Mexico City "Summer"

Yes, by now you know that we live in Mexico. Mexico City to be exact. Not the beach. We don't live in tropical weather year round even though a lot of people think it's warm all the time here. Don't get me wrong, we get our fair share of sunshine and a nice warm breeze. We have hammock chairs in our back yard surrounded by flower beds to relax in During the Winter months...while you are standing in 3 feet of snow and  your car won't start. What you don't know is that while you are enjoying your summer sun and you are realizing that those perfectly warm days are why you live in Minnesota, we are here. . . sitting in our house. . . for the 82nd day in a row cold because it won't. stop. raining. 

The saying in the States goes something like this: 

April showers bring May flowers 

Right? Well here in Mexico City we enjoy a little song that goes: 

March showers bring hail, 

and daily rain and all of the trees turn green, 

the moss overtakes our patio bricks 

and you can't go anywhere until September 

because it's so wet that you can't get a bus or a taxi

There is so much rain that you miss the 

April, May, June, July AND August flowers

because you are running to your destination under 

your umbrella and don't have time to look around.

It has rained so so much this year that I actually bought rain boots for the first time in my life. It's raining as I type this but we did just have a 3 day stretch without rain (miracles still happen) and I got all of my clothes washed and out on the line until they were dry! Yesterday I was walking with my head held high because I HAD gotten my laundry caught up and for once I didn't have to 'finish drying' a load or two on all of the furniture in my home. I hung it on the line, without worry of rain and it dried. HA! Take that mother nature. So, on my way home I realized that this weather won't last long and I'd better ask the laundromat on the corner how much she would charge me to only dry my clothes. I'd run them on an extra spin cycle at home to ensure they weren't soaking wet and then bring them to her to dry in her machines. She said it would be 30 pesos/3 kilos of wet clothes. That is 10 pesos per 1 kilo. That's not too steep. So now I have a back up plan; instead of turning on my oven to warm the house so the underwear hanging from my fridge handle and shirt on every kitchen chair will dry out quicker, I will just take my clothes to the nice lady on the corner with the amazing smelling softeners. And she'll fold them all and put them neatly in a bag and tie it. And I can walk home in the rain, with my rain boots on, holding an umbrella and wearing a smile...knowing that September is JUST around the corner. And I'll be able to thaw my toes and dry my clothes. ha! That rhymed.  

I Swept the Floor of an Orphanage

I might cry as I type this post. My heart is conflicted for the hope that might be ahead or the crush of the waiting and waiting that more likely will come first. 

I walked down the steep streets turning one block this way and one block that way until finally I came to the street where the orphanage is. The street is on a hill and looking straight out I see the other side of the valley with its bright colored concrete houses tightly sitting shoulder to shoulder climbing the hill. The smog in the distance reminds me that I'm in the usually noisy city. But the street I'm slowly walking down is quiet.
                                                          As if no one knows it's there.
It was just after a hard rain. There were no moving cars. No people talking or shouting (which is rare for Mexico, there is always someone who is selling something). I came up to the door and I saw the sign. My heart swells a little bit wondering if my forever child could be in there right now.

I had never volunteered there before but I had been in the hogar (home) twice before this day. I had an hour to spare and thought this would be a great time for an over due baby fix. I rang the buzzer. The woman who answered the door didn't speak English so I had to practice my Spanish. Which is just fine, I need the practice. I said, "I have and hour free, can I help with anything?" "Oh come on in, you can help clean the dining room." UUhhh... "Ok, whatever I can do." Secretly wanting huff and puff like a little kid who didn't get their way. I wanted to cuddle babies! I smoothly stated, "Sure, I can help in the kitchen or with the kids, whatever you need." HINT HINT. She said there were only a few BABIES in the hogar at this time! YES!... THAT! I sighed and smiled and she said, "you can help in the dining room and when you're done there you can go up and see the babies." Deal. I went into the kitchen, met the cook, then offered my services. She handed me a bucket of extremely soapy water and some sponges and I went to assess the damages that had been made from breakfast. Dried eggs on the floor, cheerios stuck to everything, sticky tables and crumb filled chairs. 

