Kite Festival Weekend in Villa de Leyva

It has been a while since we've posted... the summer came and went quickly as we spend 6 weeks in Sebastopol; spending time with family, camping, and painting our house (that was a lot of work!).  We got back to Colombia in the beginning of August and it has been full tilt since then!  We escaped to Villa de Leyva for a long weekend for the kite festival.  The town plaza was abuzz with kite flyers, but we preferred flying our kites at our friends Bonnie and William's place.  Linnea flies her kite with William's advice...

On Saturday morning we went to the local market to get ingredients for our pizza.  The little guy above on the left was sitting with his grandma (?) as she pulled the kernels off the mazorca.  He took a nip off her Poker beer without even skipping a beat.  The mora in the picture at the upper right makes tasty juice - think blackberry juice with sugar added.

A family picture in the plaza while we enjoyed the kite festival and people watching.

Linnea and I took a horseback ride.  She was on Odelinda (Ode to beauty) and I was on Sereno (Serene).  The horses belonged to Bonnie and William's friends and 6 of us rode together to Pozos Azules, some beautiful ponds that invoked the colors of caribbean waters.

Pozos Azules

Our friends Moses (who also came to be known by the following names by Linnea: MoMo, Big Monster, and New Daddy [that one was a little strange, but somehow, seemed to not bother Moses]) and Rachel were traveling through Colombia for several weeks before they met us in Villa de Leyva.  We had met them in Honduras where they were Peace Corps volunteers in a sweet little town called Marcala.  We spend the long weekend together in V de L and then they came back with us to Bogotá and they stayed with us for 3 days before flying back to their other life in the states.

One of the reasons why Moses got called New Daddy... doesn't this look like a great family photo?  Moses and Rachel have an instant family!

Back at Bonnie and William's, there was still much to do... 

Dempsey spend many hours catching and releasing frogs from the numerous ponds.  

Of course there had to be a pizza making table to create all the tasty pizzas to cook in the pizza oven.  While we were outside cooking, the smells of the pizza and the kindness of the pizza-eaters attracted a stray dog that had been lingering around the periphery.  We coaxed him closer with our sweet voices and bites of pizza.  William was quickly warming up to the idea of having a dog, but I think Bonnie will take a little more convincing.

Bonnie and William's place on Monday morning, just before we got on the bus to return to Bogotá.  

Birthday Weekend in Anapoima

Renting a finca is something quite common here...

Technically, finca means farm.  But for most folks in Bogota, it means "weekend house".  Most fincas are all in the family, or you go with a friend to their finca.  Our students talk all the time about "going to my finca" or "... when I was at my finca..."

So when I shared with my student that we'd be spending the long weekend (on Monday we observed Dia de la Ascension) at a finca, my students immediately started asking questions.  The conversation went like this:

me:  "This weekend we are going to a finca."
student:  "Where?"
me:  "It's in Anapoima."
student:  "I have a finca there..."
different student: "Whose finca are you going to?"
me: "We are renting it."
student: "What? You can rent a finca?  How do you do that?"
different student: "Whose finca is it?"
me:  "Yes, you can rent a finca."
student: "Whose finca is it?"
me:  "I don't know who owns it specifically, we are renting it from an agency that rents out fincas."
student:  "I didn't know you could do that!?"

Yes, well when your family doesn't own a finca, you rent one, and that's what we did.  We also rented a 19 passenger van to transport all 16 of us there.  Here are the pictures... the time went by too fast and we got to top off our weekend by celebrating Eric's 40th b-day.

Uno and Doritos!

Hey, what are you guys doing over there?  Oh, it's the bbq pit.  Making pizza!  

Can you see the peacocks behind Eric?

Pizza on the grill

 The food kept coming... and we got stuffed.

 Happy Birthday Eric

A Beautiful Day for a Party

Dempsey wanted to celebrate his birthday by having a party at our house.  So we had 15 or so kids over last Saturday.  They played games and we made a lot of pizzas.  We have been making pizza a lot lately, ever since we brought back a pizza stone in our carry-on luggage from our trip home in December.  I can't remember exactly which one of us had that in our carry-on bag, but I am thankful for the person who carried the heavy load because now we have tasty pizzas coming out of our oven on a regular basis.

Once all the kids arrived, we played baby food hot potato.  Actually, Dempsey would have nothing to do with it, but some of his more adventurous friends joined in.  Here, poor Jonah is taking a spoonful.  Although his bite was just a bit, he did start to dry heave a little.

We made a bunch of treasure map clues where the kids had to solve a puzzle, then run around our apartment and the rest of the building and outside area looking for more clues.

Ice cream cake time...

Present time...

Playing with new presents time...

It was such a beautiful, sunny, warm day, eventually Linnea and another girl at the party 

did a little bathing in the sun.

After the party was over and all the kids went home, Dempsey, Linnea and Elijah (neighbor friend) played in the late afternoon sun.

Father's Day and a Festival

We celebrated a 2nd Father's Day on June 20.  The first was Honduran Father's Day, back in March.  This time we got to celebrate Eric, Bruce and Jim.  Although dads are supposed to relax on their special day,  was too excited to make pizza and ribs.  What more could a dad ask for that pizza and ribs?  Oh yeah, beer.

Eric and Linnea taking his new hammock for a test drive.  

It's a winner... they were both asleep within 15 minutes. 

Then we were off the to Kate Wolf Festival.  The music was great.  Seeing old friends was great.  Watching Linnea paint Eric's toenails was great.

Game of Blink in the music meadow near the Main Stage.

Beauty Shop

Learning how to spin a plate.

Gato Prohibido!

Well today was a whirlwind of activity and excitement. We woke up and went to the school and saw J's classroom and E's office, both of them need some sprucing up but we think it will be fun to start working on making the spaces ours. Both kids spent some time in the daycare and were a bit slow to warm up but having three great daycare staff all to themselves ended up making all the difference and by the time we came to get them they wanted to stay! We found an apartment that looks good (more on that tomorrow) had some orientation meetings and then went to the mall food court for lunch. The mall is more like an amusement park here than a mall!

When we were returning our group got a call from the hotel... turns out one of our fellow teaching couples was hiding their cat in the hotel room... the cat was discovered and kicked out! Gato Prohibido! In the end they were allowed to stay in one of the adjacent apartment like dwellings but for a couple of hours we all thought that they were going to be kicked out of the Honduras Maya all together.

After that we all spent some time relaxing at the pool and having a few Salva Vidas (Decent Honduran Beers) and then we went to one of the High School Principals houses for Pizza. The Pizza "Place" was classic! It looked like a family converted the area in front of their house into a pizza cooking area and now they make great pizza. It was enjoyed by all!!

Oh Yeah I almost forgot we are in the paper!!! Link to the article in the Sonoma West Times.