6 Months Back

As of 11pm tonight Alyssa and I will have officially been back from Guyana 6 months. It has been a crazy 6 months with lots of change and major life decisions being made. We weekly reflect on our time in Guyana and often talk about it as if we just left last month.
While we get updates on the happenings in Monkey Mountain and other Peace Corps communities and miss it terribly, we are still glad we made the decision to return. Discussions of living overseas again have crept back into our lives, however, for the time being we are locked in for the next 2 years with graduate school.

Going Back to School

Alyssa and I having both been talking about going back to school ever since we came back from Guyana. Alyssa feels like she needs a few years of professional teaching experience before she goes back so it looks like it will be my turn first. 

As of Wednesday of last week I am officially attending Mars Hill Graduate School, soon to be The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. I'm going to be getting a degree in Christian Studies with an emphasis in global and social partnerships.  Here is the school's description for my program:

 "The Global and Social Partnership Track trains students in developing a mutual relationship with the world based on humility, curiosity, and context while advocating on behalf of God, humanity, and creation. Students learn to engage their local community with a global perspective, marked by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, while mindful of the shift toward a post colonial context."

Sounds sweet, huh?

I just registered for the fall yesterday and I will be taking some really sweet classes like the Intro to Hermeneutical Task: the Art of Reading Beyond Page, Faith, Hope and Love: ultimate relationship concerns and Interpersonal Foundations. As Alyssa said after the first time we visited the campus, "this place is made for you."

I still have no idea what I will use this degree for, but living overseas is coming into our conversations more and more frequently. As for now we have faith that this is where we need to be for this season of our lives. 

Pray for direction!

Road Trip to California!

Early May, Paul and I loaded up the car and drove down to San Diego.  Our visit was multifaceted. We drove down to see good friends, see Paul’s sister graduate from college, and spend some time with family (part of which was in Hawaii!).

We left from the Seattle area with the destination of San Diego.  It may have taken us three days to get down there, but we were so amazed by how beautiful it was.  Washington is completely different from Oregon, which is completely different from Northern California, which is completely different from Southern California (oh my goodness).  We’d done the drive once before, only in reverse, and a good part of it was at night so we weren’t able to see as much.  This time was all day driving. 

We tried to get a picture of us in the car.  This turned out better than the rest.

 Long trips require entertainment.  We didn't bring any, so I became the entertainment.

This is Sa'sa's favorite spot in the car.  Please notice Paul's sunglasses.

We used cruise control most of the way, but much to our dismay found ourselves back in six lane traffic mid-California.  Ugh.  I do not miss Southern California driving at all.  I went from a steady flow of traffic to absolute craziness.  I had to have Paul turn off the music and turn up the AC just so I could concentrate.  Yuck. 

Sa’sa was awesome.  One advantage to her being on the smaller side is her portability.  She slept most of the time in the back with the cooler, and we made sure to run her every few hours at a rest stop.  She’s a trooper.  I kind of love her.  

From this to this.....

Failure x 2

So, I failed to follow through.  Like I said before, our life for the first three months after Peace Corps was a bit mundane.  As you can tell from the next few photos, much of what we did revolved around cold weather and dogs. 

Paul's parents and sister did come to visit as well.  Strangely enough, we spent three months with my family and don't have a single picture to prove it.  

The first three months back were trying, to say the least.  We are incredibly overstimulated as North Americans, surrounded by constant noise in every sense of the word.  We still question why we are back in the United States, especially earlier than expected.  We loved our time in the village and talk about it every day without fail.  I don't think that was the last time Paul and I will live overseas immersed in a different culture, but for now we are here and enjoying time with family, friends, and the comfort of warm showers.

Failure

It's been my turn to update the blog for awhile now.  Seeing as how we are both unemployed and living with my parents, there was little blog-worthy to talk about.  Our life was rather boring and I'm sure you wouldn't find anything we would have posted interesting.  I'm not exaggerating.

That has changed.  May has been nothing short of wonderful.  I pinkie promise to update the blog (with photos this time) before the week is out.  Don't give up on us!

Love Alyssa

Things That We Appreciate and Miss (now that we are home)

We apologize that it has been such a long time between posts. I decided that it would be a good idea to share with all of you some of the things that we appreciate about the U.S.A. now that we are home and some of the things that we miss from Monkey Mountain. I (Paul) have been attempting to add one item to this list every day as a way of readjusting to life back in the states. Check it out:

Things I Appreciate

-Good, cold beer

-Health care (trust me, we are not socialists)

-Instant communication
-The cold in general

-Good infrastructure (cities, businesses, etc.)

-Proper community development

-Christian community

-Food choices (Bread, fruits and veggies everyday, orange chicken)

-The quiet

-personal space

-Ice cream

-Cold rain

-Democracy

-Friends

-Family

-Choices, choices, choices!

