What I Will Miss and What I Won't Take 5

Today was our official last day as residents in El Condominio Alta Gracia, Casa 7.  We handed over the keys and the new residents sent in their painters.  So, I thought it was only fitting that I pay my respects and disrespects to our house of 7 1/2 years.  My "what I will miss and what I won't" is going to be a little different today.  I am going to tell about what I will miss and what I will not miss about Casa 7.

I will miss driving up to a beautiful entryway and the door opening for me as if I were someone super special. I will miss saying hello and goodbye to our full time guards every time I arrive at or leave from my house. And the security of knowing that someone is always there watching out for me. I will miss the little playground beside of our house and all of the fun memories that I have of our kids playing with their little spanish friends. I will miss being the only mom outside playing with my kids among several other kids and their nannies. (Yes, I often hung out with all the nannies of the condo) I will miss being able to step out of my front door and count on the fact that I will probably see and stop and visit with one of my neighbors, one of the guards or one of the workers (and usually in varying languages- english, spanish, guarani and portunol as I call it). 

 

I will miss living in a very modern looking house that made me smile every time I drove up.  I will miss living in a house that had the most beautiful wooden doors throughout the entire house.  I will miss having a giant glass door that took up one entire wall in my living room.  And especially the fact that it usually had a view of the neighbors blooming flowers hanging down over the wall.  I will miss having a house full of tile.  There is nothing like spraying down your entire floor with water and then using a squeegie to push the water right out the door or right into a drain built into the floor just for that purpose.  I will miss my bright yellow walls in my living room. I will miss looking out my back windows and seeing the most beautiful tropical flowers in the world.  I will miss having a built-in grill on my back porch with it's own little chimney.  I will miss our fireplace that we huddled around during cold days and nights to keep warm.  And I will miss knowing that I am living in the house where we brought all three of our sweet children home to from the hospital.  We have truly felt blessed by being able to live in this house for our entire time in Paraguay! 

However, this house that sounds fabulous (and it was), also had it's flaws.  I will not miss the fact that the beautiful glass door in our living room weighed a ton and never worked correctly.  It required a lot of effort to open and the fact that our dog had to go outside to use the bathroom meant that it had to be opened various times throughout the day.  I will not miss the fact that every few days some sort of plumbing broke in our house.  From toilets to hot water heaters to bidets to sinks, something was always breaking and spewing water all over the place.  (Thankfully we had those tile floors!)  I will not miss an air conditioner that rains water on my floor even after it has been fixed vairious times.  I will not miss the huge water stained wall by my front window that we had fixed 4 or 5 times and finally gave up.  I will not miss being in an entirely tile house when it is wintertime in Paraguay.  Tile does not heat up unless it has a direct heat source.  And it did not!  And it was very, very cold in our house!  I will not miss bathrooms that do not have any source of heat or air conditioning.  I was always either freezing or burning up in all of our bathrooms.  I will not miss having a laundry room with an open ceiling.   My clothes often either got rained on, pooped on by pigeons or were the recipients of colorful flower petals falling from the trees above.  And my laundry room was never clean because the dust, dirt, bird poop, bugs and flowers always found their way in there!  I will not miss houses that are not sealed up.  I never grew to understand the 2 inch gaps under my doors leading to the outdoors.  Mosquitos and dust were a constant in our lives and our home.  And I will certainly not miss having to rub bug repelent on my children and myself every single night before we went to bed.  I will not miss the dust!  Huge volumes and amounts of very black dust.  I am still amazed at just how much dust gets into the homes in Paraguay.  It is impossible to keep clean!  And if you don't keep it clean- you have a black film on everything in your house!  And the dust bunnies.  They are as big as some pets.  And I will not miss not being able to use certain areas (fairly important areas) of our house depending on the weather.  I have grown to appreciate central heat and air!  And while on that topic- I will not miss using floor fans and space heaters to be able to survive the climate inside my house.  I will not miss having to use converters for all of my kitchen appliances.  I will not miss having scary lighting systems throughout the house.  There would be weeks when it would get to the point that we did not have a single working light bulb in our downstairs.  So, we would change all of the bulbs and within 3 or 4 hours, most of them would be not working again.  And some of the globes would just fall out of the little metal socket and then we would have to clean up shattered glass.  And then sometimes the bulbs would break off in the sockets and we couldn't get them out.  So, then that light wouldn't work anymore.  And the week we were moving out, one of the light bulbs just fell out of the ceiling and was hanging by a wire.  I will not miss those lights!  I will not miss the fact that most of the door handles in our house had broken and were falling off the doors.  And I will not miss having to worry about hot water heaters that were famous for exploding.  And one was in our bathroom, one was above Olivia's bedroom and one was in our laundry room.  And every other house in the condominium had their water heaters explode.  Yikes!  We are thankful for that!  And I will not miss renting from people who never fixed the things that were broken in your house!  And there were a lot of broken things! 

