Mi Familia

Kathryn brought home an art project from school last week. She kept putting her right hand over the her hand-print before flashing a great-big proud smile. (Faith later drew faces on the end of each finger for each member of our family and the project went back to school)

Mmmmm.... Queso!!!!

I'll be blogging a lot about my recent trip on the Camino, but first, a shot of our little booster-seat-bound thief. We left her alone in the kitchen (momentarily) strapped into her chair thinking she was restrained from getting into much trouble. Only to return to find she had absconded the last two (yes that is two slices thick!) pieces of Gouda. As Dora would say - "Delicioso!"

A slice of daily life

This is one of the local parks we visit often. There are three within a short walk from our home. This one is the most popular park of the neighborhood, I presume, because it gets full sun in the afternoon. It has been dubbed "the ria park" by our family because it is overlooking the scenic tidal river here. It is the park that we most often run into classmates of Brennan's, and a few local families we have met. Here Brennan can shyly start to play with those classmates as he feels more and more comfortable here. Here Ryan lives as large and as loud as he wants, and blends right in with the natives. And Kathryn gets to watch even more frenetic activity and hear even louder noises than she experiences at home. She also is a great tool to help us meet other parents. No one can resist her (see my last post for proof).

This is the view of the sunset over 'the ria.'

The above and below pictures are action photos from yesterday's visit.

Another boat photo. Still addicted to them.

Who says you need hair to be beautiful?

This is a face everyone can love. I am so sure of that I had to share these photos with the rest of the world. I want my daughter to look like a model, but would be mortified if she actually became one. I present these pictures from yesterday's photo shoot at a local park as early proof she could be a model, except we all know she's too brilliant for that. My apologies to all you brilliant models, no offense intended (it's probably not wise to start offending brilliant models).

She looks pretty flirty here - watch out niños de España!

Hanging out at the park, playing hard to get.

"How are you?"

Or, here in Spain they ask it, "¿Que tal?," or "¿Como estás?". (Can you tell I'm enjoying using the upside down question mark?)

The answer is usually fairly easy. It is both convenient and conversationally correct to answer 'fine', or 'good.' That greases the speed of conversation and allows us to move on to more important matters, such as the weather, recent sports scores, or our children's latest bodily excretions. Even in Spanish the answer is fairly simple, even for those of us who are struggling to learn the language. A simple 'bien,' or more complicated 'estoy bien' will do. It's really great to follow that up with "¿y tú?" That then puts the conversational ball squarely back into the other person's court without having to explain yourself any further.

I've been thinking a bit more lately about how things really are, partly thanks to a book by Larry Crabb called "Inside Out". I may post more on that later, but one of the big themes that stuck with me from the book was his challenge to Christians to live honestly, and to seek that honesty to the point it thoroughly disrupts our complacency. It gave me the idea to blog about how things are really going for me, and for the Walter clan in La Coruña. I'll address a few common questions, give the standard safe answer, and then follow with a more transparent answer.

How are things in Spain? Good. Great. We love being here. We are as confident as ever that we are here solely because of God's leading in our lives. We have a great community in our local church, Vida Nueva, and have been enjoying discovering more about the people, place, and culture here.
Really? It has been a fun, but difficult (at times) transition. We feel we've come through the first stages of the transition pretty well, but it was quite a tough road at times. The kids seem to have adjusted pretty well by this point. Communication has been tough at times, obviously, as we did not speak Spanish when we arrived. We learned to drive stick shift and how to drive in a different country at the same time - with three kids 4 and under crammed in the back seat. We feel pressure to focus on our language studies as our number-one priority, but also feel pressure to figure out how to become more and more involved in our local supporting church. Plus we are learning to live in a completely different culture, and learning little by little to adopt to different ways of living. Our running joke here is that everything takes longer to get done here than you think it will. The way things are done hear are different enough to often leave us wondering why on earth they do things this way. All of this is in addition to the pressures of making sure we are caring for our kids in the best way possible, which is not always that easy, as I hope most parents can attest to. Plus, the real bummer about being here in Spain is that we missed the Super Bowl this year! On the whole, it's great to be here, we really do enjoy it. But we do miss some things from 'home', and are baffled by some things here.

How is language school going? It is good. I know more Spanish today than I did 5 months ago! But seriously, it is a challenge for me, but it's good to be able to communicate better, and I just keep on keepin' on to continue growing in my communication skills.
Really? It's hard for me. This is the thing I worry about more than anything here. Partly because it feels like so much of our success here relies on our ability to learn to communicate. Partly because I've had no success in my past at learning languages. Languages consistently were low spots in my academic career. But mostly, I go to class, and struggle to understand the teacher anytime she veers off of the textbook to explain things. It feels like I am learning at a glacial pace when I look around and see many others who learn quickly (classmates, family members, etc). I definitely feel like I'm learning stuff, but it does not seem to happen fast enough. I'm fairly certain I'm in the bottom of my class. I have no choice but to succeed in what might be the biggest challenge I've faced in my life.

