Mi Madre!

It must be something in the water or something that has to do with the holidays all around that have gotten me thinking about family and so many people that are so close to me. I've been on a cooking craze lately, wanting to try new things and also wanting to make some recipes that I haven't made in awhile or that I've never tried to make. Of course, cooking always reminds me of my mom. I am thankful for my mom for so many reasons (we'll get to that later) but one thing I am so thankful for my mom is that she is a great cook and has tried to pass some of that down to me! I will never ever think I am as good a cook as my mom, but the funny this is that I hear her say the same thing about her mom about certain things she cooks! I just hope one day my kids will say that about me! So here are a few reasons I am thankful for my mom:

My favorite cookie recipe of all time, and of course I still don't think mine taste as great as my mom's. I think that's partly from the weird brown sugar we have here in Guatemala. :) Mmmmm, M & M cookies!

My Thanksgiving dinner, just my two favorites: turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy. My gravy will NEVER ever live up to my mom's but this is one thing that she says she can't make as good as her mom either. I don't believe her though! I miss good brown gravy so much! :) But I do have to admit, the mashed potatoes were pretty good. I hadn't made real mashed potatoes in a long time!

My favorite thing to wake up to on Christmas morning. Not sure if mom knows she has made it a tradition, but to me it is! I made one over Thanksgiving. It was great, but again, not quite as good as mom's! I gave a piece to the guard downstairs in my building and told him it was a family tradition to eat this!

Mom and daughter relationships are a funny thing. When you are really young, you want to do everything like your mom. You want to dress like her, you play "house" and say the things that she says, etc. Then you enter into the lovely preteen and teenage years when you tell your mom that you hate her and don't want anything to do with your mom. You don't want her to drop you off by the door in case anyone sees you. Those kinds of things. And then this weird thing happens when you get older. You start to hear yourself saying things that your mom says, you find yourself doing things and having the same mannerisms of your mom. At first, you're kind of like, "OH NO, I'm turning into my mom." And you go into a sort of panic about it. Then one day it hits you, "Wow, I'm turning into my mom." And you feel proud about it. At least for me, this is the series of phases I have gone through. And it feels so nice to be in the last one! :) I find myself wishing I could do things like my mom. For example:

-I still cannot tear saran wrap off the roll without making a mess of it. I don't know how my mom can do it. If she ever does have trouble with it, I sure have never seen her!

-I wish I could make brown gravy like my mom. I know I have mentioned this before, but it deserves to be mentioned twice.

-I wish I knew how to have everything hot at once for dinner.

-I wish I could plan meals for the week and make one grocery store run and get everything at once.

And I'm sure there are many more! I am finding myself more and more like my mom. I couldn't stand having a maid, because I came home and things weren't where I left them. I am anal about certain things, not quite as much as my mom, but I'm sure that's where I got it. At least from her side of the family (my grandpa was the most anal person I knew!). I think I got my stubbornness from my mom too. I like things done my way and if they aren't I usually choose to walk away. Not to make a scene or whine about it, but just to walk away. I fold my underwear, I keep my clothes in order or long sleeves, short sleeves, sweaters, etc in my closet. When I start making my bed before I leave in the morning, I will start to get worried! :)

I am glad I have a mom that I can learn so much from and that I'm now proud of myself when I find myself doing things "like mom does." :)

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving was a little strange for me this year. I haven't been home with my family and enjoyed my mom's Thanksgiving dinner in at least four years. Since graduating from college, I've made it home for maybe one Thanksgiving. Even that year that I went home, I bought a cheap ticket and I'm pretty sure I flew back on Thanksgiving day. BUT, I've done some really cool things for Thanksgiving. Just a few examples:

Thanksgiving 2008: Spent on the beach in Costa Rica, warm weather, experiencing a new country, hanging out with two new friends, trying new beer

Thanksgiving 2007: Spent in Manila, Philippines, with my best friend from Korea, on a last minute trip change, I think we bought our tickets less than a week before, because they were cheap and our trip to Vietnam fell through. We had no idea what we were going to do in Manila, but we went and made some fun memories!

Thanksgiving 2006: Went to Shanghai, China with three great friends from my school in Korea. It was my first trip after moving overseas and we had so much fun. It was my first Asian vacation experience and we laughed a lot that trip. It was great.

Thanksgiving 200?: Living in CT, got a hotel room with Allison and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade live.

Thanksgiving 200?: Cooked Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment in CT and invited over all my Latino friends there, attempted to tell them the Thanksgiving story in Spanish, and share in an American tradition with them.

