Chocolate!

"hey, john David, I thought you didn't like chocolate!"

"yeah I do!"

"when did you start liking it?"

"tomorrow."

Day 6 in Venezuela

It's now the morning of my 6th day in Caracas, Venezuela. The first 4 days were very eventful, but then yesterday was pretty layed back.

We got here in the late afernoon on Sunday, and got to the place we're staying just in time to eat dinner and head out to a wake. This particular wake wasn't from a violent death. (He was an 18 year old kid named Alexander - a very common name here- who had a degenerative disease.) The wake last night (which Hannah and I didn't go to) was from a violent death, but I guess he was a guy who was involved in some pretty shady stuff, so no one was too surprised. Going to wakes and burials seems to be a big part of what the team here does. I think the apprentices who've been here a year and a half have been to about 10.

Monday Birgit Shorack (the wife of the couple who are the team leaders) took Hannah and me around to see a couple of school options for Alexina and John David in the morning. That was an interesting experience. School would definitely be a huge adjustement, starting with the fact that almost all schools start at 7 am and end at noon. The school I actually liked best is from 6:45-11:30! The kids would certainly have good penmanship after a couple of years here and would be able to write down dictations flawlessly, not to mention the Spanish and Venezuelan culture they would be learning. Luckily they're already very creative and imaginative, but if I wanted them to keep up those skills it would be something I would have to do with them at home, (but we'd have all afternoon to do it!) Here's a quote from a profile of what a first grader needs to be learning in order to pass to second grade (translated, of course) "I am creative and will practice until I can color with out going out of the lines and in one direction." The 15 year old daughter of the Shoracks, who's lived her for 7 years, says that she's never written an essay out of her head, she only copies things. Anyway, it's a very different system and I think it has some good aspects to it which could complement what's lacking in the US system, but mostly it's given me lots of ideas for trying to do art classes and creative writing classes with kids here. (Neither of which are my forte, but I'm sure Zoe could give me some ideas in creative writing!)

After doing the school tours we spent two hours travelling by public transportation to the cemetary for Alexander's burial. Luckily we were able to catch a ride back with neighbors, because as it was, we were all completely exhausted by the time we made it back. (Even though we got a ride, it took 1 1/2 hours to get back because of traffic and we had 8 of us crammed in to a vehicle designed for 5!) Transportation would be another thing that would take a lot of getting used to. Without traffic it's a 10-15 minute jeep ride to get down the hillside to where the market and metro station, and the school I liked best are, but that's once you're on a jeep. Sometimes jeeps can take a while to come and sometimes they're full. To catch the jeep to come up you have to wait in line to get into a jeep, and they stop running by 9pm. They also could stop running for any other reason, like if the the jeep driver wants to take a nap or eat lunch. We walked up the hillside one time and it was an exhausting, sweaty, 45 minute walk. (and that was without kids! Actually I wouldn't do it with kids because there's no sidewalks, so it's prett dangerous.) If you want to go to a park or the zoo, or a movie theatre or the beach or anyplace like that it's a 45 minute - 2 hour expedition each way (depending where you're going) and you have to plan very carefully to avoid rush hour or you can double the travel time.

It's time for me to go join a team meeting, so I'll try to finish this another time.

I leave for Venezuela this Saturday night

This Saturday night Hannah (our housemate) and I (Jenny) head to
Venezuela on the red-eye. We'll be there for a week. Tim will be
staying home with the kids. That'll be a new experience for all of
us. He and I have gone on trips together without the kids, and he's
travelled a lot with me and the kids, but we've never done it this way
before. It's nice not to have to worry about an elaborate babysitting
plan AND not to have to worry about packing for the kids.

The main goal of the trip is for me to check things out there and see
if it really seems like it could be a fit for our family. We won't be
trying to make any decisions from this trip. If it seems like it
really wouldn't work for our family, we could decide to drop the
question after this trip, but assuming we're still interested, we'll
have quite a few more steps before we make a final decision. Another
big step will be that Tim will go in late April, and then there will
be lots of prayer and discussions between Sojourners, InnerCHANGE and
us. I'm hoping to decide by the end of the summer, but we'll see . . .

You can be praying for Hannah and me on this trip. The main thing to
pray about, other than the obvious, is that on the 15th (the day we
fly home) Chavez, the president of Venezuela, will be having a
referendum, where I think basically he's trying to change the
constitution to allow presidents to stay in office for an unlimited
number of terms. Needless to say, the whole country isn't on board
with this idea, so it could possibly get ugly.

book recommendation for "I Heard the Owl Call my Name" by Margaret Craven

I was given this book for Christmas by my mother-in-law, Jennie
Lockie. (Yes, we have the same name, but she spells it with ie. The
really weird thing is that Tim's sister married a Dave, and my father-
in-law's name is Dave!) Anyway, this was a really interesting book.
(Thanks Jennie!) Especially as Tim and I are wondering about joining
InnerCHANGE, it was good to read a book that's basically the opposite
of The Poisonwood Bible. This books is an example of incarnational
ministry done well. It's also pretty short and a very easy read.
It's about a young vicar who's sent to live in a remote indian village
where life is difficult and death is common. The villagers are
suspicious of him at first, but he doesn't ask for special treatment
and really gives himself to the people of the village. As it turns
out, his Bishop sent him there not because the village needed him, but
because he needed the village, and at the end, he becomes acutely
aware of this. Here are a couple of quotes from it.

When the atheist teacher meets the vicar who has recently arrived in
the remote Indian village, he tells him that anyone who professes
Christianity must be incredibly naive. "The young vicar grinned and
agreed. There were two kinds of naivete, he said, quoting Schweitzer;
one not even aware of the problems, and another which has knocked on
all the doors of knowledge and knows man can explain little, and is
still willing to follow his convictions into the unknown. 'This takes
courage,' he said, and he thanked the teacher and returned to the
vicarage."

When they are watching the salmon die at the end of their upstream
struggle, an indian girl comments that the end of the swimmer is
sad. And the vicar replies, "But Keetah, it isn't. The whole life
of the swimmer is one of courage and adventure. All of it builds to
the climax and the end. When the swimmer dies he has spent himself
completely for the end for which he was made, and this is not
sadness. It is triumph."