Today was the first day of school. Luckily for us, the school doesn’t provide a hot lunch option, so this morning we made lunches for four children. We have never made that many home made lunches in one morning in our lives. Somehow we got it done.

We arrived at the school on time, and the kids classes are all very close together. Our oldest was given a back full of treats and candies from her classmates. Our second child said he was surrounded by kids asking a lot of questions. He was overwhelmed because he can answer one person at a time, but not groups. Our third child seemed to enjoy his class, and spoke a little Spanish at least when he entered his class for the first time. And then there is our youngest.

Our youngest child plays to his strengths. He knows how adorable he is. He wields his cuteness like a master swordsman. When Bonnie introduced him to his preschool teacher, he gave her a thumbs up, then said to her “soy Caleb, estoy listo”, “I’m Caleb, and I’m ready.” Then he walked up to his new teacher and gaveled a big hug.

When they started their school day, Bonnie and I drove to the downtown to mail post cards, and go to the bank.

The drive into downtown is interesting. The town we are in is an old mining town, and so the town has multiple tunnels all through the city. This is an example of one of them. The below videos are a little shaky but a great example.

After downtown, we drove our rental car back to the airport to turn it in. Our car we are purchasing won’t be ready until Monday. After dropping the car off, we took a taxi back to our place from the airport.

To get a taxi at the airport, you first have to go inside at the Taxi booth and tell them where you plan to go. They then charge you, and give you a ticket. You take the ticket outside and a concierge assigns a taxi to you and they drive you to where you need to go. It seemed much safer to me doing it that way.

After school the kids seemed to be in a good mood. I was mostly worried for child 2, but he seemed to be ok after school and this evening when I put him to bed. When we are laying in bed at night that’s when he’s the most honest, and he said the day went pretty well.

The real highlight of my day was when my mother in law called, and our oldest squealed, took the phone from my wife and told her about her wonderful day. That was the best part of this trip so far. Hopefully it only gets better from here on out. *

Today was the last day of homeschooling the kids. I was in the office attempting to fix the internet, and Bonnie made breakfast for the kids, then took them on some errands.
We are going to buy a Toyota Avanza, a small minivan type car that seats 6, perfect for us. We have to turn the rental car in tomorrow after dropping the kids off at school. Then we have to wait until the car dealership gets the car ready. We would have picked the car up the day we saw it, but we plan to sell it back, and there were cosmetic physical problems with it that having kids would make them worse, and we want to sell it back for as much as we possibly can.

So Bonnie took the kids on some errands while I tried to fix the internet at my home office. When she got back, she picked me up and we went to lunch at the same restaurant we went the first day we were here. The cheeseburgers were really good, so we went there and mostly ordered cheeseburgers at the restaurant… During the lunch, our second child’s class FaceTimed us, and he was a little shy about talking to a lot of people. He doesn’t like being put on the spot, and gets really shy.

After lunch, Bonnie took the kids out for a couple errands and then to the park. I walked up the hill and bought a couple rottiserie chickens and vegetables from the produce stand. I made chicken soup for dinner. Bonnie made chicken soup the last couple times. Needless to say, when the kids said what they were grateful for tonight before bed time, three of the four kids said they were thankful for “mom’s chicken soup”. One of my kids said it wasn’t very good, but that I was the best baker ever.

As we were putting the kids to bed, reality was starting to really sink in with them. Their joyful bravado melted into solemn contemplation. Asking their mom questions about whether they know enough Spanish. Our oldest broke down talking to her grandma tonight over FaceTime, she said she didn’t want to speak Spanish anymore, and wanted to go home. It made me feel really sad. Later on that night one of the kids had me lay with him in bed, and he laid out a very logical impassioned argument about why he was worried about tomorrow.

He said, everywhere he goes when we are at home, he is surrounded by people who love him. School, home, activities, people love him. Through glassy eyes he looked me in the eyes, and told me he’s going to a place where nobody loves him. I returned my own glassy eyes back to him and told him that if he is sad, that he can ask to go see his sister and give her a hug, or one of his other brothers. If that doesn’t work, the school can call me, it’s a ten minute walk from our place. He turned away from my gaze, slowly nodded an acceptable nod, then remained silent for a while. I didn’t miss the tear that rolled down his cheek, today was a very hard day. I really hope they enjoy their first day. In my experience it’s the night before the second day that’s hardest, because they know what to expect. That’s all for us tonight, pray they have a very fun easy day in school, and that their classmates are patient with them, and their language capacity.