I scrubbed with love, I wiped the chairs down with prayers, I swept the floor thankful.

Because if there were dried eggs on the chairs and table; that meant the children are fed.

My child is fed.
Because if there are cheerios and crumbs on the floor and chairs strewn about that means there was fun.

My child has fun.
and if there is dirt on the floor it's because their shoes drug in the outside dirt, it means they have shoes.

My child has shoes.

So I was thankful. I was so happy to serve, to clean. So glad to be in a place that cares for children, feeds children and clothes children.  

After I was done I quickly made my way upstairs to the nursery. I new there was a newborn baby boy but he wasn't seen. Through the window in the door I saw toddlers. I waved. I raised my eye brows and made silly faces. Then I knocked... 

Could one of these little ones be destined for me? For us? 

As I knocked the toddlers were smirking and coming towards the door with the caregiver. I sat right down with a little girl who I had met at the Children's Day fiesta. Her mom works at the hogar. With me sat a set of twin girls. And by sat I mean one of them ran and moved and danced. She is a silly little bugger. And her sister was a bit more cautious but equally silly. And next to me in a bouncy seat was a little dark haired fat faced little baby girl, about 5 months they say. A-dor-a-ble. I didn't pick her up until a little later but she was worth the wait. A little squish, a wiggler. Very sweet. 

It was a great first day. Who knows if any of them are adoptable. All I know is that I got to cuddle with some beautiful babies who's mommy's circumstances didn't allow them to be with their children. So I did my best to show them love.

 

  

We're ba-aack!

If you know us, or follow us on facebook then you know that in September we came back to Mexico. The same day as the year before. September 18th. We landed here in D.F. with no jobs, no housing and no real promise of what was next. But we felt like it was the right thing to come back.

Our plan was to first find a place to live that was close to Sally's school. We got an email the afternoon that we flew in that said, our apartment from before would be available the next day. That the woman was moving out and we could move in the next day if we wanted. Problem was, we didn't have the same income as last time. So I asked the land lady if we could pay a bit less. SHE SAID YES! Confirmation numero uno.

Next thing was to pay for Sally's school. YIKES.

Then we started getting the word out that I was officially starting up my Photography business here in Mexico to pay the bills while the Mexican Government found a paying position for Doug. So we got our website set up. If you click on that link you'll notice that we set it up in Spanish. We thought that our clientele would be mostly Spanish speaking. We soon found out that this was not the case. I started putting specials on Facebook sites and at church I handed out cards. And WOW! the support I got, but mostly with ExPats from the US and other countries. Word of mouth spread and I have been pretty booked this past 6 months. It's been amazing. Getting JUST enough to pay for rent each month has been a blessing. AND I'm enjoying the international portfolio I'm collecting. I have photographed people from Taiwan, Canada, Germany, USA, Ireland, Mexico, Trinidad, Venezuela, Spain, Columbia, Puerto Rico and Ecuador. They are all so different and so beautiful. So cool right?! Business is great, but because of all this work; lifting the heavy camera and repetitive motions with editing my arm has been aching a lot. So I've tried resting it and begging Doug for some massages of the shoulder and arm. It is better now that I'm aware of how long I sit at the computer doing 'extra curricular' activities that don't include editing.

Doug has had a few leads before we came back and had a big meeting the day after we got here. The meeting was with the 9 juvenile judges here in D.F. It went well but we are still waiting for funding from that project that they want to start so badly. So, after many pushed back meetings and maybes he finally in October started his own non profit advocating for juveniles in the prison system here. The non profit has started and many are interested in supporting him/us in this journey. At this time donations are not yet tax deductible but you still donate and can read more information by clicking on the link here:
International Justice Consulting OR follow him on Facebook. He gives great information on how you can help shine a light on excessive pre-trial detention in Mexico. We gratefully have received donations to be able to keep up our rent and keep Doug working but we still need more. If you haven't yet read his research or read about his new independent projects please visit those sites and educate yourself on his passions and his calling to give these kids a better life outside of prison.

