A Night Out with Friends

This is a pretty bridge in Manaus. We walked there with friends one night, and it happened to be a night when I really needed to choose some thankful thoughts about this city. God knew. The aesthetic lines of the bridge and the pretty lights were a welcome sight for me, and something I could celebrate about our new home.

Kiki was supposed to be posing but she got thirsty. 🙂 She’s cute anyways.

This is our friend Leticia posing in front of the bridge.

I was so sad this picture turned out fuzzy because I REALLY want to introduce to you our friends: Alfredo and Fabia and their family have been a huge help to us in adjusting to our new home here in Brazil. They spend alot of time with us. We have quickly come to love them, and our kids love theirs.

Alfredo and Fabia are here in Manaus during a transition phase between works. For medical reasons, they have decided to leave the remote tribe they were living with for the past 6 years and work with another tribe that is more accessible. It has been a hard decision and seems like a huge setback, but we know that God directs in many ways and often it is not the way we would have chosen. Please pray for Alfredo and Fabia’s family as they get ready to start over again in another place.

While they are in between works, they have been helping with the NCLA (National Language and Culture and Aquisition) program here in Manaus for people like us.

At Home:

Isaiah is 14 months old tomorrow.

Cali still likes putting together the puzzle Marilyn gave her.

After a 6 week break for moving to Brazil and getting our bearings in this new place, we picked up where we left off in homeschool. Cali is wrapping up her “My Father’s World” kindergarten, and when she finishes that we will just continue to build on her reading skills with some easy readers we have, and practice math concepts in everyday life. I think we will only sit down and officially call it “school time” on Wednesday mornings. Most of our energy right now will be focused on learning Portuguese. We feel comfortable with this since Cali only turned five this summer and is already reading short vowel words, counting to 100, and getting familiar with the concepts of adding and subtracting.

Thank you to Mike and Lorna for the curriculum Cali’s finishing up now, and thanking you to Lorna and Jane Poynter for lots of homeschool talks, suggestions, direction, and motivation you have provided. I will be using the book you gave me this year, too, Jane.

Kiki also needs help learning some preschool level thinking skills, so we are doing things like puzzles, simple worksheets, counting, and categorizing. Keeping it light. She is getting immersed in a new language right now, too.

For those of you who haven’t already seen the quail eggs we posted on facebook, here they are again:

They were a kindergarten expiriment for Cali’s [qu] quail lesson. Aren’t quail eggs pretty? We found out they taste really good, too.

No [qu] for Cali to find on the package, though. 😉

Isaiah likes to cool off on the tile floor in our house.

And this is o amor da minha vida.

At the Mission

We spend alot of time at the mission property during the week. Jevon and I trade off days having language lessons and watching the kids. One of us could stay home with the kids if we wanted to, and we do if they seem to need a break. But as much as possible we like to take them with us. There is room at the mission for them to play outside (grass even! which is a rare thing in Manaus!) and Alfredo and Fabia’s kids are there for them to play with. Everyone assures us that kids learn language fast, but we know it isn’t magical. They have to be hearing and responding to the language if they are going to learn it. It’s good for them to play with Lais and Leticia and whoever else is around. Even the adults at the mission will take time to talk to our kids and play with them a little bit.

Cali’s nickname at the mission right now is “Cacao”, because when we first came here she was learning the names of some fruits and painfully mispronounced the word “cacao” as “cow-cow”. The worst thing was that she would walk around repeating it the wrong way all the time just for fun, so everybody was always trying to correct her. Now that she knows how to say it right, people still call out “Ei! Cacao! Tudo Bem, Cacao?” when they see her. She loves it. Since cacao is the fruit that cocoa beans come from, Cali seems to feel her new nickname fits perfectly with her Studtmann uncles’ name for her – “Truffles”.