Mini Fall Break

I have a four day weekend! woo hoo!

So, my goals for this four day Fall break:

- experiment with two new chocolate chip cookie recipes
- experiment with homemade pumpkin spice latte recipe
- finish the 2nd part of my "Biography of a Bilingual" ASAP
- finish my 2nd "Techniques for Teaching ESL" paper
- make blueberry pancakes
- visit thrift store, keep my eyes out for cute boots
- collect dead pine beetle wood for our fireplace from forest
- roast chestnuts from neighbor's tree in oven (or over open fire?)
- help Nate and Sarah clean out their old apartment
- celebrate Christi's birth with her family
- write Kate in our pen-pal journal
- play guitar
- assist at Cumleys' photo shoot
- borrow the Cumleys' vacuum
- take a stroll in Cheesman Park
- take similar stroll in Botanic Gardens

~~~~~~~~ I LOVE THE FALL!!!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Along the Way

I first fell in love with this poem five years ago in the bathroom reading section of some pretty inspiring people. And then I lost this poem and meanwhile I began to lose inspiration. I feel drained and I miss all of the "free time" I used to have for reading, contemplating and writing. And I found this poem in a tattered and taped-up notepad from days gone by and I know that I have to stop complaining, even in my thoughts, I have to learn to appreciate this season of life and how it fits in with all of the other seasons and how this current job situation isn't the point, but LIFE is the point, the JOURNEY is the point and thanks be to GOD for being with me and showering me with glimpses of His beauty and glory ALONG THE WAY.

As you journey through life,
choose your destination well,
but do not hurry there.
You will arrive soon enough.
Wander the back roads and forgotten paths,
keeping your destination in your heart
like the fixed point of a compass.
Seek out new voices, strange sights,
and ideas foreign to your own.
Such things are riches for the soul.
And if upon arrival, you find your destination is not exactly as you dreamed,
do not be disappointed. Think of all you would have missed if not for the journey there, and know that the true worth of your travels lies not in where you come to be at journey's end, but in who you come to be ALONG THE WAY.

Wednesdays are for Labyrinths

I take the 20 to and from work. On the bus ride home I pass the Saint Paul Lutheran Church on 17th and Grant. Besides the general peaceful/tranquil aura which illuminates from the magnificent edifice, there is a giant maroon banner inviting passersby to participate in a labyrinth on Wednesdays from 11:30 - 2:30.

Ouch, it hurts to pass this by and to know that I can never attend. I can't think about anything else I'd rather do on Wednesdays at noon. But the job (working with middle school English Language Learners - ELLs) that rips my heart out and brings me to my knees daily prevents me from attending this labyrinth. I prefer the symbolic path towards God in a tranquil, candlelit atmosphere which brings me towards the center rather than the socio-educational path that brings me to my knees in the teachers' bathroom on the second floor.

I know I can create a "labyrinth-experience" with God anytime and anywhere, but right now it sure would be nice to just "show up" somewhere spiritual. What I loved about House Church was the ideas of "being the church" rather than just "showing up at a church," but right now working a crazy-stressful job, transitioning back to Denver-life and taking two nightly grad school classes every week, I feel like I don't have time for anything but "showing up." So, it's not a labyrinth, but I'm planning on showing up at Mass at the Catholic Cathedral down the street tomorrow night and my soul is ready.

Donnerstags are for Deutsch!

("Thursdays are for German", in German)

My professor last night was talking about some recent studies concluding that going back and forth between different languages - or code switching - can actually delay the onset of Alzheimer's Disease; which is personally encouraging as I approach 30 (one more year away). It is like taking your brain to the gym and pumping it up. So, in my quest for trilingualism by 30, which I admit is no big deal to my German friends, I am thinking about making Donnerstags for Deutsch Day. Practically this means I will listen to German podcasts and try to situate my thinking into German and maybe glance over a book or something. I get Spanish exposure and practice everyday at work, which is awesome, but I have to make time for German or it won't happen.

SO, learn a new language and keep practicing it so you can exercise your brain and live longer without going crazy.

:::

Here are some great foreign language online resources:::

BBC Languages:
--------- Excellent multimedia programs in 36 languages for free!

German Site:
------ podcasts & more i like: Alltagsdeutsch and Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten

Notes in Spanish:
------ podcasts & topical conversations in easy to understand Spain Spanish

The Grass is Always Greener...

the fleeting glory of a typical sunset

when we invited the neighborhood mothers over for coffee and a presentation of typical kids' club (one of my top five highlights of our whole time: it felt so holistic: to be including the whole family)

What I miss about Guatemala:::
-
- Matt and I having SO MUCH time together
- open air pick-up rides
- cheap/frequent/crowded/lively chicken bus rides
- the fog descending upon the surrounding area
- vibrant sunsets behind volcanoes, over looking the Lake
- abundant avocado and mango consumption
- the slow pace of things
- Spanish class with Diego
- Nohemi, Yovardo, Juan Manuel and other kids from the neighborhood
- re-fried Chuchitos from street vendors
- drinking cold, sparkling water on a hot day
- colorful native clothing
- passing farmers on our walks through the countryside
- the campesino lifestyle & agricultural scenery
- taking the dogs for a walk around the farm
- day trips to Panajachel ("gringo-tenango")
- riding on a boat on the lake
- hospitality of neighbors
- Guillermo and Dianna's inventive enthusiasm
- Dianna's pumpkin scones and flavored lattes
- browsing artisan shops

What I enjoy about life in Colorado:::
- hanging with friends
- tent camping and National Forest access
- infinite gourmet foods and vegetarian cuisine
- good beer and access to restaurants
- the freedom of having a car
- wildlife viewing
- the safety of travel and hiking/exploring
- easy access to internet and other media

Wedding Weekend Extravaganza

Chris and Sarah's (Matt's sister) lovely rehearsal dinner

The new immediate family! I love my in-laws!

and sweet baby Mary, kept playing with her pasta and was loving all the laughs she was getting.

"Call me right when it happens."

This is what I told my mom just now.
My grandmother is slowly passing away in my mother's living room.
She's certainly old (94) and definitely ready.
But it's always hard to say good-bye for real.
:::::

I started writing this poem about my grandma when I was homesick and living in Switzerland back in '03 and finished it just right now:::

a muffled whistle and a jigsaw puzzle,
and a book I could always read again.
a tire swing and a parfait pie,
an alligator cup in my hand.

dominoes and skip-bos,
and American Movie Classics.
you bathed me and you sang to me,
growing up, as i was fragile.

a bloody toe in a baking pan,
the shovel of disaster.
lots of love and forgiveness,
wrecking trucks in the pasture.

snapping peas in patio rockers,
picking pecans with my hands.
rollerskating, driveway circles,
infinity in our hands.

you were blessed to be loved twice,
by two kind and loving men.
i am hurt to think you gone,
but richer to have you mine.

