The return

7/31/2013

It is 11:40 on Tuesday night, and we have been traveling for a little over 24 hours.  I reach for the key, whose presence I have verified countless times throughout this journey.  With key in hand I look up at the number on the door, 601, and it hits me like the tropical heat; we are home.  This 6^th floor apartment, in a city far from the life we dream of, is home.  After 6 weeks of living out of bags, we can empty the bags and put them away.  They were 6 wonderful weeks .  Too short, too fast; but in the big trees and cool nights of the Northwest.  With the grand conversations and warm hugs of friends and family.  A people and place to build a dream around.

And here we are walking through the door, returning to the familiar of where we have spent the last year and where we will live the next.  This is home for now, it is going to be a good year.

Twenty four hours of traveling have given me time to realize the confusion/inanity of our current station, we live two lives.  Two lives aware of each other but separated by 38^o latitude and so much more.  Two lives both good, both blessed.  Two lives one here the other far away, one current the other for another day.

Planting, a good start to the year.

The garden, it made it through the summer!

Orange trees and Ceibas.

The makings of a good weekend; Wendell Berry poems, knitting, and bird watching.

Tomato and basil seedlings

Hopefully the tomatoes and basil produce and spice up our cooking!  It is a little bit of an experiment to see how the temperate selected seeds fair in the tropical climate.  There isn't much selection of tomato varieties down here so I brought back what seeds I could find.  If anyone has some left over Sweet Million or Sun Gold Cherry Tomato seeds please let me know, I would love to try and grow those here!

April, March, and June

5/25/13

It was year ago that we were in and around the Skagit Valley for Ski to Sea and our friends wedding.   It was a phenomenal week remembering our friend Kevin, making new memories, and renewing our connection to that place, its community, and ground.  Sometime during that week we realized that the Skagit area was where we were going to settle and put down our roots, we just didn’t know when.  And now, exactly a year later, signed and notarized documents are on their way back to the valley to complete the purchase of our house, barn and land.  What a year it has been.

The last two months have been filled with long weeks of school and many rewarding days in the classroom.  We haven’t traveled on weekends as we have been saving every peso for the down payment, but weekends at home have been refreshing at times and we have made some spectacular lasagnas.  Other days we have been homesick, tired, feeling down, but we keep moving forward.  Working towards buying a place we thought we could only dream about has been very hopeful and at times frustrating.  Only three weeks ago when we were days from closing, the large bank we were working with came to us with some ridiculous demands and a terrible rate after they had said everything was good.  They were too big to be helpful.  So that plan fell apart, but thanks to our amazing real-estate agent we found another bank that has worked with us, and it is nearly ours.  We should officially close on Tuesday or Wednesday. 

We have one week of classes, a week of exams, and a week of teacher wrap-up stuff before we are done for the year, but the end is in sight.  We know we can make it from here.

Other Notes:

I have learned to knit in anticipation of having a few wool-producing sheep.

I have been reading A place in time by Wendell Berry and Teaching a stone to talk by Annie Dillard.  Both are phenomenal books by incredibly talented and thoughtful authors.  I am also reading The Brothers Karamozov, by Dostoyevsky.

My plants have been growing very well, especially after I gave them some fertilizer.  I couldn’t find the slow release organic type that I like, but the plants are happy with the needed nutrients.

I have been sick and missed school three different times this semester.  Tara has done a great job taking care of me.  I am not used to being sick and missing school.  In my first 4 years of teaching I took only 2 sick days, and I am up to 8 sick days this year. 

5/30/13

We got the call this afternoon, the sale of our place closed!  We officially are home owners.  We were too tired to do much celebrating, plus I had cheating cases to deal with (disheartening) and tests to correct so I could get them back to students tomorrow.  We'll celebrate when we see it!

6/7/13

I am finished, exams are graded, grades are in the grade book.  The school year is done, and I am listening to The Queens of the Stone Age. It has been an interesting week, the joy of finishing the year that was so daunting in August, mixed with the dissapointment of dealing with 10 cheating cases in the last week.  Having a student cheat is disapointing enough in itself, but when they lie to you it really hurts.  I have to remind myself that these individual cases don't represent all of the students.  In fact I even got some nice notes from students on the exams.  "Mr. Van Loo, thanks for everything.  I had a good year with you and also I learned a lot! Thank you!"  I really do love teaching, and my students.  I had a number of mini-celebrations today, while correcting exams, for students who excelled.  And there was also heartache for the students who bombed the exam, or failed the course.  

It has been a very rewarding school year, and it may be the first year in my teaching career when I am excited about next year on the last day of this year.

 

And to close it out the ever classic funny response to an exam question:

 

Q:  Explain how traits are passed from parents to children.

 

A: Traits are passed from parents to their children when parents do things and the mother gets pregnant......

Thanks to Carmen for the photo of our house!