Sebastopol seen throughout the eyes of a NY Times journalist...

A friend here in Bogota forwarded this article to me about our home town, Sebastopol.  Fun to see some our favorite places...

http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/travel/food-and-art-in-sebastopol-california.html?nl=travel&emc=

Our New Digs

We spent the day at work today... no students on campus yet, but beginning of the year meetings are in full swing.  We are setting up our rooms and learning the new systems and protocols.  I had a glimpse today of how busy we will be in a week from now when work really starts so I figured now was the time to get a post up with pictures of our new place.

The front of our building, where a Colombian flag was waving yesterday because of a national holiday.

Our kitchen

Dining room

Entryway and fireplace

Living room

The view from our living room window where we can see the courtyard and kids play area.

Yeah, So we've been a little busy lately and the priority of the blog has fallen down on the totem pole.  So here's the Reader's Digest version of our last few weeks:

Linnea staging a store in her bedroom. 

 She repositioned the bookshelf and strategically staged the items for sale.

                                                      

Our new home... we had to move... the story is not really worth telling unless we're talking in person.

Rural Honduran shower on the "roadside"

One of Dempsey's Lego creations

We call this the "Secret Garden".  It's a great little pathway through a xeriscape garden at school between pre-school and the elementary school.  It's not necessarily hidden, but it's "secret" because no one uses it.  In it we find lantana, peanut grass, succulents and enough winged flying-things to keep a bug zapper happy for an evening.  It's also a nice place to walk before school to avoid the speeding Range Rovers and Prados that are exiting the school after drop-off.   This picture was taken on our way to Family Day. 

 Family Day snacks with Laurel.

Our new view from our new home...  it's even more spectacular at night. 

No Menorah? No Problem!

Finding Chanukah candles in Tegucigalpa is a bit of a challenge.  Especially when we didn't start looking until the days of light were literally upon us.  Unable to find the right size candles, we simply made our own modern version of a menorah and gathered up the appropriate number of candles, lined them up, used the tallest one for the shamash, and voila!  

Our Menorah.

Saturday 6:15 am

...and a couple of hours later...

Simple Pleasure

     Last March we got some grim news from Jorge, our property manager.  Our cistern had run dry twice (fortunately it filled the next day, both times) and he predicted that by April we would be in a water crisis where our cistern would only be filled 2 times for the ENTIRE month.  Up to this point, our cistern was being filled twice a week.

     The entire capital was feeling the pinch of a very dry "wet season".  Locals talked about this being the driest the capital has been in 80 to 100 years.  100,000 capitalinos were without water in their cisterns.  We have 2 cisterns for the 6 units in our apartment building.

     We were scratching out heads, trying to figure out how we had contributed to the draining of our cistern.  Twice.   Granted, we are sharing this cistern with two other apartments.  But, we were already water conscious denizens.  We are Californians!  We know about water shortages!  We know about turning off the water while brushing teeth and washing the dishes.  We always fill the washing machine full... never those skimpy loads!  We turn off the water when we shave... I even started collecting the water before getting in the shower while I was waiting for the hot water heater to kick in.  We tried to think of other ways to reduce our water consumption.  Sorry kids, but bath time is next on the chopping block.  So they started taking showers with us in the morning.  This was not a popular idea.  They love  bath time together.  But we had to make some dire and necessary changes.  Fortunately, for all of April our cistern never went dry.

     Last week we noticed that our downstairs neighbor was out of town.  His car was gone and we hadn't seen him.  AhHa!  One less person using water!  (It's so funny how our brains work in crisis mode).  So the kids were surprised tonight with the treat of a bath.  We will still have them take showers and we will continue to use as little water as possible, but the bath was just so much fun!

Honduran Topiaries

We have been "admiring" these ficus trees around our neighborhood for a while and finally took a camera around today to capture their creativeness...

"The Basket"

"The UFO"

"Shelves"

"Three Sisters"

"Oh, No You Di'n't!"

"Bridge"

"Birdhouse"

"Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb"

I bet you never thought you could do this with a ficus!?  Feeling inspired?

Empty Bowls - Part 2 and a New King Bed

We went to the Empty Bowls fundraiser last Thursday night.  We purchased 2 masterpieces made by young, budding artists.  The green bowl is Dempsey's and the yellow and blue is Linnea's.  The Annie's pasta is only thrown in there because we were so excited to see it at the store the other day that we bought a bunch of boxes.

Here is another picture from the night...

There was a bit of a bed fiasco last weekend...Eric went across the city to El Hatillo to get a king size bed from some Americans who are moving back to the states.  He made arrangements with some guys from the school to use a truck to haul the bed back down the mountain and to our house.  About 20 minutes into the excursion, the truck broke down.  Phone calls were made, a mechanic was summoned, I was on call in case I needed to use our car to go pick him up from this aborted bed mission.  After they all waited three hours the mechanic was unable to fix the truck.  It turns out the truck was in pretty bad shape; low oil, no water, electrical problems etc....  It was decided that a school bus would be sent to pick them all up! Best part of it was that the school bus also went to pick up our new bed!  Beds do not exactly fit in the door of a school bus, but somehow they got it in and twenty minutes later...

