My Kingdom for an Agenda

We picked up Alejandra and Scarlett from the St. Louis Intl. airport Wednesday night. Royal and I were very excited; both eager and anxious for what the future will hold with two complete strangers in our house and in our lives. I was happy to learn that Alejandra had already been studying American Sign Language (ASL) for some months before coming to America. So, our communication was fairly fluent and fluid. Scarlett came an hour later with the other two students from Nicaragua, all of who missed the intended flight from Miami! Scarlett is new to ASL, and our communication is halting at best so far. There's a great deal of me signing to Scarlett, Scarlett  turning to Ale (pronounced as spanish names, of course; Aaahhh-Leh) and Ale signing to Scarlett, then writing in spanish on scrap paper to Scarlett.

But, anyways, that first night was positive.

Day ONE with our SEED students started to go wrong when I got out the foods for them to assemble a lunch from. We still had 20 minutes before take-off. I had bought an extra $100 or so of food to make sure we had some food they could eat. Potatoes, corn meal, corn tortillas (the way too huge package), dry beans, milk, lots of eggs, lots of fresh fruit and more made up our possible lunch meal collection. So, Ale sweetly surveyed the countertop and signed to me something I didn't get. She pulled out her IPOD touch and got google to translate "carne". "Where's the meat?", she asked.

I pulled out a bag of frozen chicken breasts. Big smiles all around let me know that we would now be 20  minutes late. We took turns chopping and stir-frying the meat, and alternately running around getting last details ready to leave. Whew!

And when we arrived at their first day of orientation, I received a printed agenda and schedule for the day. "Lunch will be provided." Thank you, SEED program for giving me the details AFTER our arrival on day one. Or should I say, "AAAGGGGhhhhh!!! Do you people realize how stressful this is? Come on! Help us out a LITTLE!!! the printed agenda could've been emailed to me last week!"

That's okay, Jeannette. We still love you. But, the rest of you boss guys are in trouble!