-Healthy dog

-Fire places

-Reliable transportation

-Customer service

-Veterinary care

-Blue water

Things I Miss

-Focus on the family

-The village life

-Some people in the village

-Freedom

-Nature

-Warmth

-Lisa and Marlon (Our neighbors)

-Stillness/ sound of silence

-Heat

-Hikes

-Bathing in waterfalls

-Nature sounds

-Owning our own house

-Hammock time

-Not being forced to spend money

-Exotic animals

-The sun

-Simplicity!!!

Bringing Sa'sa Home

Paul, Sa'sa and I are home now, safe and sound, and have been for a little over three weeks now.  Crazy story though - the one in the middle almost didn't make it.  

Sa'sa has strangely become the center of our world.  It's a frightening glance as to what we may be like with children of our own.  In preparation for bringing her home we did all matters of research possible.  She was used to planes, having flown on several while in a cardboard box (see below)

 We made sure her shots were up to date, the kennel was exactly the correct dimensions with the right specifications.  We double checked with Delta to make sure she was booked on the flight.  We double checked the fee to get her home - $200 (US, not Guyanese - sigh).

The one thing we didn't do was make sure our credit card hadn't expired.  It had...in January.  Declined. So we tried the debit card.  Also declined, this time due to a shortage of funds in the account.  I had phone numbers for Peace Corps staff and volunteers, only no cellphone.  The payphone in the airport required a phone card, sold outside the building.  I ran to the shop only to find a rather unhelpful man that would only laugh, shake his head, and say, "I don't have those."  Grr.  Disaster.  Tears.

After almost bursting into the sobbing type of tears in front of a security guard, a man with a heart of gold let me use his cellphone.  :)  I called a volunteer, still thank goodness at home, and had her transfer funds from our savings to checking account.  She's pretty amazing.  We ran the card, again, only the same answer - declined.  More tears thinking about my dog forever being a Guyanese dog.

\

So now I'm crying, sitting in front of the kennel with my sweet, helpless Sa'sa in it when a little girl, sweet as can be, comes over asking questions.  "Is this your dog?  What's her name?  Is she nice?  Why are you crying?"  Awfulness.  Serious awfulness.  I'm crying through the answers.  Finally though, a very kind airline employee helped Paul call the debit card company who confirmed there was enough money in our account.  Card still declined and I'm shaking thinking about leaving my dog in Guyana.  A few more swipes of the card and it magically went through.  :)

With just enough time, we ran Sa'sa through security, ran ourselves through security, and grabbed some snacks for the flight.  As we walked to the plane I asked a guy in a fluorescent jacket if a puppy made it aboard.  He said she had.  Success.

Paul and I have slowly adjusted from life in the South American jungle to the rainy (and sometimes snowy) woods of Washington.  Well, we're working on it.  Sa'sa, on the other hand, is doing just fine.

From One Rain Forest to Another

As many of you know Alyssa and I recently left Peace Corps Guyana.

Don't worry everything is fine. My leg was not bitten off by a Jaguar, and no Alyssa is not pregnant, sorry Mom.

After experiencing a year of Peace Corps, we decided that coming home is what was best for us. While there are many factors that contributed to this difficult decision, the isolation, lack of village support and things going back home left us overwhelmed and feeling disconnected.

A few weeks ago we moved into the Alyssa's parent's house in Washington State and have hunkered down to attempt to resocialize. Fortunately, we are surrounded by beautiful forests (see photos) and we have not just been thrown back into city life. We have ventured out a few times only to realize that we have to re-learn to drive a car on the right side and walk into a grocery store without our eyes completely popping out of our skulls, but today we were able to walk into a coffee shop and order a drink. Success!

Our plan from here is to spend a few months processing the last year of our life and then to focus on getting jobs and finding a place to live. Alyssa has, of course, decided to get an upper grade teaching position and to go back to school to get her masters in reading, while I have decided to re-pursue junior high ministry at a local church and go to seminary. The prospects seem slim right now, but we are confident that God will provide.

We would love to talk to all of you and share more of our story, but as you can imagine we are a bit overwhelmed. If you want to chat send us an e-mail and we can set up a time to skype or something. 

Thank you all for your support and prayers. Please continue to pray for our sanity, direction and discernment in these next stages of our life.


As always, this blog will document our life adventures, so please keep following us.

A statement that requires no explanation

Sunrises and Sunsets

 Our favorite time of day here is the evening when the sun starts to go down and the village begins to quiet for the night.  We make dinner, do dishes, bathe, put the chickens in the coop, and play with the puppy.  The next two hours are spent under the mosquito net, reading or writing, sometimes just listening to the frogs and crickets outside if the village shop’s generator kicks off early enough.

It’s beautiful.  It’s simple.

And it all begins the next day with the sunrise.