"This Feels Like Home. This is Home."

Brynna has been repeating a little mantra for the last few days, "This feels like home. This is home." And I cannot really tell whether she is using the mantra to convince herself of this truth or because our little house and La Josefina really do feel like home to her. I am beginning to believe it is the latter.

Sometimes she chants "This feels like home. This is home" when we are doing something that feels quite home-like, e.g. sitting around the dining table eating muffins or sprawling on the livingroom floor playing "I Spy". At other times, it feels a little out of place, e.g. when a gaggle of chickens wanders in our front door. 

Back in Quito, I shared with the kids how I have found that a novel place becomes familiar and feels like home surprisingly quickly once four basic steps occur: 1) you get your bearings, 2) you find a way to safely meet your basic needs (food, toilet and sleep) 3) you make a relationship with one or two people, and 4) you generate a few simple memories in the place (e.g.  we had ice cream there the first night, or oh, that's where we found that cool playground).

This is, in fact, our home for the forseeable future. But to be sure, this is not 135 W6th Street, Santa Rosa, CA USA. 

First and foremost, we miss our friends and family. Grandma and Tia are not down the street, Pat and Evan don't pop in our back door several times a day, GG doesn't come by for a walk. Second, we miss the food; as Brynna said today "We HAVE to figure out some way to make cereal, or we are going to have a whole year without cereal." Third, just about everything else is different than home as well: the temperature, the humidity, the banana trees around our house, the way we eat oranges, milk fresh from the cow,the roosters crowing us awake, the bugs, the size of the spoons.

It is a family growth mindset experiment -- to settle into a house, community, and life that we are foreigners to but that we are hoping to participate fully in for the next year. We are blessed with an entry into this community via long-term relationships with people who know and love me and love my family as an extension of me, and yet the work has just begun to engage ourselves. Settle in. And ultimately stretch.

Paul and I planned this, but we, too, are participants in this experiment. We each lived something similar years ago as young, unattached Peace Corps Volunteers without established careers, without specific roots, without anchors. As a single dude in Kenya, Paul could eat ugali at his Kenyan family's house every night and in between live on pancakes; he could tend the bees living in his walls, jump on vaccination brigades, and make banana bread for the kids next door. As a solo woman in Ecuador, I too could jump into pick-ups and venture to wherever I wished; I could wander into communities with nothing to lose, offering to teach them to make zucchini bread or guacamole. I could push myself as far as I was willing to go.

Now, how do we do this as a family of five? 

Our regular life was predicated on a set of givens: mom works as a family doctor; dad is a software engineer, we live in the West End of Santa Rosa; the kids attend CCLA; we are members of UUCSR, and so on. This life's givens are different: mom and dad are not technically working; we live in a rural village in tropical Ecuador; we are not native Spanish speakers, nor are we natives to here; we stick out like sore thumbs everywhere we go; we don't have formal committments or affiliations, and so on. In some ways, we have more control over constructing our givens, choosing how we want to spend our hours, days, and weeks. In some ways, the foreignness of everything gives us less control. 

Adventuring around Ecuador will happen soon enough. For now, as we planned, we are spending this month nesting in La Josefina, creating a home that we are hoping will give our kids a solid foundation for the year to come. 

So far so good: We know our way around La Jos; we can get from our house to Lucia's house, to the river, to the cancha. We have our basic needs met;  we know where to buy bread, eggs and TP. We even know where to get the good cheese. We are fostering relationships; in fact, as I type, a neighbor boy Liandri sits here shyly playing Legos for the first time in his life with my boys. And we are definitely making memories: making homemade orange juice with our own oranges. Raising baby chicks. Hiking to waterfalls. Playing indoor in the evening with the local kids. Yesterday, we put up a rainbow in our kitchen archway. Today, I made carrot muffins and homemade spaghetti sauce (that no one liked). 

Mostly, the kids are rocking it. They are flexible, open and resilient. And some days, I feel like I am rocking it too. Even if noone likes my spaghetti sauce. 

Today, I asked everyone to tell me what makes this home feel like home for them and here are the answers. Some are more prophetic than others.

Dillon: "Because it feels comfortable here."

Jonah: "Home makes home feel like home."

Brynna: "It's snuggly, it also feels like home because all our things are here, and we have a snuggly bed and chickies to look after."

Paul: "Sleeping and eating here."

Veronica: "Where my family is safe and happy, where we are together. Where we have a place to eat together, sleep together, work and play together."

And now, I ask you, what makes home a home for you? 

Hanging original art in the kitchen

Our first pass at making flour tortillas

Living room floor: Legos, coloring books, art

A rainbow of art on a walk

Jonah in his happy place, drawing

Sherman playing Carcassonne

Legos, legos, legos

This morning's walk