Beautiful Sunday Morning

Yesterday Shaun told me, "Alright, Brenda, no more buying anything this month...."  The thrifty in me said "No problem."  This is not a super common occurrence, but it does happen occasionally, and of course every month there seem to be unanticipated expenses.  I guess there should be a monthly column for "unanticipated expenses" because they are so common they should be anticipated?

Anyway, of course that evening the unanticipated happened.  Our 9-month old fridge (also which we had not anticipated buying when we moved here) stopped.  Electricity was going to it (the light was on) but the fridge had melted.  At least on the inside.

Twinges of guilt for a couple purchases this month ate at me, specifically the cost of a course online this fall.... (I'm still working on my degree and have five courses left.  What better way to spend my "free time," right?).  I marched stoically across the road through a large group of people having a party on the road and onward to a small group of people visiting on the street, one of them being a neighbour.  The five or so of them gazed curiously as I came to the group and burst into tears.  Well, that wasn't quite how it happened, but as I tried to say "Our fridge stopped" in Portuguese I had a hard time holding it together.  She was kind enough to offer the use of her fridge and save me from further embarrassment.  We had thought in this community where everyone seems to know something about everything that one of their husbands would know something about fridges, but apparently that's why there's lot of refrigerator repair shops around.  None of them open at night though.  If we want to figure out warranty stuff we'll have to pay someone to bring the fridge to Recife, two hours away.  I don't even want to think about that.

I came home after moving our meat over to our neighbour's house and Shaun was pouring over online forums about how to fix a fridge.  Something about a compressor having to work hard blah blah blah.  Maybe turn it off for a couple hours and try again.  Also take an axe to it....that was just my suggestion, but no forum agreed with my analysis.  We tried to turn it on a few times.... nothing happened.  I guess we have to wait until Monday.

So this morning, as we are eating breakfast I plug it in.  Nothing happens.  Then I forget all about it.  Twenty, thirty minutes later we hear a hum.  Seriously?  GET OUT!  Now I'm really crying because I am so incredibly grateful.  I know it's just a fridge people, but this is actually a big deal.  Thank God that He provided us with an answer to our prayer that it would just be a small thing.  And please pray that we have no more unanticipated expenses this month.

Escola Biblica de Ferias...aka VBS

Another special event that happened during World Cup Month (Winter Holidays), was Vacation Bible School.  We have a teensy tiny church plant here in Peroba, and have a large number of kids show up at our house on any given day.  With participation from some of our fellow church members, we invited these kids to come to Escola Biblica de Ferias.  Our dear friend Sandro, who drives the school bus, picked up kids from the church here and we all drove to the school, Escola Biblica Cristã.  His wife ran the games, his daughter led the crafts, our friend Luiz taught music, and Pastor Thyago had Bible class.  There were a bunch of helpers with each group as well.  I honestly think the bus ride and the fact it was at EBC was the highlight for most of these kids.  There's not a lot going on in Peroba apparently!  We had 40 kids aged five through twelve split into two groups, with the majority of kids being in the older group.  We had an awesome four days, but I must admit there were stressors, such as crafts not being ready to go, or not being planned at all, and helpers coming more sporadically than I would have liked, the only man who can take the guard dogs in and out at the school not being available one of the days (we stayed at the church), and no one bothering to let us know there was construction at the school going on in the gym.  However it was lots of fun, and a lot of kids showed up at church on Sunday in the afternoon to receive their certificate and sing the songs they learned in front of the church after the service.  Since then we've done a monthly Saturday Bible School which has had between fifteen and twenty kids show up.

THE most important job.  Seriously.  This is all the kids talked about: "Will there be snacks?"  "What kind of snacks?" "What are we having tomorrow?"  "Who made this?"  and "Remember the cookies Shaun made?"

We had some handraisers ;)

Singing on the bus was boisterous and fun.

The last day when the school wasn't available we used our road.

The pictures are out of order because they are from two cameras.