I kind of wish that we could have moved out of Casa 7 several years ago and then re-rented it so that they would have fixed it up again for us!  Casa 7 - I am curious to see what I truly miss about you and what I won't.  Especially when I am sitting in my new house and enjoying the luxury of central heat and air! 

What I Will Miss and What I Won't Take 4

I decided today at the grocery store that I will not miss the little men in the parking lot.  Now some of them are rather cute little old men, and there are even some super sweet ones.  However, something about the fact that I am expected to pay them for doing nothing just irritates me!  I have tried to get on board culturally and tip these cute little men, but something in me will just not allow me to happily do it!  Now, if I am in a tight spot and one of them comes over and helps me get out- I am more than willing to hand over a few coins!  No problem!  But when I purposely park in a space where there are no cars anywhere near me and I am trying to pull out of my spot- I do not need any help.  Him standing out in the middle of the parking lot and motioning for which way I need to turn my wheels just bugs me.  I have tried not to take it personally, but to me, it just screams- "let me help you because you don't know what you are doing".  And when I am pulling out of an uncrowded grocery store parking lot with no cars on either side of me and no cars coming in any direction- I feel pretty comfortable in my capability to do it on my own!  And paying someone to move their hand back and forth just doesn't make any sense to me.  Although I guess really it is not as bad as paying someone to "watch my car" while I go in somewhere.  That basically translates into "I will not steal anything out of your car while you are gone and I will do my best not to let anyone else steal anything out of your car while you are gone if you give me some coins when you get back!"  I have really tried in most aspects of my life to adapt to the culture around me (as long as it is within the realms of my being a Christian), but there are times when I have drawn the line.  And the poor little guy at the grocery store gets the brunt of this line drawing.  And I feel a little bad about that.  After all- he is just trying to do his "job".  But little hand waving men at the grocery store- I will not miss you much. 

After my trip to the grocery store this morning, I came home with a great lunch of chicken milanesa, pasta with cream sauce and a cold broccoli and cauliflower salad. As I was eating it, it hit me that I am going to miss chicken milanesa!  Chicken milanesa is a traditional Paraguayan dish consisting of a flat piece of breaded chicken.  It is similar to our version of chicken fried steak.  And if you get a good one- it is really yummy!  I remember when we first moved here and I was craving chicken strips because I had not aquired a taste for milanesa. But, after 7 1/2 years, I am proud to say that I will probably be craving milanesa on the other side!  There- I AM adaptable to things that make sense to me!  And good food generally makes sense to me. 