~~~~

i hope she understands how much it all meant to me.

when you were 12

A friend of mine, Allison, once said when trying to figure out your life's vocation you should think back to what you were doing when you were twelve::

What were you interested in?
What were you dreaming about?

Me? I was listening to my "French at a Glance" cassette tapes like crazy. Repeating my numbers, une a dix, over the sound of the shower, listening to greetings while falling asleep and designing quizzes on my bedroom floor for all the nouns and adjectives in between. Later it was German words and phrases taped all over my college dorm room and car and then came Spanish with a little Bengali, Russian and Nepali in between. SOO, as daunting as it has been to choose just one field of study for grad school (Linguistically Diverse Education aka "ESL"), I'm thinking this has been a subject that I have consistently been interested in since I was at least 11 or 12 so it should be safe.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

Recent Encouragement: maybe this is a sign::: So far this summer I have had kids in my group who speak: Hebrew, Korean, British English, French, Swiss German, German German, Afrikaans and American Sign Language (that's right no Spanish, the camp's in Boulder not Denver). So, I have just loved getting the kids to teach the others some key phrases for fun.

We have finished four weeks with Avid 4 Adventure and I am really enjoying it. I have great co-workers (especially the husband), which makes all the difference and the kids are kids, which is always fun and exhausting.
~:~
I have so much.
I am grateful.

Our Neck of the Woods

So, life update::: Matt and I are working for Avid4Adventure (an outdoor educational summer adventure day camp) in Boulder, Colorado.

and we are living in the National Forest outside of Boulder in our tent.

I've always dreamed of living in a tent for a season

and it's working out great
livin' the dream, trying to live a good story.


so, here are some of our sights so far:::

Elk grazing in an Aspen meadow

mother and cub looking both ways before crossing the road

crossing the road about 20 yards in front of us



big momma

From Brokenness to No Regrets

ok, this is a bit of a heavier topic, but it's life and sometimes we need to talk about the harder things (and i juxtapose it with a happier poem of life and love). I ran across this first poem on the movie Into the Wild, and in Anne Lammot's book, Bird by Bird.

This poem must be close to the hearts and minds of children from broken families. The thought process goes like this: i can't imagine how my parents were ever in love or how they got together, but I'm glad they did because otherwise i wouldn't be here.