Here are some photos from the day.

Today started off with breakfast and then home school. Bonnie walked up the hill to buy flour the other day. The flour was going to be used for baking, and also for an art project. This morning, she had them make home made play dough for art time. Bonnie briefly turned to wash a dish, and the rest of the flour was dumped out onto the table.

While this was happening, I was upstairs in my office trying desperately to register our fourth child in kindergarten. Evidently, there is some sort of firewall between the country we are in and the United States, that is preventing my laptop from using a secure registration portal. I eventually downloaded a VPN, and that worked like a charm.

We eventually cleaned up the flour, by some miracle all kids are still alive. We had to change all their clothes and bathe them because you can’t get flour out of your hair. Onward and upwards.

After the impromptu bath, we had some left over Little Ceaser’s pizza, and then Bonnie walked the kids to school for a second meeting. I decided to drive because me knee is still in a good deal of pain. We ended up meeting up and had a second meeting with a psychologist who interviewed us, the head administrator, and another administrator that has been with the school since 1977, when it first opened.

The administrators wanted to be very clear about their vision for what they expect of the children that are enrolled, and of the parents. I’ll leave it at that, and we can book mark this for after we come home. But there’s a lot more to be said then I’m comfortable writing in this blog, that they might be able to find somehow. Needless to say, the school has admitted their applications, and they start school Wednesday.

We got to the school at 130 for a 2pm meeting. We were there until 4ish. It was a long day, and the kids were bored. They ended up running around the main square inside the school grounds.

After we left the school, the business that sells the uniforms is across the street. We headed over there, and had to wrangle four very hungry and bored children for trying on multiple uniforms for the school.

When that finally ended, we came home. Made dinner, and shipped our kids to bed. It was a long exhausting day. Very glad it is finished.

This morning we had french toast, scrambled eggs, and spinach, the kids nearly revolted when they saw the spinach. We went to the same church as last week. I think the worship music is helping me learn more Spanish. At the start of service, a young man walked up to us and asked if he could translate for me. Now I didn’t move here for six months so people could translate for me the entire time, and I feel guilty about another person not being able to concentrate on the sermon. I am able to understand about 5% right now, and the idea of having a guy translate for me didn’t appeal to me at all. Child 1 was in my ear most of the worship telling me what most of the words meant, it always blows my mind that my children are bilingual.

After the service, he walked up to me and started speaking English, quite well. He is an English teacher here, and is also a kind of youth group leader. He really wants to practice his English, so I think next week I’ll allow him to translate for me.

Tomorrow Bonnie is heading into the down town to meet with the public school district in order to start the enrollment for our kids. We have a second private school meeting tomorrow in the afternoon to discuss our goals for the next six months, but just in case the private school doesn’t enroll the kids, we need a back up. We came home and had leftovers from the last few restaurants we have gone to. I sincerely think I’m losing weight, because even though there is a small little store across the street from our house, there is no fast food, and I would eat fast food once a day back home. I don’t even have a craving for it. The owner of the store is named Jorge, and every time I walk into the store he says ” Hi George”, I think it’s the only English he knows.

Above is the view from our front door to the right. You can see the store to the left, and the mountains in the distance. There are three little restaurants within walking distance from our door, and you can barely see it but to the right, there is a small parking lot, luckily we don’t need it because we have a garage.

The above photo is what we see when we walk outside and look left. If the kids go to the private school we want them to go to, then we will walk them up this hill a half mile, and then walk them another half mile to the school. There are a couple dozen little street food vendors on the way, and other shops.

This is the front of the house we are living at. Sadly we are right next to a notary public. In this country, only lawyers can be notary publics, so… not a huge fan of our neighbor. After dinner we made the kids go to bed early.

Reading a story before heading to bed. The kids weren’t excited about going to bed early, but they brought it on themselves today.

Warning: this post isn’t for the faint of heart. There will be photos of mummified bodies if you scroll down. Keep in mind, my children saw them face to face, so pity me and my wife, what we saw today will be in my kids nightmares for the next thirty years. With that said, enjoy Day 10.