Thanksgiving has changed, as to not necessarily always being with family and watching football on this day. It always fell so close to Christmas vacation that it seemed silly to buy two plane tickets so close together. It was never really that big of a deal to me. Not sure why it seemed like a bigger deal to me this year. I finally figured out, it was because I wasn't traveling and keeping myself occupied. Thanksgiving didn't really seem like Thanksgiving when you were in an airplane and then landing in another country. It just seemed like a four day weekend that was a great time off school and a great time to travel. This year, I had the opportunity to travel to a few different places, but none that were really jumping out at me and I put off travel plans until the last minute and it just wasn't happening. I was totally fine with it, actually looking forward to getting a lot of sleep, not having to deal with people for a few days, getting some things done around my house that I needed to, getting some shopping done, etc. I had a few invites for Thanksgiving dinner, but for some reason I just felt like if I wasn't celebrating it and having dinner with my family, I didn't want to celebrate it with someone else's family. Not sure what spurred this on, but it just felt weird. Like I was cheating on my family or something. I know, call me weird. It's ok. So I cooked my 3-lb turkey breast, made some real mashed potatoes and had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy on Thanksgiving night. By myself. And it was actually quite nice. Of course I would have rather been with my family, but since I couldn't, I just preferred to be by myself this year. Thursday was just a normal day here in Guatemala, no Pilgrims and Indians to be thankful for! I went to the COPA airlines office and redeemed my voucher that has been sitting on top of my tv for a year, bought a ticket to celebrate my birthday in May in Costa Rica. Went out to lunch at a fondue restaurant, felt some tremors, just a normal day here without working! Friday night, one of my friends who is engaged to a Guatemalan, invited me over for a Thanksgiving dinner with Guillermo's family. I wasn't going to go and she knew it, so she called another friend and told her to bring me! haha. So I went and it was really nice. Dinner was great. Before dinner we all went around and told what we were thankful for. I was second to go and attempted to do it in Spanish! Who knows what I really ended up saying but they all just smiled. It wasn't until then that a tear started to form in the corner of my eye really missing my family. I wish I was there with them. It was just really nice listening to all of them talking about what they are thankful for, getting some baby time in and being a tia for a few hours, and at least knowing that I will be home in two weeks!!!! It's always about this time of the year that home seems so close yet so far away! I can't wait to squeeze each of my little niece and nephews, eat some IHOP with them, get a slush at Sonic and a blizzard at Dairy Queen! Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, being thankful. Things that we should be doing every day of our lives, right? Why do we always whine and complain 364 days of the year and give thanks one day of the year? OK, OK, so that might be a little overexaggerating, but so many times that's what it seems like. I want to live my life in much more of a thankful mode than I have been lately. I've never really thought of myself as a negative person or someone who looks at things half empty, but there is always room for improvement! :) So here is my 2009 list (although I'm sure it won't be complete) of things I am thankful for.

I am thankful for a mom and dad that love me no matter what, that have loved me for 30 years, that have always believed in me, that have always supported me, encouraged me, that have punished me and told me no when need be, that have sacrificed probably even more than I can imagine to give me opportunities that they never had, that still let me climb into their bed at night even though we don't really all fit anymore, that laugh at my stupid jokes, that come pick me up and take me back to the airport at odd hours so I can get cheap flights, that cook my favorite foods for me, that spent hours watching softball games, that have never once made me doubt their love for me. Thank you mom and dad for everything you have done and everything you still do for me.

I am thankful for four beautiful niece and nephews that are healthy, that make me laugh, that make me cry sometimes because I miss the everyday things in their lives, that make me smile pretty much on a daily basis. I love that they know who I am even though I have never lived in the same state as them since any of them have been born. I love that they call me Tia Kammie and try to speak "Spanish" to me. I love each and every one of them in such a special way and am so thankful for all of them, even when they wake me up early in the morning! haha

I am thankful for my two sisters, who have put up with their baby sister for 30 years, who have shown me lessons that I can learn from whether they were intentional or not, who have welcomed me in their homes when I come back to Missouri, who have cried with me, who have laughed with me through the good and bad parts of our lives.

I am thankful for the beautiful white sand beaches that God made. I think he had me in mind when He put these things together all over the world! Beaches are by far my favorite vacation destination. I've always said I wanted to have a destination wedding on a beach somewhere. I love the sound of waves crashing on the shoreline. I love the beautiful blue skies that are so often found at the beach. I love the smell of salt water and being able to forget about everything else and just relax in a chair and soak up some sun! Thank you for beaches!

I am thankful for airplanes. Airplanes are how I have gotten home to see my family for the last 12 years. Airplanes have taken me to some incredible destinations in the world. Airplanes have carried me to see friends and relatives that I have not seen in a long time. Airplanes have become a fairly significant part of my life these days. I am definitely thankful for the ease of travel in today's world and being able to fly to far off destinations without much stress!

My friends.....I am so thankful for my friends. It is amazing to me every time I think about the amount of people that have meant so much to me, even if just for a stage, of my life. Some of my friends have come and gone and some will be stuck with me for the rest of my life. I am so thankful for friends who have stuck with me through thick and thin, who have shared tears of joy and tears of sorrow together. Friends who have shared in deaths of loved ones, friends who have shared in new jobs, in births of young ones, my "aunt club" of friends. I have met some incredible, incredible people on my life's journey. I am thankful for those that have joined me for a short stint of that journey and those that have come later on the path and are still here. Living far away from home, my friends have literally become like family to me. I am so thankful for them!!!!