Sally is doing well in school. Her Spanish is evolving, which is good. We still don't speak Spanish in the house. Sally's homework load is out of control this year. Crazy! It's like 3 different notebooks at least 3x a week. She has a hard time when she's so tired. She has been sick a lot since Christmas. With a cough and runny nose. But we kind of all have this strange allergy thing with the pollution. :/
She has been on and off again been asking about a sibling. She touches my belly, whines about it, talks about it, sings about it. But we just don't have the funds to do fertility right now, and I don't know if I want to ever do that again. However, we have talked about adoption but we need an income to be able to adopt here.

So speaking of adoption...

We had a meeting in March with a woman who is the director of an orphanage here in D.F. She is an American who lives here and does an excellent job with this orphanage. We first contacted her about adoption when we came in September 2012. At that time we got some paperwork back from her and some info about hague convention rules between the US and other countries. But nothing happened during that first 10 months here. But at this meeting (now in 2014) she went through their private adoption process with us in person and told us how we could potentially go about adopting a child or siblings from the children who's cases she was currently working with. There are 11. We were shocked to hear her tell us that we not only were already on the 'list' to adopt but that she had put us on it so long ago that now we are SECOND. Second! Say WHA?! She asked if that was ok and of course we said yes. But what will that mean for us now? Well, we had to get residency visas, which we just got the other day. They were $250 dollars per person. That was not in the budget (insert slight freak out here) but just like before the Lord provided just enough 'extra cash' and now we have them. Next she has to have a child or children ready and registered as adoptable. So now is the waiting period. We are praying this is the will of God for our family. We are praying that we honor God in the child/ren He chooses for us. We are praying for Amy as she goes through these legal issues to get these children ready for adoption, We are praying for the heart of the child/ren to be healed, prepared and upheld in this time of waiting for parents who will love them forever. Once the child is available for adoption we get to start spending time in the orphanage with a group of kids playing and getting to know them. It will be children who have parent chosen for them already and our potential child/ren. Each week they will take away a child from the playgroup and eventually it will be our family with just our child. They in that time will have gotten to know us, played with sally and had some connections with us. Then the child can ask to go somewhere fun with us if they want. Then at some point after the child has spent the night here and no longer wants to live in the orphanage we get to foster to adopt during the process (this is a new law and will be so helpful in the transition period). We are excited to share this news with you in hopes that you will stand with us in prayer. We are thrilled that we are on a 'list' but now we have to pray for the right child to become available in the time that we are here. Will you stand with us?

Thank you for following and reading and I'll try and keep everyone updated.

Amanda

Tourism and Transit

Holy cow you guys! I never finished my blogs about Italy! I think where we left off was we were in Rome at the Vatican and we were shocked at the amount of tourists.

Well to sum it all up we had a great last day in Rome, it was hot, it was crowded and we definitely hadn't seen it all. The city in it's entirety would have taken a few weeks to view. We loved getting to walk through the old buildings and touch ancient walls. I think on the last day we walked around the Coliseum and enjoyed the view from the tour bus. Our next stop was Florence.

We boarded a train in the morning and it took us through the countryside as the tracks carried us through fields of sunflowers and vineyards, into tunnels through the hillsides and over bridges will old Tuscan houses perched on the bluffs overlooking the rivers. I never knew how many shades of yellow there were until we reached Tuscany. The farm looking houses in each field were covered with red clay shingles, each one in their particular hue of golden. The sunflowers following the sun as it baked their tall slender cypress trees lining the long driveways to their entryways to their stucco homes. The vineyards were packed in their land, sometimes right up to the houses. The hillsides green and inviting. We were going pretty fast but the impact on our excitement was great! I for one didn't realize that Florence was in the middle of Tuscany. It used to be the capital for only a few short years but little did I know how much we would love this place.

We interrupt this blog for a special news report. Click here to read about a bolder that rolled through an unsuspecting vineyard!