Our boys thought it was a good idea to pack their bags and plan a trip to Mt. Everest this morning. They packed their carry on bags, got food, and brought books, and had some pesos. Luckily for us, they don’t know how to use the keys to leave the house, so we caught them before they were able to attempt a break for it. We had a long chat with the three boys about how foolish that was, and it of course denigrated into my explaining that not everyone who climbs Mt. Everest survives, and if you die on that mountain, they leave your body there. SO… it was a great morning. It took us a while to get them to unpack their bags this morning. By the time we were done, we had lunch and cleaned up the kids rooms.

After lunch, we decided to head off the the mummy museum. Historically the city we are in was established in the 1500s. The Aztec’s inhabited the area first, and then the Spanish. The Spanish brought Catholocism with them to Mexico, and established churches all over the country, including the city we are in. With churches, come cemeteries, and crypts to hold the dead. Eventually in the 19th century, a doctor started exhuming bodies from cemeteries in order to study the plague, and other illnesses in order to understand them. What the doctor discovered was that the bodies buried in the area were still preserved, and did not really decompose. The bodies were essentially mummified due to the nutrients in the ground that preserved and did not allow true decomposition.

We have four children, ages 9, 8, 6, and 4. I honestly couldn’t think of a better place to take our children, then a museum dedicated to displaying corpses that never really decomposed.

They allowed photography, just not flash photography. So the photos will be a little hazy.

The following photos are of babies who were mummified.

If you made it this far, I tip my hat to you. After we had a great time looking at mummies, we took the kids out for Italian food. The restaurant was pretty good.

For the past few days, my knee has been slowly freezing up. Last night I could barely move it without pain, and most of today I was immobile. The kids hd home school, and my bride, mid way through the day went out and purchased ingredients for more chicken soup.

later on we played board games for a while, and the kids snuck upstairs one by one and found the remote control to our bedroom tv. What’s funny is, we are living in a spanish speaking country, every channel is only spanish. They weren’t too annoyed since they understand it, it’s just funny because when I finally found out what they were doing, I saw them upstairs watching tv but they weren’t as happy as they usually are when the tv is on.

My wife surprised the kids and got little ceasers pizza. There is one about a ten minute drive from our house. The kids welcomed it, and have been asking us when we are going back to Applebee’s (bleh). Overall I’m proud of how they have eaten at the small little hole in the wall restaurants in the town we are in. They usually clean their plates and sometimes ask for more. I’m flying back in a few weeks for court, and I can say this, I will not be eating the type of food that is prevalent here.

On Monday we head back to the private school for an additional meeting. We are considering putting them in public school here if this private school doesn’t work out. Tomorrow we are going to see the very famous mummies of the town we are in, almost 25% of our kids are excited. It’s 11pm where we are and we are desperately trying to get the kids to sleep. Sorry this blog post was a little scant, I’m sure I will have plenty of pictures and stories from tomorrow.

For the past few days, we have all been a little under the weather. Bonnie has been sick since we got off the plane, and the kids have been a little run down. We just stayed in all day, and ate home made chicken soup. All the kids love the soup Bonnie makes, and for those of you who have multiple children, it’s rare to find a meal that all the kids love.

Other than that, not much happened today, we played board games, Dragonwood was the favorite today. My namesake loves board games, and for some odd reason all of the kids got a long for an extended period of time, it was weird. I’ve been thinking long and hard about this post for a while because I wanted to get the words right, but since nothing happened today, I wanted to share what the single most difficult issue was when moving out of country for half a year, and that was taking my children away from their friends, and brilliant teachers. I will profile each teacher in this blog, and I know they might be following along. I won’t use any information or names to keep anonymity, but they will know who they are, and my friends and family will also know who they are.

My wife and I were thrilled at the beginning of the school year when we found out which teachers our three older kids were assigned to (our preschool teacher is phenomenal as well). We were also sad when we found out which teachers our kids would have because we knew they wouldn’t have them for very long. I think a week before we moved our third grader (second child) along with his siblings, his teacher made him a wooden box, and had his classmates write him notes and they were placed in there. The wooden box is lined in what I think is copper plating, and the classmates also wrote their signatures in it, there were also some photos as well.