A Time of Firsts and Lasts

Last night was our last night in our house of 7 1/2 years.  When we first moved to Paraguay, we lived in a Paraguayan home with a Paraguayan family for one month.  During that month, we found the perfect house for us to rent.  We absolutely loved it!  It was very modern, it was beautiful, it was in a safe closed-in condominium, had 3 bedrooms that we could grow into as a family, had a playground right outside our front door and it was VERY affordable.  We could not have asked for a better place to live.  I remember when we first moved in and our stuff was still being shipped from the U.S.  We started out with a mattress on the floor, curtains on the windows and 6 plastic chairs.  We decided that it was the perfect chance to get a dog and potty train him!  After all, we didn't have anything it could chew up, we didn't have any carpet for him to pee on and we didn't have a whole lot to entertain us at night.  So, we bought 2 puppies.  That ended up being a huge mistake and we had to find one of them a new family.  But, Toby, our ever-faithful cocker spaniel has been with us since the first month we moved in.  And bless his heart, he has watched as we brought 3 little ones home from the hospital.  Our children, and our dog for that matter, don't know any other home.   So, as we had our last night in our home of 7 1/2 years, I got a little sentimental.  And it was somewhat ironic that there we were with the same plastic chairs, all of us sleeping on mattresses on the floor and those same curtains hanging on the windows.  But life has really changed!   Now we have a house-trained dog who prefers to sleep rather than chew on anything and 3 kids who never allow us to even remember what life was like when we had little entertainment. 

I can't believe that on our last night in the house, I forgot to take a picture of "the last supper"!  I really wish I had taken one!  But, I did get a great picture of the last bath that the kids took in our giant bathtub.  But since Emma is already 5, I will refrain from posting naked pictures of her and her siblings. 

Here is our empty living room, except for a borrowed table and those same plastic chairs, along with the toys we left out of the container for the kids to play with over the next few months.

And here is our fancy entertainment center.  A cardboard box and a computer for a TV. 

Today was our last day in the house because the time had arrived to move over to the SIM house (which we will be renting for the next few weeks).  We don't actually have to be out of our house until Wednesday, but since the buyers of our refrigerator decided it was time to pick up their purchase, we felt it was time to make our exit from the house.  While I spent the morning packing the rest of our stuff, the kids played with Rocio and our neighbors, Joaquina and Regina.  They are going to miss their little friends so much! 

Playing Barbies with the girls. 

Walker playing in his "toy box".

Rocio reading to Olivia.  Everytime I looked at Rocio today, she was loving on one of the kids.  My kids are going to miss her so much!  And I have a feeling that she is going to have a pretty hard time not getting to see them all the time! 

We took all three of the kids over to the new "house" for the first time today.  Emma had already gone over with me and all three of them had actually played with some of our missionary friends at the SIM house in the past.  The SIM house is owned by the organization Serving in Missions.  It is an organization that sends out medical missionaries all over the world.  Their headquarters for Paraguay are here in Asuncion and they recently started renting out space to missionaries outside of their organization.  They have a house and several cabins that are furnished.  It turned out to be perfect for our situation because it is close to the church building, has very adequate space for our family, has a wonderful outside play area for the kids and for Toby, has internet service and is very affordable.

Here is our cabin!

And here is the fabulous playground . 

We are renting two rooms with a kitchen in between.  This is our room. 

And this is the other view of it.  We have lots of beds in both rooms!  And it is still very messy since we have been dumping stuff from our house in it all day long. 

And this is the little kitchen that joins the two rooms.  I am going to have to find some kind of storage for all of the food we still have!  Most people who stay here just come for a week at the most, so they don't come with a lot of food like us. 

We are in a time of firsts and lasts and I have a lot of mixed feelings.  We were all kind of excited today to be moving into a new place and having new experiences.  But at the same time, it is pretty sad to leave behind a house that has so many memories.  The house that is the only home my kids have ever known.   And to leave behind neighbors that our kids are used to seeing almost every single day.  And our poor dog has been so confused!  He was terrified that we were going to leave him at the house, I think.  And now even he is having to adjust to a new place too.  And the SIM house has 4 dogs already- he is not exactly at the top of the totem pole here!  We also had the first dog fight today, which scared both me and Emma to death.  And woke poor Olivia up from her nap.  But all in all, it has been a very blessed day!

