More Party & Kite Flying

We recently went to a town called Tabio, Colombia with our friends to celebrate their daughter's 1st birthday.  Our friend's parents live in Tabio, so we went to their home, which is in the "country".  It is about 45 minutes from Bogota, so it was nice to get out of the city for a little while.   As I mentioned in an earlier post, August is the official kite flying month in Bogota.  We spent some time flying kites before the celebration & food.

This is a kite left here that we are using because our kite from the USA just wasn't working here.  Isabella was flying the kite here.

Brook watching

She took a picture of me watching too!

Our kite, the owl 

Brook flying the kite

There was a great outdoor space with this pretty awesome fireplace.  This huge pot on the fire had beans in it.  My friend was so thoughtful to have a frozen pizza for the girls to eat & chicken for me.  Everyone else had beans with some sort of pork on it.  Next to the soup, we had a plate of rice, avocado, & an arepa, which is very common to serve with soup here.  I did eat my plate of food, but not the bean soup.  

Our family with the birthday girl.  It was a Dora the Explorer party :)

We sat by the fire to keep warm after lunch.

And this could be one of my favorite family photos we've had since we have been here.  This was our backdrop for the day.  

Pancake & Ice Cream Dinner

What a great title...pancake & ice cream dinner.  That is just what we had last weekend.  Our friend, Matthew (or Mateo in Spanish) returned to the Dominican Republic this week, so we had a gathering with him last weekend before he left.  First, we had him over to our house one night for dinner with our family. Afterwards, we played a game on the playstation & Just Dance.

Matthew & Brook

Matthew & Avery

The next night, we had Matthew & our friends over for pancakes with ice cream.  Matthew wanted to do Just Dance again, so we pulled it out & made it an event for everyone!

Avery & Jaime got the night going & us all laughing!

Isabella & Brook are pros at this Just Dance!

Isabella & Matthew

We got the 2 boys to dance to One Direction!

Monica & Jaime (we had a couples dance-off!)

And this was our table of food!  Pancakes with fruits, arequipe, & ice cream.

I just hung back & enjoyed holding Victoria & feeding her :)

It was nice to have a fun night with friends!

Happy Thursday people!  We are off on an excursion with our language teacher today.  More about that next week.  Basically, we want to go learn how we can send mail from here.  Exciting stuff!

Back To School

8th grade & 5th grade ~ These are the grades of Isabella & Brook this year.  Hard to believe.  Hard to believe I am starting my 9th year of homeschooling. Hard to believe I am in Bogota, Colombia homeschooling my children.  Hard to believe I am back in school trying to learn a new language.

The school calendar in Bogota is a little different. They actually have 2 school calendars.  The first school calendar returns to school in July, so a large group of kids here have been in school for a month now.  They call this calendar A.  They have all of December, January, and June off for their breaks. The calendar B here is like the school calendar in the United States, basically school from August until May.  We are generally following the good 'ol USA calendar for school.  The girls returned Monday to their school routine. However, they don't feel like they have had much of a break.  After all of our traveling this year, they have been doing math here every day all summer to finish up last year's math.  And they have been in spanish classes for close to 8 weeks now. But this week they add their history, science, grammar, bible, & literature to their math and spanish classes.

Last week, the girls & I went to the office supply store to buy some new notebooks.  Oh my word, those things are soo expensive here.  Sure makes me miss notebooks for a few dollars & tax free weekends. Anyway, on the way home, the girls claimed front row seats on our bus ride back home.  We always get exercise when we are walking to & from the bus stops & then walking to & from the store from the stop. However, I may not be getting enough exercise to justify all the ice cream we eat here!!

Girls on the bus ride home

Pray for me as I balance homeschooing with my spanish & housework here, & then just time for me to be outside at some point each day.  The sun goes down around 5:30-6, so my time is limited after class.  Not to mention I am usually so exhausted, mentally anyway, after class.

One more note, I am going to miss this place so much this year.  Many tears have been shed in me missing this.....

This is the school where the girls & I volunteered each week last year

From my last visit there with my sister, the most amazing sister & special ed. teacher in the world.  What a privilege to help her & love on her kids she teaches, all while sharing these experiences with my daughters.

I treasure this gift they gave me on our last day there & it is hanging in our home with pictures of the students.  Can't wait to visit them sometime next year hopefully!

Pray for my sister & her school year, which started last week.

Nuevos Frutos

Last week, Clara took me to one of the largest fruit stores in our area to teach me about the fruits here.  I don't think I will ever know the names of all the fruits & vegetables here because there are so many I've never seen before & I'm really just trying to learn the spanish names of the fruits & vegetables I do know.  I did buy one of several types of new fruits though to try.  I needed a Colombian to tell me what to do with it once I got it home!  You can make juices out of any fruits.  That is a very popular, common thing here.  I buy the pulp of the fruit & make it from that (it is pretty easy).

Here is a sampling of what I bought & pictures from our test tasting that took place over two days:

This is Pitaya & was my favorite fruit I tasted.

You just open it up & it eat with a spoon, seeds included.  Colombians eat everything here..seeds & usually the skins of fruits are normal to eat.

Here is the Pitaya in the store.  Lulo, which is next to it, makes a wonderful juice!

This is guanabana.  I didn't buy this fruit, but did buy the pulp & made some juice from this that we had one night last week.  This is juice is very common here as well.  Juices here can be made with water or milk & you have to specify which one you want if you order it in a restaurant.  Con agua, por favor!

Melon Dulce (sweet melon)

This is what it looked like peeled & sliced.  

This is mango azucar (sweet mango).  It tasted better than the regular mango in my opinion.

This is zapote, but it wasn't a win around here.

Here is what it looked like in the store.

This was Yacon.  It was just okay.

This is Yuca, a vegetable, similar to a potato.  

You peel it like a potato & boil it just to get it a little tender.

Then you slice it, even though they are still tougher than a potato, & fry it in some oil.

Serve plain or with salt.  Delicioso!

Isabella did get in on the test tasting too.  I made both the girls try the fruits with us.

I really did like this, but I'm not sure my face shows it here!

Come down to visit & try new foods with us!  But even with all the different foods here, it is very western in a lot of ways & I still cook very North American!  

Bogota Bridges

Today, check out our Bogota blog for an update:

www.bogotabridges.com

Happy Wednesday!!

Kite Flying

August is kite flying month in Bogota.  Sunda, we went to fly our kite in a nearby park (not the one in our neighborhood) with our friends.  It was a beautiful day in Bogota.

Lots of people were in the park flying kites 

Avery is trying with ours

Monica & Isabella striking a pose after church

Another attempt at kite flying by the dads

The women sat & watched most of the time

Hey!  That's our kite in the sky!  It was pretty impressive to see how high other kites were.  We decided we may need to buy a new kite.  This one we brought from the states is 8 years old.

Brook & Victoria

Matthew was at the park too & was flying his kite.