World Travelers

If you’re ever thinking your Spanish is getting pretty good you should pay people to remind you over and over again of just how many mistakes you’re still making. So, that’s exactly what I’ve been up to for the past week.

I took A on her first bus ride for her first adventure outside of Santa Cruz to the booming mountain metropolis of Cochabamba to revisit my old language school for some brushing up.

Traveling with Ange means sharing a bed and hence getting kicked throughout the night by little feet dreaming of futból, but in the daytime it means constantly having a sweet sticky hand in mine as we explore new unknown places. So new, in fact, that she said to me the other day as we waited to buy tickets for something, “In Bolivia we don’t have lines like this.” “Huh? Honey, we are in Bolivia, Cochabamba is another city in Bolivia, like Santa Cruz.”

Angelica 1 and Angelica 2. Ange finally met her namesake, my lovely language teacher.

Telling her this statue is the tallest Christ in the world didn't really mean much to her since her world still only consisted of two cities (or countries, whatever.) We came back to Santa Cruz yesterday morning for our Vineyard church national conference this weekend, and to enroll her in school tomorrow morning. Then we'll head back on the road to Apolo, which might as well be another continent it's so far away, even though it's really still in Bolivia. We'll, of course, keep you posted on all our adventures.

Update on motherhood, for those of you who are curious: We've been together two weeks now, pretty much 24/day since she's on summer vacation. I've yet to need to discipline her, but just yesterday she started to finally get her own will a bit. My friend, another adoptive parent, says that's a good thing, it means she's feeling more comfortable, but it's not quite as easy as when she happily complied with everything I said. On top of that she's already using the English I'm teaching her against me. He new favorite word when she wants to do something is "pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease." Since it's also really nice to be able to talk to the adults in our own secret language, I'm starting to reconsider this whole English thing...