Day 25: Tuesday, 6/14

Today started out great and ended even better! Grace slept almost a full 8 hours going down around 8:30 and getting up around 4:00 am. It's still not hard to get up with her since it's around 1:00 pm back home – the hard part is going back to sleep. I stayed up for another couple hours getting the past two day's posts finished and uploaded and responding to a few pieces of email.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was hoping for an answer to the immunization question from my mom and it was there and waiting for me when I did. We're going to wait until we get home to do any more immunizations. I know that the cycle might be broken by waiting longer than the recommended amount but even if we have to redo anything, it'll only be one shot. I feel a lot better about waiting for many reasons – among them, if Grace reacts to the shots even with something as small as a fever, we'll be home and can handle it in our own environment.

So around 6:30 I went back to bet for a couple hours but I don't feel like it made up on the early hours I lost. I've felt a little behind all day getting up so late (8:30). We went downstairs for some breakfast and afterwards, my task was to see about getting a picture printed for Emi. It was raining most of the day here and this morning was pretty heavy. I grabbed my umbrella and headed across the street to check out the TSL place on the third floor. I was pleased to find out they could do the photos right away... not as pleased to know that it was basically the same price as everywhere else I'd looked. $5 per photo sheet. I needed a smaller size so it fit 4 pictures per sheet.

Back home I put the frame together and finished closing up all the bags for the family. It was almost 1:00 and we were expecting Donna at any moment but housekeeping arrived and we wanted to get our room cleaned so we grabbed our stuff and went to the restaurant to wait. I texted Claudia that we were in the restaurant but hadn't seen Donna yet and it was about 1:10. She texted back she'd forgotten but Donna was on her way. We waited about ½ hour and finally I see Emi come in the front door pointing to her wrist as if to say, “hey, you guys are late!”... I've come to discover she's quite the teaser! I don't know if she's only now just letting that part of her show or if I just wasn't picking up on it before but she's really pretty funny and it makes me wish even more that we shared a language.

We gathered our things and headed out to the car where Donna was waiting. She'd stopped to pick up Emi, Destiny and Bertha before getting us. I'm not sure why as it probably took an additional 10 minutes to navigate the “road” to Emi's house – it's really rough and full of enormous potholes. But we were on our way back down that road and soon were at their house.

I think I mentioned I wasn't really sure what to expect when we went inside as we couldn't really see anything last Saturday (when we dropped the girls off after Laura Beach). I was very pleasantly surprised... I mean, by our standards it was very bare and would certainly not be where you'd want to live all the time but from stories of other families, I'd been expecting the worst. A fairly big room, tile floor, a corner area as a kitchen area (many people cook on hotplates, not stoves), electricity (Tom & Jerry cartoons playing on the TV while some of the kids plugged in)... you could tell they keep things clean and organized as much as possible. A difficult task with so many people living in the house.

We were guided to the two chairs in the room – I think this was an honored guest sort of thing – and we sat down. There was a bench (maybe a cooler – couldn't tell) agains the opposite wall where some of the adults sat and the kids milled around either watching cartoons or staring at us. Donna hadn't planned to stay so she said her hellos and asked if we were okay – we were – and started to tell us when she'd be back to pick us up. Seriously, the house is about a 5 minute walk from our hotel and that's if you include the 3 flights of stairs and unlocking the door (which always gives me trouble) so we told her that she needn’t worry about us and that we'd be fine walking back. I had my trusty Target umbrella... complete with bullseyes on the underside. She seemed happy to hear this like she had 101 things to get done and this would help her immensely.

We felt very welcome in their home and soon started some chatting. A few of them speak some English but Bubu is the only one who really can (or did) converse. Some of the school-aged children would laugh at various things we said so I assume they could understand some of it. I mentioned that I'd brought some gifts for the family and asked if it was okay for me to hand them out. Wow, did that pull everyone in! The gifts went over really well and soon their was pointing and laughing and playing all around us. Even some of the shy girls got a little braver – some sitting with Jeff asking him to identify pictures in a coloring book and giggling each time he gave an answer.

Just for reference, we didn't go crazy on the gifts... we brought small things like coloring books, boxes of crayons, hair clips/binders/headbands, fingernail polish, matchbox cars, a couple Vikings t-shirts and and string backpacks, a Twins hat, a plastic slinky (metal rusts here really fast), little kids cardboard books (in English – which were a hit even with the older kids)... and I'd made a few sets of earrings to include. Stacy gave us the rest of her bag of Dum Dum suckers so we handed those out as well – even to a few neighborhood kids who were peeking in the front door most of the time. I highly recommend bringing in expensive gift bags and stickers to put numbers or name on them – the kids really seemed to like having their own thing top open.

One observation I have to make is how polite they all were – even the small kids. When offered the bag of suckers, they each only took one an many said “thank you” in English. Even the neighbor kids just waited at the open front door until they were acknowledged. There was no fighting over toys – sharing was the thing as items from individual bags were passed around from young kid to older kid and back again. One small skirmish when Calbin (a boy in 4^th grade) picked up the slinky (which was originally in his gift bag) and Allianna (a girl about 4) cried because she wanted it. A not-very-harsh word from Bubu and he simply put it down next to her so she could play with it.

I was able to get some photos and a few videos and will post a few in the blog. I debated doing so as we were in their private home but our experience was so positive that I feel like the overriding message here is about the people and the welcome we received and not specifically what their home was like. I would caution future families to be sensitive to posting things like this and examine what your true motivation is in doing so.

After about 90 minutes Grace needed to be changed and Bubu promptly handed her over to me... she seemed to like the changing pad that came with our diaper backpack and boy was it necessary in this instance. While I was handing her back, Grace barfed all down my shirt and down her outfit as well. I trust I handled the poopy diaper and baby barf well enough that my mom status is cemented. We stayed a bit longer but she and I were both in need of a change of clothes so we said our thanks and got ready to go back to the MIR. Bubu offered to drive us as it was still raining pretty hard and, with some convincing, we accepted. I actually felt like they'd feel better if we took the ride instead of walking with Grace through the rain to get home – even with an umbrella. On the way back to the MIR, we asked Bubu to see if Emi would like to come for lunch on Friday... I'm not sure how we'll know if the answer is yet but we'll be there anyway.

After a bath for Grace and a new set of clothes for the both of us, we were discussing dinner when Stacy and Oliver popped up to find out how things went. We filled her in on the visit and then went down for some food. With all the wind and rain today, the temperature was almost pleasant so we choose to sit outside and eat. The earlier dinner time was appreciate by both babies but we did have some issues with flies. Grace decided she was hungry just as the food arrived so Jeff fed her while I ate my meal and protected his from the flies. We then swapped and everyone ended up fed.

Now we're hanging out in the room and watching the Australia channel. Just now there was a small piece on adding phrases to your speech with the intent to sound more American... phrases and words like “kind of”, “really”, “sort of”... very strange that anyone would be interested in sounding more American. We've been here long enough that we're seeing a lot of reruns... I think it's time for some DVD TV (and yes, technically most of what I brought will be reruns for me but at least they're shows I like). A little Big Bang Theory and maybe an episode or two of Modern Family. Get ready to laugh!