The Honeymoon Stage

Bosslady Jeannette tells us that at the beginning when everyone is getting acquainted, our family and our SEEDs will go through a "honeymoon stage".

My husband and I have stayed up for the past 3 nights just visiting after dinner together with our SEEDs. Our home is more full, there is more love here. Tonight my 9 year old daughter came running to me after my nap, "Mommy! Ale made me quesadillas today and I knew exactly what she was saying! I'm so glad the SEED students are here!"
And, "Scarlett was showing me her scrapbook from Nicaragua, and we communicated so good! Look at all the words we wrote down on this paper!!"

Royal and I are spending hours communicating and getting to know these wonderful young women, but how much time have I spent today noticing my little ones? I'm getting a lesson in what makes life taste good.

My "rush about all day long hurrying to get more done" is NOT a mentality that works with our 2 new cultures. Dinner takes about 2 hours to prepare. And preparing it is like an event. It's not means to the event, it is an important event in itself...just making the food...together.  And it is really peaceful.

And, I'm noticing it doesn't really work in getting your kids to feel loved, either. I'm praying I can remember to slow down and work with my kids the way I'm having to work with my SEEDs. I think we'll all be a bit more in love.

A Royal Interjection - I Can't Sign!

So there we were, walking around the international grocery store: me (Royal), Ale, and Scarlett.  I (mostly) had no idea what they were trying to communicate to me.  I thought for sure at one point that Scarlett indicated her family really liked hot peppers in their food.  "Great!" I thought.  "We can finally get rid of that one jar of medium-heat slasa we accidentally bought."  Then when we got home the Mexican dish Ale made turned out to be too hot for Scarlett!?  Eh?  Alright . . . well, there was also the moment in the store when Ale signed this strange Spanish word: C-H-E-S-S-E.  I had no idea.  She was like (at least, this is my interpretation of the flurry of signs that came next) what do you mean you have no idea?  It's your English word!  OH!  You signed C-H-E-E-S-E!  Got it!  Right.  Sometimes I think we're communicating, but then I find out later we were all just smiling and nodding politely!  Well, at least we had fun when I showed them the giant Iranian nan bread.  They thought about making a huge burrito . . . so I had to show them the picture of Elizabeth eating the giant nan burrito we made last year just for fun!  We had a good laugh at that.  By the way, the Mexican sign for potato looks suspiciously like peeling an orange.  Just so you know.  

Yay for those who love to cook!

I got my first treat out of hosting tonight; and it showed up while I was stealing a nap!

I laid down at 5:50pm. I was totally exhausted, but didn't want to admit it.  I let the girls run "My LIttle Pony"  on Netflix for all to watch. Royal had taken the SEEDs by the international grocery "on their way home", which turned into over an hour by this time, and they still hadn't gotten home.

Well, eventually I woke up to find Alejandra busily making Chicken Mole from scratch on my stove. Wow! The cooking was very, very slow compared to the recipes I am accustomed to. (Now I know why the restaurants take so long to make it.) And when the chicken was done boiling, she hand-shredded it. I helped as much as I could. It was very slow going, but luckily our family had already eaten. Infact, they went out with Uncle Nick to some cool car racing event. I stayed home with our SEEDs. Then, she took each plate and instructed Scarlett to spread the mole evenly over the folded tortilla. I was so impressed by the process and the beauty of the cooking work!

Then, I saw the Kodak moment. She was doing something with the tortillas over the stove...She was heating them directly on the electric element!! by hand!! The girls had told me that they both had gas stoves back home, so I asked if they heated tortillas over the open flame? Both said yes, that was their way of heating them! I had to get a picture.

So, Alejandra and Scarlett have agreed to alternate cooking each night.  I'm very excited!! I got a super-delicious, restaurant-quality meal from another culture. Tomorrow night it is Nicaraguan cuisine!!!

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!