Raclette and airplanes

Bati had us over today for lunch at his new place. We had Raclette, which is where you put an electric grill on your table and heat up cheese, meat, potatoes (in this case) as you eat. It's something the Swiss do, I guess. We had chocolate fondu with strawberries and bananas for dessert.

It gets a little smoky when you've got the Raclette at work.

After lunch we went downstairs to the park. Bati's apartment is right in front of Carolina park. Grandpa Dan had brought the kids some blasa wood gliders and we put them together and flew them for a while. It was really fun, although Nico seems to be getting sick. He was so crabby and cried and whined the whole time that he couldn't get his to "go like Tin's".

That kid is a handful, I'll tell ya!

Happy New Year!

Well happy new year! Welcome 2011. Wow. When I was little that sounded soooooo far away. Thought we'd be living on the moon or driving in flying cars or something. Of course, we DO have iPods so... almost the same thing! haha.

Had a quiet day at home. Not much going on around here on New Year's. Most people just went to bed by 6 a.m. when the kids are getting up. Nothing open. Dad helped me take down the Christmas decorations though. It's so nice to know that that is taking care of!

New Year's Eve 2010

What a great way to spend the end of an equally terrific year.

A tour of this year's año viejo contest on Amazonas.

Some pretty architecture.

A tour of the city and the viudas and viejos. (Grandpa Dan has some great pictures of the viudas, or widows.)

The green wig was a hit this year!

Lots of time with family.

Celebrating another year. (Happy birthday, Grandpa Dan!)

And we did end up making a viejo...

and burning it. (Shhhh, don't tell Agustín. He would NOT be happy! He prohibited us from burning the viejo this year.)

Amidst LOTS of fireworks. (Maybe a bit too much. A few went off a little too close to us, as well as our house windows!)

And my personal favorite story of the night. It was getting late, and Agustín was trying his best to stay up. We put him on the stairs to draw a bit. After a while he got up and started passing out pictures of dinosaurs that he had drawn. He had pictures for everyone, even people who weren't there (Great Grandma Ali is in Cuba at the moment on a trip, and Nico had fallen asleep in the car while we went out to see the viejos.) It was super sweet as he passed them out. He had written a dedication on each: To: (name).

He made it until 11. After I put him to bed, I found another drawing he had made. It was a picture of a a Hot Wheels car (a 7x7 - "Daddy, if 4x4 is good, why don't they make 7x7? That would be even better!" - his own personal invention). The drawing said: To: me.

I just love that sweetie!!!!

Happy New Year.

Mask hunting

Got out today to look for the perfect mask and see what kinds of things will be showing up in our viejos this year. Some Michael Jackson (as always), Shrek, Correa and police officers (re: Sept 30), Toy Story.

Back home it was reading time. Again. And again. And again. And again.

Memory, Books and Vacation

Lots of Memory and relaxation around the house this Christmas vacation. Nicolas especially is fascinated by this game, and asks everyone to play it. He doesn't cheat - too much. He cries when he loses and gets excited when he is winning. He pouts and walks away and hides his head in a pillow if someone gets the pair he had his eyes on (although he is getting better about this the more we play - big brother is now doing the same, however, which makes for tedious play). He "saves" the cards that are pairs by placing his hands on top of the cars, and he won't let anyone else turn them over, unless we want to see the Pout.



Myself, well, what have I been up to? You guessed it - lots of reading! Finished The Book Thief (got it in Vegas) and it was not at all what I expected.



I hate it when I get a book, thinking it is going to be great because so many people have recommended it (when I bought it at Borders, the girl even commented that I had made a great choice!). It wasn't bad. It was sort of good. Again, it was meant for teenagers, like the Twilight saga. Maybe that's my mistake. There is no comparison to Twilight, mind you, but I thought the language was too contrived at times. I shouldn't be so critical, but there were some sentences that just didn't make sense to me much at all. I guess the author was trying to show the power of words, how they can envelop you, change you, imprison you and free you. Sometimes I just wanted more of the story, though, and not so many "words".

I kind of liked the narrator, however. Death. The author did a great job of making sure that the narrator was not such a cliche. It was still a good story, although I didn't cry once (and I cry at everything), so there was something that couldn't make me care enough about the characters.

I am going to blame the power - excess - of the words.



I am still working my way through Angela's Ashes. It is really good, amazing, and I can't quite make myself believe that Frank McCourt will make it through to the end. He is amazing and the story is so great, and I can hear the Irish lilt of my Great-grandpa Kreyer as I read McCourt's memoir. The way the ideas are threaded and connected is so much fun, and there are some parts that are just hilarious! I mean, what do you do with a line like this:

Before he leaves his house he always sticks his head out the door and tells the lane, Here's me head, me arse is coming.

You laugh out loud!

So, back to school and work tomorrow. I am expecting lots of tears tonight!

Let me take this moment also to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Back for the New Year

It's been awhile since I've written. I was back in MN for Christmas and the New Year, and it felt good to be back on my "turf". There was almost no snow and it wasn't very cold (I hear that's changing as I write), but it did snow for Christmas and New Year's, so we got our taste of it.

Things at work are hectic as usual. It always takes some time to get back into the routine after a long vacation. I'll be posting some pictures from our vacation later this week. In the meantime I am still trying to catch up with e-mails and planning our school cycle. Andres and I are trying to get things together for TESOL Seattle, and if that works out then we will be going in March. I would love to attend and just hope the university realizes what an opportunity this would be for our program. Andres will be presenting on Teaching English for FTA's or some other academic-sounding topic, so I'd love to go and see what he has to say about global English, too. (Don't think that just because we are married and live together we actually talk - those days are gone. Now our conversations consist of screaming over a kid's crying or playing or whining or... well, you get the picture. There is little "real" conversation, and much less work-related stuff, going on in our house at the moment).

With the new year I wanted to bring in some resolutions. I've always got more to do, more I want to do, I should say. But I still haven't been able to narrow them down yet. They say that you should only choose one or two do-able resolutions, and so I have spent the last two and a half weeks trying to decide which ones seem the most do-able. Of course, at this rate, my 2007 resolutions will quickly become my 2008 resolutions, so I guess I just need to commit. At the top of my list are (not necessarily do-able, however):

1. get in shape and lose weight/become healthier (I mean, really, it wouldn't be a new year without this one, right?)
2. actually sit down and write, whether it be my blog, work-stuff, a new blog (you know I can't resist!) or just a journal, but I want to exercise my writing hand more.
3. start a blog on Ecuador. Hopefully it would be enough to get me back to those feelings of awe that I had with the country pre-kids, pre-EPN, pre-stressed-out life with mortgage and debts and visa worries. Not ignoring the daily grind, but finding the joy in it.
4. and I guess I could always be a happier person, try to make more friends and keep in touch more with the ones I've got. Maybe try and reach out more at a social level with the Americans who live here and work for us.
5. oh, and I can't forget my work-related goals. Broaden my teacher training experience through other universities and establish contact with other programs, in and out of Ecuador. Start a teacher newsletter, student blog, increase usage and exposure of our wiki, etc. etc.

Now if THAT isn't enough to just sigh and want to give up and wait for 2008, I don't know what is!