to glance down at my blog feed, and I spied the title “World’s Best Pancakes.” Pancakes are simple. They do not involve hard-to-find ingredients like cocoa powder or fancy spices or extracts or quinoa. So of course I had to look.

Lo and behold, I had all the ingredients! True, the recipe called for a lot of butter and butter here runs about a dollar and a half a stick, but for our Sunday morning pancakes, a splurge was absolutely and positively appropriate.

I made a single batch, served my older son, saw his reaction, and promptly mixed up another batch. We ate every single pancake.

Ruth Reichl describes these pancakes as sweet, salty, and crispy, and she is exactly right. They are less cake-y and more crepe-y, but not so crepe-y that you would associate them with crepes. I fried them in vegetable oil (see above comment about butter) and, much to my surprise, that may have made them even better (think donuts). The kids took turns eating (only one skillet to fry them in and two forks to eat them with), and my husband ate his with a spoon.

I’ve decided to keep Ruth’s title. If we can eat these pancakes in our little, scraped together kitchen in northern Guatemala, than they truly are an international affair.

World’s Best Pancakes
from Ruth Reichl’s blog

I am not sure why the recipe calls for that 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, but if Ruth put it in, I figured I better would too.

After making the pancakes the first time, I had the recipe memorized. See, they are truly are the world’s best pancakes—you can carry the recipe with you in your head wherever you go!

1 stick butter, melted
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
4 teaspoons sugar

In a bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, and oil. Add the melted butter and stir well. In a smaller bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. Add the dry to the wet and whisk lightly.

Slick a hot pan with oil (or butter) and spoon in the batter. Fry until the batter bubbles and the edges look a little dry. Flip and fry on the other side. Serve hot, with syrup.

Ps. My apologies for the poor photography. I am working in yellow rooms with no natural light which makes clear photography nearly impossible. Maybe I’ll get a handle on it…eventually.