A Little Bit of the Mundane – Daily Life

I haven’t blogged in a while. I guess we just got really busy and then the thought of catching up is a little overwhelming. So I’m just going to jump in where we are.

Last June we started language study. Its been challenging to say the least! Most weeks we have at least 4 days where we spend an hour or two working on the language. That is about as much as our brains can absorb in a given day and then we just have to practice, practice, practice. It’s challenging because of the noun case system that they have that affects the verbs and other modifiers. You almost just have to memorize the various forms and then their variations. Complicating this is the 6 verb tenses. The verb changes form based on if it is present tense, today past, yesterday past, near future, distant future or distant past. Slowly, slowly we’re going through those to learn them better so we can actually understand them and use them. Thankfully, we’re getting to the place where we can understand things that those around us are saying.

Last June we also found out that baby #6 is on the way. The summer months were kind of rough. The morning sickness was really terrible and some days I couldn’t even get out of bed. Thankfully, by the time I was 12 weeks along, the morning sickness went away and I was able to do fine after that.

We started school in mid August. Its interesting juggling school, housekeeping tasks and language study. Sometimes its really overwhelming. But I really want to learn the language so we’ve been plugging away at it. The kids are doing great with school. Its nice to have designated school room. It’s the other half of our family room area. It means that the school books and supplies are contained in one place and aren’t leaking out into all the other places of the house. Gaelin started first grade this year. I was a little concerned that it might be beyond him but so far he hasn’t encountered any concepts he couldn’t figure out. I know 5 years old is a little young for first grade but we’ll take it a year at a time. He is really smart and gets bored easily so the challenge of it is good for him. The things that actually bother him the most are the mundane things – like handwriting and spelling. He’d far rather do his math or reading than those other things. It’s challenging for me, too, having 5 kids in 4 grades. Teaching long division one minute and carrying or renaming the next. Helping one student grasp the concept of a noun and then another student write an essay on a foreign country. But I really enjoy it!

We’re starting to feel like we are moved in. Our container arrived last July and we were able to get unpacked for the most part pretty quickly. James has been helping me get pictures hung. Once my sewing machine arrived I started making curtains for all the windows. Juggling that along with school made it take a long time but it got done. There were a few things that we couldn’t really unpack. One thing was our books. The bookshelves we had in America weren’t very good. They wouldn’t have survived long here. So last month James had some bookshelves made for us! After 11 months of being here (and longer for the books since they were some of the first things we packed in the states – some of them 3 years ago!) we finally got those unpacked! It’s like Christmas being able to find old friends and new discoveries in our library! The kids are loving it! It took a while but we finally have some avid readers in our family. Often I’ll go looking and find them curled up in their room with a book. Whenever boredom strikes I suggest another book. We also were able to get some shelves made for things like our towels and cleaning supplies and the kid’s toys and games. Its wonderful to feel a little more organized and not have to say “I have that but I don’t know where it is…..” I’m loving that!

We’re getting ready to plant our garden for this rainy season – if the rains will just get consistent for us. So far it has been a pretty dry rainy season. Last rainy season we didn’t get to plant a lot as we got started late and the ground wasn’t very good. But we’ve been working to get it ready and are just waiting for the rains to start. We’re going to plant tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini, broccoli, and peas. We’d like to eventually plant sweet corn as well and a couple other things too, maybe. We’ll see how all those other things do. We can get tomatoes and green peppers here but have to look harder for broccoli and zucchini is almost impossible to find. The local peas are more like split peas – sort of like a bean that you have to cook for a while. So if we grow our own we can harvest them earlier while they are still soft. They don’t quite taste like American sweet peas but will work fine in a pinch.

So that is a little about our every day life. A lot more happens daily than just that. Some days it feels like Grand Central Station around here and other days it is nice and quiet. But mostly it is just normal life that we’re adapting to little by little. 🙂