I have died and gone to Latin Heaven!

Another Sunday has arrived and we are had a busy week full of apartment hunting and security briefings from the embassy and learning more and more spanish!

I am finally starting to figure out Bogota a little, which means the more I look at apartments the more I realize where I am at and where I want to be.  It is like an big city.  We can get more square footage up in the hills, but it requires us to drive to things.  I guess I am getting a big ole mamma Jamma car for my personal use.  It will be nice to have the freedom, but it is a little intimidating to drive here.  I have driven in Greece, Ireland, Washington DC, Chicago and Cross Country a million times, but I don't think I will be driving with any confidence here for a while.  So I think I would prefer to live near the northern city center, close to the great parks here, the restaurants and grocery stores.  We just haven't found the right apartment in that area.  So tomorrow more searching will commence and I am going to have to be patient while I look and wait for the right place to come open.

We have a nice lady helping us out, her name is Irma, and the kids love her!  I love her too, but it has definitely made me think.  I mean how did I do it by myself.  I mean sometimes it feels like I am a slacking mother because of the fact I have her to help 3 days a week and I actually get to sit down.  But it is the standard here if you have any money and that is for full time help!  I have actually been told several times that since my children are so young that I should have 2 people to help me.  One to watch the kids and one to help me clean.  I keep saying, well what am I going to do then with all my time?  Anyways, Trifon has started to add Senora Irma to our evening prayers and Georgia wants her first if we are both around.  I still haven't reconciled all my feelings about this level of help in my family.  Especially when I did it all by myself while Ray was in Iraq for a year.  But it has been helpful. The intensity of apartment hunting I've been doing would be impossible without someone watching the kids at the hotel.

We have been settling down though and getting to know a lot of Ray's co-workers.  They are almost all Colombian.  They just work for the US government as foreign nationals.  They have been working in this office of the Corps of Engineers for over a decade now together and they are a family.  They have totally taken us in, had us to their homes and invited us to their parties!  Lucky for us they all speak beautiful English and are so open and helpful to us as we try to learn Spanish.  But they are so excited to share everything about their culture with us.  They are also very surprised we like the food and the music, that or they are just so anxious for us to like it they keep asking us.  But this is where I feel I've died and gone to Latin heaven!  The culture is so beautiful, open and rich (as most cultures are!).

  We went to one of Ray's coworkers 40th birthday party.  It was a large affair at a Cuba restaurant.  It was to start at 7, and we showed up a fashionable American 15 minutes late.  A hour later the party started and the drinks were poured freely until we ate at 930pm (oh, and the drinks were still being poured).  We left at midnight and it was still going strong!  Everyone again mentioned that we should have a live in nanny to help so we could party till the sun came up.  I don't know if that is ever going to happen!

We went to church again this Sunday.  It is nice to have a home away from home.  It keeps me balanced and grounded.   It was actually pretty full today and there were many children.  I don't think anyone there speaks English though and the priest gave a great sermon.  I just wish I could have understood it all.  I am pretty sure it had to do with practicing the Orthodox faith in the home so that you children know it or how a child practices to improve on something same with us practicing the faith.  Wether I understood it all or not, I think it is a good point!

So more apartment shopping tomorrow and I have my camera set up and ready to go, so I will do some house hunters international for ya'll!  Maybe you can help me pick!  God bless you all and have a great week!  Love
Lindsay