A behind the scenes look at transitions (otherwise known as packing)

This morning, we woke up and began the painful packing process. Yes, packing up even a 450 square foot house without a single closet is unpleasant. 

Which drawings do we keep? Which do we toss? What do we do with half-done lanyards? Old tennis shoes? What about broken erasers? And the English-language books? Puzzles that are missing pieces? And so begins what feels like an annual mindfulness project. . .

***

It is not all bad.

The most enjoyable part of packing is making individual gift bags for many of the kids here: one for Leyver and Emerson, one for Luis and Neymar, one for Jeryko and Ariel, one for Aitana. . .and so on. 

Who would want the flag memory game? The true answer is "Everyone"--it is hands down the hit game of the year. There is something notably compelling about those flags! "But who could we give the memory game to that would share it with others?" asks Jonah. 

What about the good markers? Sandy.

The shape shifting cube? Leyver.

The puzzles? Emo.

The origami paper? Ruby.

The Dragon Wood Game? Oh, the answer to this one is still up for heavy debate. This is another well-loved one, the local kids call one of our favorite games "El Dragón". 

It really is fun to be gift-givers, and we have played and used so many of these items with the kids here that we are mostly in agreement with regards to what goes to whom. 

I am proud of my kids for their kindness and generosity and for their ability to give stuff up, though I did give them full decision-making power about what they are bringing home. No judgment. It seems only fair. So we will have very interesting suitcases ourselves. :)

***

After morning packing, the kids moved onto game-playing, while I cooked us up some of our favorite Ecuadorian snacks: patacones and yuca frita. Gotta eat 'em while we can! 

The pile of gift bags for La Jos kids that we will distribute over the next couple of days. 
The "going back to Santa Rosa" pile

Big green plantains gifted by a neighbor, perfect for patacones.

First step: cut and fry the green plantains in reasonable chunks.
Second step: use the specially designed tool to smoooooosh them. 

The finished product! Patacones (best sprinkled with a little salt)
A rousing game of Dragon Wood (accompanied by patacones)
Last minute translating of Slapzee cards so we can leave the game behind. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On motherhood

Image
                                                 Last Sunday was Mother's Day, of course, a day that we observed by wandering through Historic Downtown Quito and the beautiful Quito Botanical Gardens with our former nanny, Julie, who is visiting us this week (hooray!). We are now back in La Josefina, showing Julie our sweet home.  Today, we truncated our homeschool day so that we could sneak in a trip to the  finca  and a dip in the river before the afternoon rains. Jonah is quietly playing with Legos, Brynna is flitting back and forth from the neighbor's house playing imaginatively with a few local boys, and Dillon is on the front porch, doing math homework and birdwatching. Our soundtrack is the unceasing drumming of the elementary and middle school students practicing for an upcoming parade. Amazingly, I  have found a few minutes to reflect on motherhood, albeit interrupted by the demonstration of a very cool Lego soccer field, an appeal to  try to fix The Incredible Hulk
Read more

The Origin Story

Image
Paul and I met at a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer event in Berkeley, California in the fall of 2004. We were the only RPCVs under fifty there that night, save for a mutual friend who had coordinated the event and a classmate I had dragged along for company. During the course of that evening's conversation and a date or two shortly thereafter, it became crystal clear to me that Paul would be my life partner. And very early in our relationship, in a dark salsa club, trading stories about our families of origin and our Peace Corps experiences, we began to envision the adventure our family is about to embark on. . . now almost 18 years later.  We would finish our schooling. We would marry. We would have children. We would live somewhere we love and be of service to our community. We would travel the world with our children. And, when the time was right, we would take them somewhere for an immersion experience-- for the opportunity we both so treasured -- to live in another place, to
Read more

Sandwiched

Image
On Saturday 12/3, I received a WhatsApp message from my sister that my mom had taken a fall at her home in Santa Rosa and was in the emergency room. Mom was alone when she fell and not able to remember what happened. She needed stitches to a complex ear laceration, and x-rays revealed that she had fractured her pelvis. Ugh. She would not be able to go home. This was exactly the health crisis I was hoping would not happen during our year away. Later that same evening, while we were getting ready to attend a special Christmas dinner at a friend's house deep in the Amazon jungle, Brynna ran into a corner of our wooden boarding house and sustained a large cut to her forehead that required stitches. Unfortunately, the tiny rural hospital did not have the appropriate suture material for the repair. Thus ensued an hours-long escapade to obtain the suture thread and get it to where we were staying. Many thanks to 1) my dear friend, Alba who became an instant case manager, 2) Silvana, who o
Read more