The Packing Journey

Why is it that when so many important things are happening in my life- I just don't have time to blog about them?  I wish that I could have written every single day/night over the last few weeks of packing because it has been a journey to remember.  Or maybe one that I would like to forget for a few weeks at least, but one that in the long run, I will want to remember.  It has been an exhausting, challenging, overwhelming journey.  The day after Christmas we started packing and we just finished this Thursday, January 13th, when we loaded up 136 boxes onto a 20 foot container to be sent to the U.S.  And yes, it has taken me a few days to recover and therefore I am just now finding a few minutes and a few ounces of energy to write about it. 

How in the world did we collect so much stuff?  Although I actually hate the process of packing, I welcomed the opportunity to downsize our collection of things!  I think my theme for this year is going to be SIMPLIFY!  I went through every single item that we own and decided if we really needed it.  If we did- I cleaned it and packed it.  If we didn't- I threw it away, sold it or gave it away.  We have thrown out a lot of trash over the last few weeks!  And we had a lot of yard sales!  We had three official ones, in fact.  Until the last official one ended in a downpour and a lot of our stuff, as well as us getting soaked!  Then we got really brave and set our yard sale up on our back porch (at least it is coverd by a roof and the rain couldn't stop us!)  and advertised for people to come just whenever they wanted for an entire week.  And come they did!  They came as we were first waking up in the morning, during lunch, during pack time, during dinner, after we got the kids to bed and they came and came and came.  After a week of hardly being able to get anything else done (although we did sell a lot!), we decided that was enough of the open invitation.  So, we concentrated on packing.  I got so tired of packing!  At first packing was just a big part of every day.  We still did other normal things like run errands, go to lunch with the team and play outside with the kids.  But the last week, we packed from the time we woke up, until it was time to go to bed at night.  And the hardest part was having to tell the kids that we just couldn't play- we honestly did not have the time!  We had to keep promising them that as soon as our stuff was gone- we would turn back into their normal parents who played with them, remembered to feed them at normal times and spent time with them.  I dreamed many nights about sorting through things and packing them away!  It was such a consuming process.  And it zapped every ouce of energy that we had, every single day!

We almost packed Olivia!

Emma and Luana, a friend from church, built a tent in the living room floor with boxes, chairs and blankets.  They had a blast! 

The hardest days, and I think the craziest days, were the two days before the Thursday when the container was supposed to be loaded.  On Tuesday, the Blackmers came and got the kids to keep them for us for the morning so we could pack all day.  The moving company was coming that day to prepare all of our big furniture for shipping.  (International moves are a little more complicating than national ones for sure- everything has to be "prepared" to be in the container for months). 

Here are some of the bigger furniture items that they "prepared" by wrapping them in cardboard.  Emma felt that the boxes needed to be "labeled" with what was inside, so she drew a picture of the furniture that was inside on the outside of the box.  She is a funny little girl!