I Go Back to May, 1936 (by Sharon Olds)

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

Excerpt from Everything is Illuminated, (completely fascinating work of genius)

"The Book of Recurrent Dreams"
The dream of falling in love, marriage, death, love. This dream seems as if it lasts for hours, although it always takes place in the five minutes between my returning from the field and being woken for dinner. I dream of when I met my wife, fifty years ago, and it's exactly as it happened. I dream of our marriage, and I can even see my father's tear of pride. It's all there, just as it was. But then I dream of my own death, which I have heard is impossible to do, but you must believe me. I dream of my wife telling me on my deathbed that she loves me, and even though she thinks I can't hear her, I can, and she says she wouldn't have changed anything. It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and will a thousand times, I awake.


~~~ this is a more beautiful perspective of what it could be like to look back on marriage after decades of together-ness and this of course is what I desire

i have to mention this...

We had an RV for a week, it was only a week, but it sure was jam-packed with stress and anxiety, cleaning, re-upholstering and planning and dreaming, a little bit of excitement but mostly over-shadowed by the threat of a possible break down. Anyways, here are the photos of the RV we had for a week:

We were planning on living in the RV this summer, but we didn't have the time to get it ready engine-wise to drive to Colorado... so we had to pass it on.

our dear little Minnie Winnie, that was ours for a week

the dining area before reupholstering

After reupholstering and our first and last romantic dinner in the driveway of my mother's house. The marathon-sowing-weekend was a little frustrating for an amateur seamstress but a lot of fun at the same time

we could've been so happy in here

~:~:~:~:~

oh, well, for now we're traveling in the Subaru back to Denver, we're in Durango today and there just happened to be a lovely street festival - I've only been here twice and each time we were greeted by a sunny eco-chic festival with locally brewed beers and good eats. oh, how i love your Durango ways. and we found lovely camping outside of Pagosa Springs.


downtown Durango


oh how i have missed the Rocky Mountains.
thanks for the American flag camping chairs, Aunt Beryl.

Central American Travels.

This part is hard for me to write.

because change is hard,
change is good and a sign of life,
but i am so easily adaptable and attachable
that i didn't want to leave Guatemala.
i mean in a lot of ways i knew our time was "up"
but it's never easy to turn that corner
stomach turning with the aching of things gone by
and the uncertainty of things ahead.
but we turned the corner,
we boarded a chicken bus and we left Guatemala.

sample chicken bus.

this sums up a lot of our travels, overheating and lying in front of the fan all over Central America.

a lady in San Salvador, El Salvador preparing for a days work, these short colorful aprons were common

horse and cart in Grenada, Nicaragua, the oldest Colonial town in Central America

no, not the ocean, this is Lake Nicaragua on the Island of Ometepe. we chose Playa Santo Domingo, there was a crazy thick layer of bugs constantly swarming until the evening breezes swept them away and then i understood. This island is made up of two large volcanoes and a connecting ithmus and incredible sand beaches and warm fresh water waves.

the highlight experience for me in our travels:: staying at "the monkey hut" on Lago Apoyo, a crater lake inside of a giant volcano (right outside of Grenada, Nicaragua), the water was impressively warm and calm. i just adore floating in an inner tube, which we got to do a lot of.


this is funny, i didn't even realize what i was standing in front of but Matt did, haha, my hands are on my hips because i was hot and tired and my chacos were falling apart and giving me blisters

this was our beach of choice and our only Costa Rican beach experience: Playa Samara on the Nicoya Penninsula

welcome to the jungle, kind of the closest i've ever been. after too much heat at the beach we headed for the highlands of Costa Rica::: Monteverde Nat'l Reserve, a

here we are hiking through the Nat'l Reserve with two great Swiss guys we met at our hostel. the bridge allowed us to look down over the top of the canopy of the cloud forest.

-----

i could upload a photo of the colorful furry tarantulas we saw if you wanted, but then i would be too frightened to check my own sight.

Family Time!

Matt's parents and my brother CAME TO VISIT!!

man, oh man, there is nothing like being with family in a foreign land! i'm telling you - i cannot get enough family time. all that stuff about in-laws being annoying or something does not apply to my life -- i absolutely love Mark and D.J. -- and i can't even begin to tell you the depth of my love for my brother, what an incredible guy! I didn't want our time with them to end. maybe heaven will be a lot like that - like an old family get together.

Here we are exploring some of the ruins of the Spanish-colonial city of Antigua. a must see on any trip to Central America. Antigua is full of luscious, verdant gardens hidden in lovely European stucco courtyards. Nothing is casual in Antigua - only absolutely extraordinarily old and beautiful.

Mark and DJ treated us to a super charming colonial-style hotel. matt and i just almost didn't want to leave our room it was that nice.