As some background. My son had this teacher last year in second grade and we were honored when we found out this teacher was moving to third grade, that he chose to bring our son along. At the end of the school year, the school has a end of year fundraiser to raise money for whatever, who cares. It’s a public school and they all need money. But every class in the school creates some art project that makes the parents want to purchase it at auction. Last year, my child’s teacher had all the kids draw out their silhouettes, and this teacher with the aid of another artistic parent, used these pictures and sculpted their drawings in copper wire, then he mounted it on a frame. It was the most impressive art project I had ever seen students accomplish. When we walked into the fundraiser my wife eyeballed it and said to me “that’s coming home with us” and I immediately checked our bank account to say goodbye to whatever money we had. It was the last item auctioned at a live auction, I had maybe a few shots in me, so I started bidding, and another parent was bidding as well, this was worrisome because she kept upping the bid. My wife thought I was taking too long and she started bidding hire than the other parent, and at the end of the night we paid $3,700 for this art project. That’s how talented this teacher is, and looking back on it now, it was money well spent. Back to this wooden box.

When he brought it home, I couldn’t look at it. I would immediately get choked up and come close to tears. I know he has a few very close friends and for the sake of this trip we are taking him away from them temporarily, but it still feels awful. My third graders teacher is probably the nicest man I’ve ever come across, sincerely. He is an artist, and it shows in the work he put into this wooden box. So simple, but also so loving, it is obvious how much he cares for his students, especially my son.

He loved the box so much, that he put it in his carry on, and held it the entire four and a half hour flight. He reminds me of myself growing up, I didn’t really like change, and I had few friends, but we were very close. My first real best friend happened when I was in second grade, and I still keep in touch with him today. I actually keep in touch with his parents more because they live close to us in the States. I vividly remember the day I found out they were moving to Benicia, after a soccer game, my mom went up to me and said “isn’t it sad ____ is moving away”, and it was like I was hit by a lightning bolt. I used all the power in my mind to not cry in front of everyone there, luckily the soccer park was close to my home, so I went home and sulked for a good while. Later on in life his parents explained why they moved, and as a parent I would say their reasons were absolutely spot on, and given the opportunity I would have done the exact same thing, as a 7th grader heading into high school though, I was collateral damage in the hard choices, the same as my second child is with our move here.

I still can’t really look at this box for a long time, it just brings out too many emotions. My son has gone to bed sad most nights, missing his friends. He tells me he is sad, which is a huge honor. I don’t ever remember telling my parents anything about my emotions, and he feels safe, and close enough to share that with me. This wooden box has really helped him cope with this very temporary move. I know on our flight back home, he will have it on his lap, like he did on his flight here.

That’s all I have for tonight, the bottom line is my second oldest child’s teacher this year is amazing, and one of the best teachers at the school that my older three kids goes to. I’m as educated as you can be, so I have had a lot of teachers in my academic career so I think I can say this with some authority, my sons third grade teacher this year is the type of teacher that when you see him, you just feel happy that he’s around, and grateful that he found his true calling.

We still haven’t heard from the private school, and instead of doing anything exciting, we drove to a Toyota dealership to check out a sweet Avanza minvan (sarcasm). It took us 30 minutes to drive to the dealership and when we got there, they told us that the car was at another dealership about an hour away. So, we got back in the car and drove another hour, to another car dealership.

When we arrived at the second dealership, my wife spoke to a salesman who inquired about this sick minivan, and the salesperson told us that it wasn’t there. And then he just aimlessly walked around looking for it once he saw the look in both of our eyes, the kind of look that says “find that car right now” but the look also means “I might kill you if you don’t confirm where this car is”. It felt like a wild goose chase. Fifteen minutes after claiming the car wasn’t there, low and behold it actually was. Again, I hate to channel my inner Chevy Chase, but it felt like I was in my own National Lampoons vacation, all the salesman had to do was try to get us to buy a family trickster instead of our blue sport wagon Avanza.