So, back to Tuesday- Chris and I took advantage of the kids not being at home and we got to work upstairs.  About 30 minutes into it, Chris made a funny noise.  I looked over at him as he said "we need to go to the emergency room- I need stitches."  I didn't believe him at first.  I heard the noise, I could see him holding his hand in his shirt, but I just could not believe that on one of the busiest days of our lives, he had he had just been cut with the box cutter and it required us leaving our house and going to the hospital to wait for who knew how long, to get stitches!  And the moving men were in our house preparing our furniture and we still had to explain to them which pieces to prepare!  I grabbed everything I could think of that we would need for our little trip, told the men the best I could which pieces they needed to work on and off we went.  It just so happened that it had been raining a little earlier in the day, so the roads were a damp.  We were driving down one of the main roads and a huge truck pulled right out in front of me.  I had to slam on my breaks, which locked-up and we skidded to a stop about 2 feet away from this lovely truck.  The cab was full of wide-eyed people (probably about 5 of them and likely with no seatbelts on).  After they realized that I was not going to hit them, they all started shaking their heads in disbelief as if I was the one to blame for almost hitting them!  I had the right-of-way, I was on the main road, they pulled out in front of me!  This is so typical of driving in Paraguay!  No one has any idea who has the right-of-way, so they just do whatever they want and then get mad when they get hit or in our case, almost hit.  Anyway, thankfully we made it to the hospital unharmed (well, except for that gash in Chris's hand). And we were amazed to find that as soon as we walked in, they looked at the blood on Chris's shirt and sent him straight to a room.  We were in with the doctor within 10 minutes!  He only ended up needing 3 stitches on his finger, and, of course, a tetanus shot.  The doctor told him not to use his hand very much.  We told him that we had to have the rest of our house packed over the next few days.  To which he replied to me "Well, I guess you will just have to finish the packing then."  He told Chris that he could get his stitches out within 6-8 days depending on how much he used his hand.  As we were leaving, Chris said "I guess I will be getting them out in about 8 days!"  I hated that he was going to have to use his hand a lot, but the reality was that we didn't have a choice- we both had to work nonstop to be ready for loading on Thursday.  The beauty of the day was that we walked right out of the hospital without paying a penny.  It was completely covered by our insurance!  The rest of the day went fairly well- we worked hard all day long and Chris was able to do pretty much everything he needed to with his other hand.  That night, Chris and I made our lists of everything that we had to get done the next day since it was our last packing day.  And it was a long, long list.  We had it all planned out- Rocio was going to watch the kids and we were going to do nothing but pack, all day long. 

On Wednesday, we both woke up early.  I am not sure if that was because of nerves or because we both just knew that we had a lot to do!  I immediately found a message from Rocio that her mom and grandmother were very sick and she was not going to be able to come.  My attitude went from "let's get going and get this done" to "how in the world are we going to get this done????"  The first hour went fine because the kids were all still in bed!  But then they woke up.  We got through our normal morning routines- juices poured, vitamins taken, everyone dressed, breakfast eaten, etc.  But then, reality set in.  Every time I turned around, Olivia had grabbed a box of something and dumped it all into the floor.  Or Emma and Walker were fighting over who got to play with which toys.  Or they were yelling at me from the bathroom to show me that Olivia had thrown the empty toilet paper rolls into the toilet.  Or someone was trying to convince us not to pack a certain toy because they were still playing with it.  And on and on it went.  And mine and Chris's stress levels started rising quickly.  How in the world were we going to get everything done that had to get done that day?  I did the only thing I knew to do- sent out text messages to the entire team begging for help.  Within an hour- our kids were all at Nora's house for the day, our teammates were bringing us pots and pans and mattresses to get us through the next few days of having no furniture, and new boxes were brought to us- it was amazing!  They all helped us with the things that had to get done outside of the house and Nora kept the kids for the entire day!  All 3 of them!  So, Chris and I were left to pack.  And we packed....and packed.... and packed.  By the end of the day, we were beyond exhausted!  Thankfully, Nora called and had asked Emma and Walker to spend the night with her.  She brought them by the house to get their stuff and they headed back to her house.  She left Olivia with us, but she hadn't had a nap all day. So I fed her, gave her a bath and put her straight to bed.  And we continued packing and working.  Around 9:00 that night, we had just about everything done.  We still lacked 3 dining room chairs, an office chair, a bicycle, a tricycle and a framed picture that was fragile.  We decided to just wait and figure it out the next day.  Chris had to go back to the hospital to get his bandage changed.  I cleaned up our room and made up our mattresses on the floor, took a shower, made some popcorn and got started on the lists that we had to turn in to go with the container.  We had to have a list in english and in spanish with every single box and what was inside of it.  By the time Chris got home and I got our list finished, it was around 10:30.  It had been one long day!  And we were so tired!  And so ready to be done packing!

This was our living room during the crazy packing week.

Thursday was loading day.  Thankfully Rocio was able to come and stay with Olivia while Chris and I finished up the last few items and the rest of our list. 

