Chicken

Well,

Praise the Lord we finally have a car! It's a 1997 Fiat Palio with 97,000km on its 1300 cc motor. It is such a relief to be able to go to the store when we need to, or grab a bite to eat, or even go to the office without being dependent on expensive taxis or the rarely available CDA drivers.

Driving here continues to be exciting. Everything, from changing lanes, to making a turn, to just staying in your lane is like a giant game of chicken in which you pit will vs will to see who will move first. It is a strange combination of being ultra-defensive (because everyone drives like an idiot) and being ultra-aggressive (because if you don't you'll just sit in the driveway - and you still may get honked at or hit!).

The Canadian team is here and working at a remarkable speed to finish our little house and the adjacent clinic. Because the construction is pre-fabricated panels and connectors (you'll see what I mean in the pictures) they can put up the walls really fast. the finishing work (plaster, paint, tiles, etc.) will take more time I think.

Besides coordinating transportation, the schedule, and logistics, I'm also continuing in my role as a translator. It is neat because over the last several months, as all of these foreign visitors have come, I have gotten to be a constant familiar face for the girls and so I kind of feel like an ambassador of sorts. I have gotten to translate some arts and crafts activities (pretty straight forward) and a few devotionals (not quite as easy :) but I really enjoy being able to bridge the two worlds between the Spanish speaking girls and the English speaking visitors.

It is unbelievable how cute Isabella is getting. Check out our picture link to the right for some great pictures of her grinning. She's also starting to get ticklish which is a lot of fun.

Please continue to pray for us. We've been here in Colombia for three months and the reality of missing our friends and family, as well as the ongoing adjustments to a new language, city, culture and jobs (me at school and the office and Jessie as mom)are tough. We expect that our adjustment process will realistically take between six months and a year, but even though we know that, it doesn't really make day-to-day living much easier.