Snacks at our house the last day.

The younger group singing their song at the church on Sunday.

The older group.

The kids have been asking when we will do another one.  I'm not quite ready for that yet, but I must say I learned a lot from what we did and how I would improve things next time, so I am excited about the opportunity in the future... maybe summer holidays?

Saga of the Traveling Foot Infection

Our darling son Seth spends a lot of time on the street playing.  It has been so great for him to have make friends here in the neighbourhood, learning the language and just plain rough-housing the way active kids do.  The past three weeks he has been semi out-of-commission with a rogue infection, and our world seems to have revolved around it.

It started off innocently enough, a mosquito bite on the bottom of his foot that he scratched open, but the infection grew fast.  So we cleaned and bandaged, soaked and treated for two or three times a day, and around the fourth day the boil surrounded by a large painful red area finally drained.... for around five days.  Then it went from bad to worse.  It got reinfected, but with some mutant tropical bacteria that drained clearish-brown fluid and spread to other parts of his body, just for fun.  There were six other locations at one point, including a swollen middle toe exacerbated by a possible athlete's foot infection, and large scrape that grew on his shin.  Seth was getting up during the night, we continued with topical antibiotics and cleaning it, however on day eleven, when Shaun came down with a similar infection on his leg and condemned my zealous cleansing techniques as painful,  and Seth woke up at two in the morning itchy and in pain with a red streak heading away from the oozing, festering zone, with pus following it, that I sent the two of them to the small hospital in town.  The real kicker was realizing how infectious it was.  They returned with antibiotics and Seth was in definite better spirits.  The next day we realized that the red line was squiggling back, a sure sign of hookworm, which is excruciatingly itchy.  And the infection was following the worm hole.  So we started anti-microbial ointment as well.  Seth has missed almost three weeks of the four weeks of school since the World Cup, but started again today.  Because of how infectious it was, and how itchy it was, it was hard for him to keep it clean and not touch it, and we worried about him spreading it to others in his class.  However, it is almost healed now, with beautiful new pink skin, and we pray that no new infection gets caught up in the cracks of open skin left.

Here's a picture diary of the ordeal.  I don't think it is that graphic, but if you don't like looking at wounds and discussing disgusting infections, I suggest you move on to another post ;)

For my future reference, Seth and Shaun were prescribed Keflex.

Initial boil.... no biggie.

The start of the mutation....

The start of the spread....

The swollen toe that was so itchy.... 

Seth scratched it open which caused more infection.

The wormhole, filling with infection...

Wrapped around his foot.  Poor guy, it was so itchy and he had painful spots everywhere.  If you look at his other foot here you can dimly see two other smaller spots which were also infected.

Almost healed after a week on antibiotics.

Yay!  Seth can go back to school!

So, I've been a bit preoccupied to post, but I'm getting there.  Hopefully, notwithstanding more infections or the like, I'll be able to post again this week.

  

Ferias (Holidays) and So Much More

I have always enjoyed writing, however I suppose in my years of teenage angst and less children, I had more time to pour out my heart into a journal.  Some evenings here it is all I can do to fall into bed.  I've read this is quite natural for months or even years of moving to a new culture with a different climate, language, lifestyle.....  Apparently it's all about the crazy amounts of emotional energy one burns while trying to make sense of our new surroundings.  Moving is also considered the third most stressful life event, after death and divorce, so take the stress of moving across town, and I believe you might try multiplying it by a hundred or so, and add in someone who is 7 months pregnant and trying to homeschool, then having a baby, then moving again to a different home, helping the kids adjust to a Portuguese school, and then you may have a little understanding of the past year.  Plus we've lived in seven different homes in the last four years, so you might say I have "moving-fatigue."