How are the hostel plans? Things are going well. We still have a ways to go to get our plan off the ground. First things first, we have to learn the language! We are excited to have a great teammate, and have another couple who is interested in joining us that we are excited about.
Really? Things really are going pretty well. But I think we often feel as if other people's expectations are that we might already be running a hostel, or be doing it very soon. We have a pretty clear idea of where we think we are heading, but we are prepared for the journey to take some time. We want to do it right the first time, and set ourselves up to see the best possible chance of long-term success. The truth of the matter is that we are here because we feel a pretty clear leading from the Lord that He wants us here. We see that in order for this hostel to become a reality, God will continue to guide, and will have to 'show up' in such a way that any hostel and/or backpacker ministry that results will clearly be of his doing, and not our own. And we continue to hold 'our' plans loosely, aware that what we think is our direction will change if he guides us in another direction (for example, living now in La Coruña instead of Santiago). After I learn the language, opening a successful hostel and ministry might be the next "biggest challenge" I've had to face in my life. Despite all of our planning and dreaming, there are parts of me that have trouble imagining seeing that vision become a reality. But then, I also know it was not that long ago that parts of me that had trouble seeing us moving to Spain, and here we are!

How are the kids? They are great. The boys are adjusting to school. Both boys seem to like being in school. Kathryn is a great baby. Very quiet and well behaved. We had a lot of illness over the first several months here, but we seem to have come clear of that.
Really? Yeah - for the most part, this one is pretty accurate. What we generally don't talk about though are the temper tantrums and fits that each of the boys seem to have seemingly too often. They are happening with less frequency than when we first arrived, but still seemingly too often. We also don't talk too much about the times we are woken up at night--by all three of the kids, not just the baby. But mostly because any parent can talk about that too - there's not much sympathy to be found out there for something so common : - ) We also don't talk as often about our concerns for the kids - how their personalities will adjust to being here. How will Brennan's gentle and quiet spirit adjust in a place where he clearly is an outsider? How will all of the kids respond to growing up in a place where some of the general cultural values are not all that similar to our own?

So, in the end, there is truth in the simple, pat answers. But it is often a simple truth, unencumbered by the more difficult realities of daily life.

Unplanned Experiences: The Sling

We continue to learn about how to live here in Spain, and continue on our pretty constant parade of 'firsts.' We made our first visit to the emergency room here in La Coruña Thursday evening. We were visiting another home, and Ryan fell in the simplest of ways. He was already sitting on the wood floor, and he spun around to do something, lost his balance, and fell over. It took us 5-10 minutes to discover that his arm was REALLY hurting, and he would not allow us to touch it.

Once again, God really provided for our needs. We happened to be with a number of bi-lingual missionaries at the time, and one of them, Leah, was so great to give up her evening and help us take care of Ryan. We had been planning on applying for the public health care system on this coming week, so obviously had not registered yet. The local clinic took a look at Ryan anyway, and suggested an x-ray was necessary. This meant a trip to the local children's hospital emergency room, where they also helped us. .

Overall, Ryan was an excellent 2 year old patient. Especially one who missed dinner and bedtime to check out the emergency room. He obviously did not enjoy having his sore arm poked and prodded. He spent most of the time in the hospital in my arms, whimpering or crying. He gave several dirty looks to the Doctors who poked and prodded him. Despite his misgivings, the Doctors were very nice to him, and tried very hard to figure out if anything was wrong. The x-ray showed no broken bones, which is good. But evidently with children this small it is very difficult to tell if there is any ligament damage. He refused to use the injured arm for the entire visit. They said it's most likely a sprain, and put him in a sling. They suggested he take ibuprofen, and if he wasn't using his arm in 5 days to visit the pediatrician.

Here is a picture of him taken on Friday.

For our first experience into socialized medicine, it wasn't that bad. We've heard that waiting for a long time is the norm. (The socialized system is known for it's slowness. Our friend Leah, who was helping us, hurt her knee almost a month ago, and will not get it x-rayed until December!!) But in our case, it didn't seem we waited any more at the public hospital here than I ever have at a US hospital. We now get to urgently complete our registration for the health care system on Monday in order for this visit to be covered.

At any rate, he perked up almost immediately after we walked out of the hospital doors. Thankfully, Friday was a holiday, so we've had a three day weekend. It's been two days, and he is still in his sling, and still not using the arm. He's terrified to take it off, even though we have made him take it off once each day since. Outside of the very noticeable sling, you'd have trouble recognizing he's operating with one arm. He climbs around, makes trouble with his brother, plays and eats normally. I've included three more photos below to prove he did just fine as we did some sightseeing in Coruña today, and at the park. You can feel a little bad for him, but not too bad. After all, he gets even more attention now than he was before when we go out.

Throwing rocks.

Looking tough at the Torre de Hercules (Tower of Hercules - the oldest working Roman lighthouse in the world).

Enjoying some time at the park.