June, in review: Changes on the way

June has been quiet here on the blog, but no less eventful.  Here's why:

We are excited to welcome (somewhere around January 4, some 27 weeks from now) a third child into our family!  It will be a long advent season. (Rebekah is already listening to Christmas music, no kidding.) Lia and Silas seem happy about the news as well.  Several weeks back Silas had told Rebekah that he is no longer a baby; "You should get another one."  Lia has a few classmates also expecting baby siblings, which adds some interest to the waiting.

This has involved some adjustments as well.  Rebekah can speak for herself about a challenging first trimester, which has also had the added anxiety with concerns around Zika throughout the Americas. There are still relatively few cases in Nicaragua at this point, but we've still be taking lots of precautions, which has been a bit stressful (and hot, for Rebekah).

So one change we had to make was that we decided together with other MCC regional staff that Rebekah and the kids would stay in Managua while I would travel to San Pedro Sula, Honduras for the annual MCC Latin America/Carribbean Representatives meetings (avoiding travel, and the high incidence of Zika in Honduras).  It was a great week, and it was also tough (but for the best) to leave the family behind.  Most of the week's sessions were at a retreat center off beautiful Lake Yojoa.  Later in the week we had the chance to visit some of MCC Honduras's partners, which was also a helpful learning opportunity.

A few days after returning from Honduras we celebrated the end of Lia and Silas's school year, which has been quite a year.  Last year at this time Lia and Silas were wrapping up part-time day care at Roberta Webb Child Care Center (and some childcare with the kids' wonderful babysitter Jeanne).  From there, we had packed up the house and camped out in Pennsylvania (generally), and then the kids had Children's Orientation in Akron (which was like an awesome preschool with near-daily field trips).  Landing in Managua, the kids were at Preescolar Globitos until the end of their academic calendar in late November. At that point we thought the better long-term option would be NCA International, which has turned out to be really helpful for our kids (and us) on various levels.

So Lia finished up Kindergarten (in some ways, for the second time, but more completely this time), with lots of well-earned pomp and circumstance.  Silas will continue with his mornings in PreK2 in the coming school year.  He was a little baffled by why Lia and her class were getting so much attention. Hadn't he been through just as much? We went to the mall to get them each a toy. Very proud of these guys.

Lia with her class notebook.

Silas, a bit uncomfortable with this picture.

Recognizing each students.  The slide reads, "Lia: Model student, Loves to learn, Very adaptable, enjoys every new experience and each new friend she makes." Like I said, we're very proud of her.

Another change or adjustment this month came on the way back from Honduras.  This is a long story, but essentially I learned that there were three interpretations going on with my immigration/residency process.  Our lawyer and I understood that when my courtesy visa was canceled, the process slip we were given was effectively the temporary visa.  The folks at the Nicaragua/Honduras border assumed that once the courtesy visa was canceled, the default amount of time was 90 days with the Central America-4 region (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua), which had expired. The third interpretation was that once the courtesy visa was cancelled, there was 30 days to renew, which wasn't communicated clearly to us, so we didn't do.  So coming back into Honduras they gave me 5 days to check with immigration to see if my residency documents were ready, and if not, to exit the CA-4 region into Costa Rica for 72 hours and re-enter for a new 90 days. 

After looking into our options, which were relatively few, we decided to go as a family and try to make the most of it.  Find a pool, a room with internet and A/C, and get a renewed stamp on the re-entry.  We went down to Liberia, a small city, which took about 5 hours with some slow border crossing.  But the kids had a pool, we had a room with internet and A/C, and I got the renewed stamp on my passport. Hooray.

This is what we call a payphone.

One more picture and short story.  A week later I had the chance to participate in a food security/agriculture exchange hosted by World Renew and Asociación Cristiana de Jóvenes (ACJ), which is YMCA here.  They have several farmer field schools around Santa Lucía, Boaco, and this was an inspiring (and sobering) look at the efforts, innovation, and really hard work of these ambitious, young, small-scale farmers in the face of challenging terrain and soil, little-accessible water sources, and prolonged drought.  The rainy season has begun, but rain does not fall evenly everywhere and it will take a long time and careful water and soil management to overcome the drought.

On the way back into Santa Lucía that evening, after the day in the countryside, Mark VanderWees of World Renew threw out the idea of a sunrise hike up Peña Labrada before breakfast. By suppertime we had a group of around 10 who were in, and some one picked up some flashlights and we made a contact with a local guide to lead the way.  We started out at 4:00 the next morning in darkness and reached an impressive view at the top about 2 hours later.  Breakfast was later than it was scheduled, but it was certainly worth it for the view and the social time.  My camera battery was dead, so I'll be trying to get some pictures from others.  Here's one from Denise VanWissen that I've lifted from Facebook (Thanks, Denise!). 

Last week was a little more sane, working from the office again. Next week looks to be similar. Who knows what else is ahead...