That being said, we have been in this home here in a small neighbourhood for eight months and actually feeling a little settled. We know our neighbours, the church and school are close by, and we have a decent routine.  We had a lovely month of winter holidays from school during the World Cup, and it was relaxing yet busy, full of wonderful things.  I love winter in Brasil, it gets down to the low to mid-twenties in the evenings, which does wonders for energy levels.  It does rain more, but we've only had one period where it was non-stop for almost two weeks, the rest if it does rain is usually through the night into the morning, with periods of sun in the afternoon.  Even those days have been somewhat sporadic.   

So during winter holidays we organized an Escola Biblica de Ferias (Vacation Bible School) with many of the kids that show up at our house weekly or even daily.  We spent some time at a Reformed Symposium and met up with a friend and his kid from Canada as well as meeting many other people and friends, we went to friends' homes during Brasil games since we did not have the World Cup available to us on our TV, we had company for two weeks, and we went to Recife for three nights and visited friends as well as checking out the zoo there.  Sounds busy, but we did get to sleep in past 5:30, so it really was a much-needed break.

In other good news, our contract has been extended by a year and has moved into more full-time work for Shaun, which is great for us on so many levels.  I think for us to move back when the kids were just settled in would have been an even greater stresser.  People always say that kids learn languages fast, and they're resilient, blah, blah, blah, but in my personal experience constant change and an unknown future can also negatively affect children during a very sensitive time of growth.  In terms of learning the language, when we were in Recife, the kids weren't really exposed to the language except on Sundays, so I would say it was not until we got here in November that they were really immersed in the neighbourhood and playing with kids here.  Yes, they pick up language fast, but I truly believe sometimes people think it takes a week of immersion for kids.  The kids started going to school in February and I would say right before the winter holidays everything clicked and all three of them really took off in terms of learning more and more.  So I would say around six months for kids and then it suddenly is being learned at warp speed.  People of course expect less especially from the younger ones, which is a bit unfair for Seth, but he is doing amazing, even in school where there is a huge focus on Portuguese grammar and reading and writing (same as in Canada in regards to English). Time has flown by and yet when I think of how long it has been it seems forever ago that we were in Canada, and I think it is amazing that the kids will be fluent in another language.  I'm fairly sure they will lose most of it once we get back to Canada, but that it will help them in the future with re-learning or learning other languages.  Seth and Hazel both at separate times when they were talking to cousins last week said they could not remember an English word in the moment, which to me is crazy!  We read a chapter of an English story book daily, plus we almost exclusively speak English in our home, and Seth and Hazel both do English work with me at least three times a week.

As there is way to much to record in one post, I'll just leave you with some pictures.  I am hoping I can do a little more specific updates about each "event" in the week to come, but this will have to do for now.  

Hazel and Lyla have become the best of friends (when they're not fighting of course!), and are often playing house or Barbies.  It is a lot of fun to see this developing friendship.

If you remember from one of the initial posts about the property here, there is a large covered barbecue area with a sink.  We actually have only used it once, as the barbecue is so big it needs a lot of charcoal and time to heat up for just our family.  Hazel and Lyla and often the neighbourhood girls spend time sweeping, scrubbing, cleaning, washing old pots and pans that the previous owners or left behind, making everything from birthday cakes (mud and pomegranate seeds, naturally) to orange candy (using the oranges from our tree and sugar and actually setting a bunch of leaves and cardboard on fire....this event included neighbourhood boys as well, and to be honest, did not work in the slightest).  We have celebrated fake birthdays and been served "coffee and cake" when visiting, and it has been a wonderful world of imaginative play.

Random photo op.

We got a hammock and have hammock hooks all over our veranda and even inside our house.  Sometimes it gets used as a swing, and has already been thoroughly enjoyed for naps, reading, and relaxing.

Jonas spends a lot of time on shoulders.  It makes me a little nervous but I try to supress my worrying.

Watching one of the Brasil games at a friend's.

They set up a projector on the wall, which was really cool.

Seth figured out the self-timer function of my camera.

So not too long of a post, seeing as you've missed three months of our lives, but stay tuned for a few more catch-up posts.