This was the creative box that our moving guy made for our office chair and 1 lone dining room chair that we could not figure out how to pack.  I hope it makes it there okay! 

We ended up with 136 boxes/items, used around 15 rolls of packing tape, a giant roll of bubble wrap and did a lot of hard work to get to that point!  But, by 10:15am, we were done with our part of the packing!  And we got to just play with Olivia, take pictures and enjoy the rest of the day.  It was a good feeling!

Here are the moving guys bringing out all of the boxes from inside the house so they would have an idea how to load the container.

Here is the big truck hauling our container, parked out in front of our condominium.

 The kids came back to the house with Nora right as the men were finishing loading up the container.  It worked out perfectly because they actually got to see the container and our stuff inside of it.  That way they have a visual of what kind of container our stuff is in, how it is going to get to the port and  how it will get put onto a boat with big cranes and shipped down the river until it hits the ocean. We explained how it will travel all the way around South America and up the side of it until it eventually gets to the US!  They thought that was pretty cool. 

We watched them close the doors and drive down the street with our stuff as we kept yelling "Bye stuff- see you in a few months!  Don't fall in the ocean!"

And then the kids were so excited when they came into the house and saw how empty it was.  I thought it might make them sad, but they were thrilled with the fact that there was an echo when they yelled and that they could run in circles really fast! 

Here is Emma running!

We all went to McDonald's to celebrate!  The kids finally had their parents back!  And we were finally able to do something other than pack!  It was a good day.  We all even got to take naps, which was something that I had not done in weeks! 

And then at dinner time, we had a picnic in the floor because we didn't have any chairs to sit on.  The kids thought that was so much fun! And it was, although eating with a one year old on the floor is not the easiest thing to do.  She kept getting up and running off or trying to dig her little hands into everyone else's food! 

Going back to the basics- it is kind of nice.  And it sure beats packing!

The Packing Grouch

Yep, that is me, the packing grouch.  I have said for months that the day after Christmas, we had to start packing.  And sure enough, the day after Christmas, I packed up all of the Christmas decorations.  It was kind of sad.  I really was not ready to pack it all up.  And the kids certainly weren't ready!  And since then, we have been packing and sorting for our yard sale, nonstop.  I do not like to pack.  I don't like to pack for trips and I certainly don't like to pack to move to a different country!  So, it has made me very grouchy.  The other night when I was getting the kids to bed, Chris got home from a Bible study and asked them if they had been good.  They told him that they had done some things that mommy told them not to and both of them had gotten hurt.  (I love their honesty- Walker fell off the table and hit his ribs on a chair after I had just told him not to get on the table.  And Emma had a sore bottom after playing in the sand with a skirt on.  I had told her several times not to get into the sand because it might irritate her bare legs.)  Anyway, I told Chris that I had been grouchy all day.  Both of the kids agreed and said that they didn't think I would get any presents from Santa next year! 

We have had three yard sales within just a few weeks.  Yard sales are not a well known concept or practice in Paraguay.  It is mostly Americans who have them!  In the past we have used a Paraguayan's friends' business parking lot on a main road to have them, but this time we just did it inside our condo.  It was very tiring, but much easier to be here close to home! 

This is Olivia climbing into her former highchair that we are trying to sell.

We have two weeks left to get all of our stuff ready to ship to the states.  We are sorting through stuff to see what we want to sale, what goes in the container to ship to the U.S., what needs to stay with us to take in our suitcases and what needs to stay with us until the last few days to sell.  The whole process just makes me tired and grouchy.  I am not a fan of disorder, and there is no way to avoid disorder when you are packing.  There are boxes everywhere, piles to sort through everywhere and it is just....well, chaotic.  Not only do we have to pack, but every box has to be labeled with what is inside- both in english and spanish.  And we have to have a corresponding list of all the boxes and their contents in spanish and english. 

Boxes, boxes everywhere.

The biggest role of bubble wrap ever!

My living room decorated with more boxes!

I just keep telling myself- this too shall pass!