Titles are overrated anyways. Do they really make you think “I absolutely need to read that post!” or the opposite “nah, I don’t think I really need to read that one.” ‘Cause you’re gonna read everything we post, right? Whether it’s something funny, or something boring or preachy. Or maybe even something written by Michelle that was as long as she is pretty? (just so we can get that simile straight in everyone’s mind, Michelle wrote a really long post yesterday which means she is really pretty. Got that?)

So then, what have I been up to this week? It doesn’t feel like much. But I suspect that as I write I will find I get as long winded as my adam’s apple is huge.

Class this week was on Intercessory prayer. The book/ video series we watched was called, ironically enough, “Intercessory Prayer” by Dutch Sheets. Dutch Sheets; that name is so cool. There are so many careers you could be in besides pentecostal prayer lecturer. Or if anything you can have your own line of bedding at Ikea. Although, the Dutch and the Swedish don’t like each other. I should know, I’m dutch. And whenever I see a blond haired, blue eyed person with an allen key and easy to follow instructions I just want to…

And we’re back! I learned an awful lot about prayer and the Christian’s right to have them answered. Not “Name it and Claim it” garbage though. Sorry if I insulted anyone with the term garbage, but that philosophy (I won’t allow you to call it theology) is so far off base it’s scary. But I’m fairly pumped to start praying more. And I need to. God wants me to, you could say He needs me to. I highly recommend the book. Find it, read it. Read it again because there is so much in there you need to go at it twice just to try and fathom it.

My ministry this week was firstly devoted to the nerd arts again. I like that term, if people who throw paint at walls or hang toilets filled with #2 in a window can be an artist so can I. And what I do actually matters. You should hear people on base freak out when the internet doesn’t work. Of course after I fix it there is not ONE word of thanks. They must all be Swedish. But I won’t go any further because I’ll get into a rage again. The network is working decently although we did find that one of our satellite dishes is not working. That stops me from making the network as perfect as I can, for now. I also have started looking for ways to improve the GFM website and registration process. I’ve got ideas and they may work. It will involve some hacking, but when doesn’t it?

Today was market day. I love market day. It’s so much fun. Everyone stares at the big white guy. And laughs, or looks a little scared. I’m just a big skinny teddy bear people! With a large adam’s apple that could take our your eye if you’re not careful. But I wanted to learn some new Spanish words while I shopped. So Chelsey, Jared and I set out to learn new words while we bought fruit, breads, yarn and candy. You know, the essentials. Oh ya, I needed to buy a new tape measure since I dropped mine in a tub of bleach water a few weeks back. Short story: I dropped mine in a tub of bleach water a few weeks back. Told you it was short.

So here are the new words we learned:

tape measure: mietro (I think)
yarn: tamarind (I actually think this was the colour. Miscommunication)
nectarine: nectarine (I asked the lady what it was called and she told me. I threw my hands in the air and laughed it was so funny. Might have scared her a bit)
kiwi: kiwi (again, laughter ensued)

So ya, I didn’t learn a lot of new words. But I am able to find out prices and pay the right one. And I don’t think the people are scamming me. Except that movie pirate guy who sold me 6 movies that all had English for 40 pesos. And they didn’t have English on them. Michelle got it right when she said it’s “our fault for trusting the pirate.”

Next week the MTS students are heading to the mountains for three days of camping, drinking water, praying, reading and other stuff. I did not say eating and I meant it that way (aka fasting for three days). Should be a good time. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t think it will be earth shattering, but if at some point I can have birds land on my arms and be surrounded by a couple of wild animals a la Ace Ventura then I will be satisfied. By the way, what kind of animals live in the Mexican mountains? I’m used to bears, cougers and moose. Here all I know of are bugs. Big, scary, mean bugs. I’ll let you know.

Church tomorrow. I doubt I will write anything about it. But if you want to know how it went, just read last weeks post! Oh ya, FANTASY HOCKEY DRAFT TONIGHT. I am so pumped hockey season is back. I will redeem myself from the poor results last year, although I did actually end up ahead in the money department. And the Flames are 3-1 so far in preseason. Which is both good and bad as I always say you can never trust preseason results. So what am I supposed to think?

See you after I have dropped a few pounds. Pray that God will be close, and the wind will stay low so I don’t blow away.