Luckily the kids were entertained with building blocks in the middle of the sales floor. While they were making a lot of noise and commotion, my wife kept asking questions, and the salesman kept saying he can’t answer a lot of them because his boss was eating lunch and would be back in 30 minutes. Fifty minute later some random salesperson asks us if we need help, and she helps us deal with the minivan. We were promised that we can sell it back in 6 months for 80% of what we purchase it for, since I don’t plan on driving this back to the States.

The kids were amazing during the few hours we tried to get this car, so we promised to take them to Applebees. Yes there are many Applebees where we are, and a Little Ceasers, and some McDonalds. This applebees had a huge play structure inside the restaurant for the kids to enjoy, so they got to play in an enormous play structure during dinner.

After dinner our children choreographed their own song as a type of theatre production, based off one of their favorite movies (my doing). They love musicals, and it shows.

Oh and below is a video of our oldest reading something, I love it because she has almost no accent when she reads it.

This morning my wife had another day of home school with the kids. We are still waiting for the private school to process everything and give us the green light on registering. We may have found a car we can buy from a Toyota dealership about 15 minutes away from here. Our landlords found it for us, they have been treating us more like family than renters. Almost every day they have sent handymen to fix little issues, that I can only imagine landlords in the states would roll their eyes at and get to maybe months later.

After “school” I made egg salad sandwiches. With all the great Mexican food we’ve been eating, I wanted to remind my children of at least part of their roots, and the culture they left to come here. Almost 25% of my children ate lunch, so… my skills are improving. After that we drove to a park up the hill from our place. The park made me really sad, it was really run down, but the kids in the neighborhood still played on it daily. From what I’ve seen, there isn’t much of an infrastructure from the local government, everything seems a little run down, something a local infrastructure would be able to cure.

After we played at the playground, we came home and Bonnie made chicken soup. We then left to walk down the street (about one hundred feet) to another restaurant we haven’t tried. They served tacos, quesadillas, and tortas. The meat they had was tongue, stomach lining, beef, chorizo, and pork in spicy sauce. We ate until we were all full. ($23) Then we came home for the night.

Tomorrow we might be buying a used car. Wish us luck, good night.

We are currenlty awaiting word on whether the private school the kids interviewed for will register them. In the meantime, Bonnie has taken it upon herself to home school the kids, so today she home schooled them from 9am to 1pm. We needed to find an ATM, and the place we are living, doesn’t exactly have one on every other corner, the nearest one is in the downtown area.

We decided to walk up the hill and catch a bus to the downtown, taking a bus with 6 people costs $3 round trip. Before we got on the bus, we had some street food, chicken tacos, rice, and beans. The kids are slowly getting used to corn tortillas. The food was only ok. Our oldest couldn’t handle the flies that were everywhere.

We took the bus into the downtown, and got off in a tunnel. We walked up a flight of stairs that are probably older than the State of California, and entered into a city that is probably 50 years older than our country. I forgot to get photos of the stairs, but there are so many, I’ll eventually devote a blog post to them, if I run out of things to say here. The downtown is gorgeous, and colorful. I saw so many purple buildings, probably the most ridiculous color for a home in my own opinion. We walked past a theatre called “Teatro Juarez” no clue what it means, the translation has been lost in the ages.

There is a statue on the hill overlooking the downtown area, and since my knee has been in a large amount of pain for the last few days, I only found it appropriate to walk up a few hundred steps to see the overlook. Luckily for me my knee wasn’t really in pain until I took the first three steps on the way down, I counted the steps after that, I’m pretty sure there were ten thousand. We got some amazing photos of the kids, and got to walk up a staircase at the very top to look out from the top of the statute. It reminded me of a bell tower we walked up in a cathedral in the city of Cologne, Germany. But it was less steps, and when we got to the top of the statue, the view sucked.

We bought a couple bags of churros to eat on the steps below the statue. They tasted pretty good. But the best churros I have ever had were on our honeymoon when we took a bus to La bufadora, a blow hole in Baja California.

After we made it back down the hill, we took the bus back to our area and went to the butcher. For six new york steak and 4 chicken breasts, we paid the equivalent of $8. We also stocked up on vegetables that I could barely carry down the hill for a whopping $6. Enough food to feed the family for two days for $7/meal.

We also bought a stack of homemade corn tortillas and heated them up with our dinner tonight. I promise these posts won’t always center around food. Time to get the kids to bed, see you all later.