Up comes the school bus and our new bed pops out of the emergency exit, good as new... well almost good as new.  Total time it takes to buy a new (used) bed here... just over 6 hours!

Things We Love About Honduras

We are loving some things about living here.  Some of them we have just discovered.  Some of them are things that we have noticed all along, but we are just beginning to appreciate them.

This is the feel good.  Our grocery bags are 100% biodegradable.  If you've seen all the plastic garbage bags that are a normal part of the "ecosystem" here, you would know why this is so exciting.

Last night we went to a Jazz Festival.  Great music at a great outdoor venue.  We sure do miss seeing/hearing live music!  Gotta love it, it only cost $3 to get in!

Caramel made with goat's milk.  Mmmmmm... super tasty in my latte.

Monkey Licker (pretty much goes without saying why we like this!)

A herd of horses (there were about 6 or 7 of them) on the side of the road.

It's hard to see these little beautiful flowers because they're covered in dust.  This is at the side entrance of another bilingual school just outside the city.  We've seen this climbing vine growing in Sebastopol, and now we've spotted it here, decorating the chain link and concertina wire.  Gotta love the contrasts of nature and security.

We saved the best for last.  The thing we love most about living on Honduras is that our kids have discovered that their greatest playmate is each other.  They can play and play for hours making forts, playing with Legos and Playmobiles, Dempsey reads to Linnea, drawing and painting.  Yes, there is of course, fighting.  But that's all a part of being siblings, right?

Clouds and Mountains

Last weeks full moon rising

Low, evening clouds creeping between the mountains, seen from our balcony

There are times when we look out the window and we're in awe of the beauty.  The clouds create a dramatic picture and the mountains can either be covered by a low cloud or they are illuminated in a golden glow from a sun low on the horizon.  There is never a bad view from our place at night - always twinkling lights.  

Life is Normal - We have house projects now!

We haven't posted anything in a while... that's a good sign, right?  Well, life has been busy.  There are a lot of good things going on.

Bottom line, life is good.

We're moving with the days.

Exciting things on the horizon... Dempsey's birthday is tomorrow, so you know we'll have some pictures to post and a story to tell.

We worked on  a house project last week... we bought some nicely hand made wooden bookshelves from a trashy, grassy lot down the hill from our house last weekend.  Total cost for both bookshelves... 950 lempiras, about $43.  We brought them home, sanded and stained them and voila! we have places to put our books and tchotchkes!  The small bookshelf went in the kid's play bedroom and now houses their Playmobiles and Legos.

The Finished Product

La Muchacha

Here are the pictures of our apartment in Tegus.  The maid came today and cleaned, so I figured it would be a good day to snap some pictures while it looked really good.  It also gives me the opportunity to smugly say "Yeah, the maid came today".

So far we only have our "muchacha" coming twice a week.   She just cleans and eventually we would like to get someone everyday who will also cook for us.  It's amazing how quickly I came around to the idea of having a person in the house who would perform all the tasks I took care of at home just 2 short weeks ago!  But working full time and the availability of incredibly affordable house help makes the notion much easier to swallow.

When we got home after the first time she came, we walked around the house, giddy, saying "Look!  She lined up all our shoes!" and "Look! She folded all the shirts!" And also "Where in the hell is the baking dish!?" and "Where did she put the placemats?"  By the way, each time she has come, she has put the clean baking dish in the oven.  I'm not complaining though, I am so grateful to have the help!

So, now to our apartment.  Much different from our 100 year old Craftsman style bungalow in Sebastopol.  I feel like I'm living in a high rise in SoCal or something.  It has a lot of things I wasn't expecting in an apartment that we would ever be able to afford... granite countertops, bidet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 balconies, 1 covered patio (maybe we'll have and indoor garden there?), 4th floor views of the beautiful mountains and twinkling city lights at night.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!!

Tomorrow is our first payday and we are taking ourselves out on the town!!

Political update - The Pro-Zelaya folks are at it these days and getting quite a lot of media coverage.  They know that when they throw rocks and burn hot button icons like a Popeye's Chicken restaurant or a school bus, it will garner a lot of dramatic press.  We are well informed by the administration at the school and we are personally taking precautions to be aware of the events of the city before we head out.  The rock throwers and arsonists are only a small fraction of the people in this city of almost 2 million, so take the mainstream media's reporting with a grain of salt.

Last night, Honduras beat Costa Rica in a soccer match, 4-0.  We watched the game at Colin &  Elisa's place.  As each goal was scored, we would turn down the volume on the TV and listen as our colonia erupted in cheers.  Air horns and gun shots were also heard (don't worry, the gun shots were not as alarming as it sounds - amazing what you can begin to tolerate about a new culture in a short amount of time).  Honduras needed this win on so many levels.  The political situation has been dominating people's psyches and it was good to focus on a positive element of this new culture that we are just beginning to scratch the surface of.