/RD

Well, I just got back from kicking a little “Ultimate Pong” butt and thought that this would be a good time to write another post.

Last Saturday was market day again.  Ryan, the kids, and I drove the 5 minutes to the town square, then promptly drove around for 15 more minutes to find a place to park.  Ryan has already mentioned to you all how crazy it is in the market, right?  Anyway, we parked, and I wore Katria in my sling (again, remember Ryan’s last fiasco with the kid backpack and the really low tarps?).  Back to the market…Within 5 minutes, we had bought all the things we were looking for; runners for Chelsey, a new backpack for Jared, and a snack.  With 3 kids in a hectic market, we don’t shoot very high.  We met up with some friends from the base who also have young kids.  Jenna and I sent the guys back with the kids to feed them lunch and put them down for naps.  This left Jenna and I to roam the market without trying to track kids.  There’s a lot of neat stuff here we’d never noticed before!

So we bought a few little things for our apartments, like coat racks.  Fun.  You wouldn’t believe how hard they are to find though.  Lunch sounded like a good idea, so I said, “this looks good”.  A lady had some things that look like those deep fried taquitos at Taco Time, but like twice as big.  I asked for one, and thought it just came as is.  I was wrong.  The lady asks if I want guacamole or salsa or some other weird looking sauce.  I figured that the guacamole would be my safest bet and asked for that.  She spoons some (a lot) on it, then reaches bare-handed into a bag, and crumbles cheese all over it.  Hmmm.  I decided that my biggest concern shouldn’t be the bare hand; rather the contents of the taquito should.  Jenna decides to get one too.  I thought that I couldn’t handle spicy food very well till I met her.  I cautioned her about the guacamole because I started to see seed things in it.  That usually means spicy I’ve learned.  She asks for “just a little”, so the lady pours it on hers too.  She must not have understood what that meant.  Then that bare hand reaches into the cheese again.  There’s obviously no health regulations here.

We walk to a nice quiet spot to sit and eat.  I tentatively dip the tip of my finger into the guacamole, and touch it to the end of my tongue.  I cannot believe the intensity of the burning enveloping my tongue.  I say, “Jenna, this is REALLY spicy”.  She must not have seen the look on my face because she’s like, “it can’t be THAT bad”, and proceeds to dip and lick her own finger.  I thought she was gonna puke right there!  I think she believes me now.  So here we sit, scraping the guacamole off our taquitos, trying to remember not to lick our fingers off.  I make it halfway through mine, mouth and throat burning since the guacamole had soaked into the tortilla, before my breakthrough thought.  Why didn’t I peel off the outer layer earlier?  I ate Jenna’s too.  I just couldn’t see it go to waste, especially since it tasted good once all traces of guacamole were gone.

Another friend, Jamie, joined up with us as we went searching for more food.  After trying a taco place we knew of (closed), we went looking for the pizza place.  By the time we got there, we didn’t have time to wait for them to make it.  We had to relieve the hubbys of the kids so they could get to their appointments.  So, I’m out a box of KD.  Payment for Jenna’s taquito, and her going without lunch.  That stuff is like gold here, I could make a lot of money off of it.

Sunday, we went to church, but Ryan already talked about that.  Later that day we bought a couple, um, fully legal videos.  The guy promised us that they had the English option.  We later discovered that you should never trust a movie pirate…

This past Monday we had Ladies Day Out in Oaxaca.  This included waking up early, and a day crammed mostly with shopping.  Nine of us loaded in to an 11 passenger van, along with two babies, and drove the 2ish hours to Oaxaca.  Upon arrival, we did some shopping at a Walmart-type store to load up on things unavailable in Tlaxiaco.  This was pretty uneventful, except for one friend (you know who you are!!) who accidentally got away with shoplifting right in front of a security guard.  I won’t tell anyone though…

Then we were off to Pizza Hut, a very welcome meal, where the pizza tastes normal and you’re not left wondering where the meat came from and how long it was sitting out.  You don’t see many cows anywhere near Tlaxiaco, so when you see beef, you think twice, then eat it anyway.  We then had the treat of seeing a movie.  This theatre was the cleanest I have seen anywhere.  The seats in the place were amazing too.  They were leather (or at least pleather) and oh so comfy.  They seriously put to shame all theatre seats I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting on.  They were arranged with two seats together followed by a side table.  It was high class.