My brother actually traveled to Lake Atitlan in a chicken bus (pictured above) by himself with hardly any Spanish and it worked - we found him. he was the only gringo on every bus he took and everything seemed to go very smoothly. way to be efficient and user-friendly, Guatemala.

here we are at our fav restaurant in Panajachel on the Lake. everything is wonderfully whole grain, with great meat substitutes and everything is hecho a mano (made by hand). and don't even get me started on the tropical/botanical-garden ambience with celtic or classical music playing in the background. i absolutely love this place.

We also celebrated Matt's 26th birthday together which was SUPER SPECIAL!!

We also got to visit CASA DEL MUNDO, a hotel right across the lake, which if you're ever on Lake Atitlan I would now totally recommend. A completely whimsically tropical, paradisical setting.

hammock = pure bliss


with a labyrinth of beautiful, Italian-villa style dun decks.

and because the owner of the hotel is friends with the couple we are volunteering with, we got to kayak for free!

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

THANK YOU, FAMILY (and those who weren't able to come) = you mean the world to us. your love, generosity and kindness for us and others inspires us to no end! If i could bottle of that time we had together i would - all those warm feelings of togetherness and belonging and freedom and awareness = completely priceless = i love you!

The Quest for the Holy Wash Basin

The holy grail we all know of, but what of the holy-foot-washing-basin? Through reading over the stories of Jesus' last week in the gospels I realized that John does not have an account of Jesus breaking bread and sharing wine at the last supper instead the gospel writer tells of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. So in John's gospel the foot-washing-basin replaced the chalice as the sacred vessel of God's new covenant with his people.
:
I see a connection between these two sacred vessels: if we want to remember Jesus and drink the cup of sacrifice we should also turn in humble service and love to our brothers and sisters in Christ. the second part is perhaps the most challenging: "submitting to one another out of love for Christ."
:
to set the scene John writes "Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love." LOVE:LOVE:LOVE
:

The French writer Charles Peguy said, "Everything begins with mysticism and ends in politics." (excerpt from The Ascent of the Mountain of God)

:

I don't have to remind anyone how we've seen politics play out in the church: it always becomes my way of doing things vs. your way; us vs. them; etc, etc..

~:~:~:~:~

my prayer: Father, let the water of the Holy Wash Basin of humble service and love flow over your church today. give us new eyesight and divine love for one another. help us to be gracious and humble towards one another. amen.

Semana Santa

Semana Santa (Holy Week) is the biggest holiday in all of Latin America and Guatemala in particular is famous for making Alfombras (rugs) of beautiful, vibrant colors over which walk the Easter floats which are carried on people's shoulders. The Alfombras are made of painted or dyed sawdust pieced together using stensils. All week in almost all towns around the country in the middle of the roads you will find these lavish rugs.


Here is the main "Jesus Float" about to walk over an Alfombra depicting Jesus' face.


the men carrying the Jesus float on their shoulders, with the soldiers who arrested Jesus walking alongside

Here are the women dressed in mourning clothes (black and white) carrying Mary's float, there were scores of women dressed in mourning clothes walking in front of the float and the whole parade crowd was very silent, it was a very somber procession very different from a festive 4th of July parade.

Here are the kiddos we took with us to watch the parades in Antigua. They had never been to Antigua and were a bit shell shocked most of the time, with all the crowds and beautiful buildings and processiones (parades).


Antigua, Guatemala in particular is most famous for the best Processiones and the best Alfombras. Hotel rooms in Antigua for Semana Santa are booked over a year in advance.

Kid's CLUB

In addition to all of the construction projects that Matt has gotten to work on the biggest draw for me to volunteer at the Opal House has been the opportunity to interact with the kids from down the street!!

Here are some photos of our times together:::

Here is a group shot of the pequenas, the little ones, who come every Friday for three hours of play, nutritous snack, Bible story and craft, these guys are adorably fun!

These are some of the older kids who come every Saturday for three hours of similar fun. they absolutely love art projects. there is no such thing at their local school.




here we are singing:: "Mi Dios es tan Grande"

(my God is so big)
i absolutely love teaching kids about worship and then singing together!

Here is a group shot of the kids who sleep over every Tuesday.

They come over right after school to play, then we help them with their homework, then a nutritious dinner, then a warm shower and bedtime stories and breakfast in the morning before school.

here we are showing off one of our art projects.

another art project. that day we planted sun flower seeds and then we danced around to Bob Marley and made artistic flowers out of scrap materials and trash.

Love these girls!