The train pulled into the station in Florence, more in the city and surrounded by small older few story brick buildings and a couple churches. There were quite a few small cafes and restaurants. Motor bikes and pedal bikes were parked outside the station in their respective places. The air was hot. There were a few couples that we saw looking at their iPhones and such to point them in the direction of our next hotel. Living social had set up the entire itinerary and it wasn't just us on this adventure. I think there were 20 of us, unknowingly following each other to each activity and living arrangement. The hotel was across the street from the station. We later found out that a young married couple had taken a taxi with their luggage, around the block. It was like $25. When they got out, still looking at the terminal they realize that he could have told them they didn't need him. :/ This hotel was humid and older. We dropped off our things and went for a walk through the town. It was late afternoon and by the time we got up the hill to a small pond in a park the sun was low in the sky shining it's golden rays on the ducks playing in the middle of the water. We walked through a neighborhood and came to beautiful old buildings with carvings and statues, a Russian orthadox church with spires colorfully stretching to the now purple sky. We found a plaza with a giant gate. On our walk back around the town toward our hotel we found a small alleyway with couples walking and soft lights coming from the corners of the limestone buildings illuminating the brick street. I could see at the end of the block a different colored building. And it was SO tall, stopping the street from going any further it was just there. The closer we got the more we realized how massive it was. Now I hadn't read anything about Florence. I didn't know that this is the place of the David statue, or that it had this ginormous church called the Duomo. Read more about it here. This building is go.r.geous. After finding a cafe at the base of this towering church we walked just a short distance to our hotel and rest for the day that followed.
The next day we took the tour bus around the town learning of it's art heritage. There was one family that owned most of the art in the city. They clearly were extremely wealthy but they used that wealth to secure and protect a lot of art that otherwise would have been destroyed. From the top deck of the double-decker bus we climbed higher and higher until we overlooked the beautiful city and the massive church that we had seen lit up in the night time. It towered over all the other buildings. We then took the bus back down through the town and then up the other side to a hillside town called Fisole. The cypress trees decorated the hillside growing tall and slender to the blue sky. The large houses with all of their stature made you want to move in and never leave this view of the valley, the Duomo in the distance, the golden colors of the houses and apartment building below. We reached the top and got out of the bus. We continued to walk up the narrow streets to discover the charm of this old mid evil city. There was a small fenced in hillside of olive trees. Bluish sage colored smooth leaves quietly blowing in the breeze. No one around, so quite we reached a private drive higher up the hill and decided to stop there, stand on the gray stone wall and take in the view. This was a moment to remember. Olive branches at my feet. Tuscany beauty in the distance. Really didn't realize how much I would fall in love with this charming city that demanded you to relax and breathe in it's history and romance.

After the ride back down from Fisole we took a tour of the Duomo. We climbed the steps of the dome skeleton until we reached the top. On our way up we entered the dome before the last climb to the observation deck. The frescos on the ceiling of the dome were almost within reach. Some places chipping and falling. Still beautiful, telling the story of angels and demons. The view from that dome was just as breath taking as above from Fisole. The river in the distance, the breeze cooling us from the hot congested hike up the inside of the dome. I even got to use my nursing skills as a 60 something year old woman was overheating and clammy. In the cramped small halls of the inside of the dome we did our best to keep her from passing out. Scary for her, fulfilling for me as I haven't been working as a nurse and I felt helpful.

In the morning we walked early to one of the many museums in Florence to visit the David. The detail. The emotion you feel. It is so tall and so well made. Click here for info on the David The toes on one of the foot is all dented up from some idiot who decided to beat on it before it was protected... some people. The line wasn't long and we were in and out in 30 minutes but it was worth it. So beautiful. Now this is something you never forget seeing.

The last day we found out that Pisa was super close and the train ride was really cheap. So we got on a train and after 45 minutes found ourselves standing in the evening sun as it shone on the bright white facade of the leaning bell tower. Unbelievably beautiful and mesmerizing. We took the cliche photo of us trying to hold it up, Doug of course wanted to be on the opposite side pretending that him in his mighty strength was actually pushing it over with just a finger. And after 6 photos of this beautiful place... my camera busted. That's right. 1 day before traveling to Venice, my pro-camera jams. Leaving me with only my little point and shoot to capture it's beauty.

Florence. You are in my heart forever.