My dear sister, etc.

Talking with my sister Emma for the first time since she moved back to the states a week ago:

E: “Hey, my first two nights here, I dreamed of your kids in Bolivia.”
Me: “Aw sweetie, how nice! And what were they doing?”
E: “Oh, I dunno. Just stuff.
Me: “Really? But what stuff?”
E: “Well…(hesitating now)…they were CRYING. Which ACTUALLY makes it a nightmare!!”

Oh. Glad I asked.

This afternoon we took the four oldest kids of CDA III (ages 4-6) to CDA II to play. The current adoption going on at CDA III is affecting them a bit (so hard to watch someone else get a doting new family while they continue waiting, and waiting…) so we thought we’d take them out during the family’s afternoon visit to their new child.

Some of my more interesting conversation with the kiddos in that short time:

Jhoselin (age 5): “Abigail went to Tia Eli’s house today because she had seventy THOUSAND happy faces!!” (Part of an award system at CDA II.)
Me: “Oh, really? Seventy thousand, huh?”
Jhoselin, giggling (if she’s not talking, she’s giggling—or both at once): “NOO, I was JOKING!! She had eight smiley faces!”

Really had me there…

Me: So how many kids were in your Sunday School class today?
Luis (age 6): Thirty one hundred.

WOW. I’ll guess it was 30, nor 100, or 130 (what was it with numbers today?!)

Me: “Mayra, did you have chicken pox when you were little?”
Mayra (age 4), indignantly: “QUE?!?!??” [what]

O-k-k-e-e-e-y, I’ll take that as a no. :-) Or maybe she was offended that I thought she was once "little" (if you knew Mayra, you'd understand).


And WHY you ask are we talking about Chicken pox yet again??? Arghh, because it appears we have them YET AGAIN in CDA III. Poor Juan Gabriel is pretty miserable but I’ve started him on medication, and Alejandra appears to be right in his wake. I’m worried concerned for the two babies there already a bit health-compromised (like Baby V, just 8 months old). We’re going to stay right on top of it though, and for now JG will be isolated in his room. I’m sending a Baby Home volunteer there instead tomorrow, to be his personal assistant/entertainer/nurse. SO….with an adoption in the works, another volunteer arriving, and this being my Dad’s last week living in Cochabamba, will prove to be an interesting one!!


And a picture that has absolutely nothing to do with any of this, but what's a post without a picture? Last night for my Dad and myself, I baked a spinach-two-types-of-cheese-mix-of-recipes-to-accomodate-Bolivian-ingredients....QUICHE! Yum.