I followed a few ladies to the cell phone store next.  Strangest thing.  It was set up like a bank, with the line up and tellers calling the next customer.  To get a cell phone!  On top of that, if someone wants to get a plan to the States or Canada, they have to show their passport!  I tell you, we’ve got it easy back home dealing with Rogers and Telus.  Well, except that here you’re guaranteed to talk to someone.  Who is trained.  And knows what they’re doing.

Off to Sam’s Club (kinda like Costco).  Loaded up on bulk items hard to come by in Tlaxiaco, like hot dogs and hamburgers…I don’t think anything too exciting happened here, except for these silly gringo ladies squealing with delight whenever finding something useful.  So we loaded all the stuff into the van.  Sounds easier than it was.  Think 9 ladies with no husbands telling them they shouldn’t buy things.  We had A LOT of stuff.  There were also about 5 carts worth of supplies for the base in there too.  Anyway, we load the coolers with the frozen stuff, and cram food into every nook and cranny in the van.  Most of our feet were resting on food too.

We all did the drive through at Burger King, another high point of the day.  I feel bad for the people behind us though.  Takes a lot of time to cook 9 whoppers.

Cut to the drive.  We left around 7ish.  We got back around 11ish.  Remember how long it’s supposed to take?  Good.  Just getting out of the city was mayhem.  Well, more than that.  Just driving on a normal day down here is mayhem, I haven’t gotten the guts to do it yet.  So there’s backed up traffic, closed roads, and merging onto one-ways going the other way, on top of the normal turmoil that is driving here.  It took almost as long getting out of the city as the rest of the drive did.  We finally make it out of town and onto the pothole and tope (speed bump) laden roads, in the dark.  I’ll put in here that Deb is my hero.  She drives like a Mexican, and that’s a compliment when you have to drive in Mexico.  Driving like an American or Canadian will get you killed here.  So on we go.  The babies fall asleep.  Oh, what’s that?  Only a military checkpoint, which we have to stop for.  Remember those scary looking guys with balaclavas and machine guns?  They tell us all (except for the sleeping babies) to get out.  Easier said than done.  Three of us are fairly trapped in the back seat.  It must’ve been fun watching 3 grown ladies crawl awkwardly over the other seat, practically falling over and out of the van.  The nice gentlemen (you get that title when you hold a big gun) begin intently checking out all the things in our van.  Cue baby crying.  Couldn’t have been better timing.  One of the gentlemen says the mom can go comfort him, then decides that we can all get back in.  Good baby.  The rest of the ride was long and uneventful.

While we were all off gallivanting in Oaxaca, the men-folk were left alone at the base with the kids.  Usually this wouldn’t be cause for concern as the usual schedule for mondays includes lunch and no dishes.  Their schedule was something like this:

8 AM:  breakfast
8:15:  put in movie for kids
8:16:  put in guy movie in another room
1:30:  lunch
2:00:  movies
6ish:  some kind of dinner
6:30:  movies
7ish:  wives come home and put kids to bed

Only problem was that no one told the guys that lunch was canceled as a large portion of the people were gone.  So when 1:30 rolled around, they noticed no one was making lunch.  Bad idea.  Cranky, hungry kids; cranky, hungry guys…I’m still not sure what went down after that, but the kids are all still accounted for.  Well, at least all ours are here.

I can’t remember much else that went on this week, it’s kind of a blur right now.  I got my coat hooks and another shelf hung.  That was nice.  Oh, today Chelsey had her first dance class.  She looked pretty lost, but she’ll catch on soon.  It got kinda weird in the middle.  The kids and teacher were all sitting close together and talking quietly.  Chelsey and one of her friends from the base couldn’t understand what was being said and tried to come sit with me.  Well, as any good mom (who’s paid money for something) would do, I bribed them with Smarties to get them back with the class.  She had fun though.

~Michelle

I wanted to try out something new on my blog.  So here are a couple of pictures from our gallery.  Look at the previous post to see how to get to the rest of them if you don’t already know.

This is the view one morning from our front door.

And this is our front door.  We’re on the 2nd floor, on the left.

And this is a pig with no head.

You’re welcome.  Just click on one of the pictures to get to the gallery.

/RD