Not that I could by any means do justice and talk about all of my friends here, but here is just a quick sampling: Alexa-I don't think I could have survived two years in Korea without her. She is my soulmate friend if there ever was one. We are about as alike as night and day in some respects, but yet we mesh together like mashed potatoes and gravy. I am so thankful for Alexa and for the fun yet sometimes undesireable memories we made together. I am thankful for her amazing heart and her good spirit and optimistic attitude about life. Alexa is a huge part of my life and it's been one of the hardest adjustments about moving to Guatemala, no Alexa time.

Nancy, my fancy Nancy! I only got to spend one year in Korea with Nancy but we sure made the best of that year. I am so thankful for that year that we had together and for her heart for the little kindergarteners at our school. I love you Nancy and am thankful that we have crossed paths and may our paths continue to cross many more times!

Mike and Gretchen Miller, what great friends. Gretchen was my soul sister from the very beginning. We spent two years in Korea together and she and Mike really were my family there. I have adopted her kids as my niece and nephew and shared in good and bad times with them. So thankful for their fun spirits and loving hearts.

Wendy Fryatt, a lifelong sister/friend! She is like another big sister to me and more recently has become a friend to me! I am so thankful for friends that I enjoy traveling with and can travel well with. Wendy is definitely that for me!

Natalie B, my kindergarten buddy! I am so thankful for friendships that can cross paths time and time again and pick up like they just left off. Natalie and I have stayed on very close paths, chosen far away paths and have come back together on the same path! It's so fun to have a friend that you were in the same kindergarten class with! I am so thankful that Natalie has remained a part of my life, that our mom's have funny stories to tell about us together when we were 5. What a great lifelong friend I have to be thankful for!!!

Rebekah has been such a solid rock friend for me. Rebekah came into my life in the 6th grade when her family moved to our church at the time. We always went to different schools, always lived far away from each other, yet had a special bond that kept us very close together. Rebekah is such a dear friend that I can't imagine not having in my life. I am so thankful for my childhood churches and the lifelong friendships that were created there!

My Rona! I lived in Connecticut for four and a half years after graduation, went through several jobs there, and finally settled down with a homeschool teaching job for three years. In those three years, I also settled down into a church family, a small group Bible study during the week, and made some great friends there. I have wonderful memories that were created with several of those girls, but Rona is so dear to my heart. I am so thankful for her. This was a period when I was really searching myself out in a lot of ways. Rona was a friend that helped me to have fun, yet keep my feet on solid ground.

Just writing these descriptions of my friends makes so many more come to mind. Allison, who helped me out of so many pickles when I had first moved up to the northeast. I was such a mess in so many ways when I thought I had it all together. ha. She helped me find my way around Westchester County when I was lost, she helped me find jobs, she gave me a bed/pullout sofa to sleep on when I needed a place to stay, she fed me, she helped me to stick it out when I really didn't think I could.

Mary and Michael, my roommate(s) in Korea. haha. Not really Michael, but what great solid friends they are to me. So many many many laughs that were shared in Shin Dong A apartments. Not enough hok doks eaten together and too many pizzas ordered from our apartment!

So thankful to my Ouachita girls, Wendy, Emily, Susan, who have been there through so many things with me. Wendy showing me around Africa, Susan getting tearful phone calls when I didn't want to call and shed them to my mom, Emily being there to listen and talk through the loss of my nephew.

I mean the list could just go on and on. I really have so many people and THINGS to be thankful for as well.

I am thankful for my job, that I have a great work environment, a great boss to work for, that I get a paycheck every month.

I am thankful for a beautiful apartment, although a little scary during tremors, but having a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in at night.

I am thankful that I have food to eat at every meal. I probably have enough food in my house to last me another six months without going to the grocery store.

I am thankful for so many things and I hope that I can continue to see those things day in and day out for this upcoming years and many more. Thank YOU for reading this! :)

Spanish Classes

This year our school has started offering us Spanish lessons on campus. It's great. It costs about $100 for lessons for the entire year, two days a week after school, right on our campus. It's awesome. I'm in a class with about six other teachers, we have a fun, easy to understand teacher and I get to work on understanding and speaking Spanish for an hour. Quite the deal. I have really enjoyed it so far. We just started a few weeks ago and had our third class today. So, I get to class, exhausted, sit down, am talking to my friend, we start class, our teacher is telling us what we are going to do at first, he tells us to write one sentence in our notebook answering his question, and we're off. He takes off his jacket to settle in, I look up as I begin writing, and lo and behold what is he wearing??? A Kansas City Royals t-shirt!!!! I couldn't believe it! The Royals!!! I of course asked him about it! I said, "Royals, verdad, los Royals???" He said, "oh, si, de Kansas City." I said, "Yo se, es mi cuidad, es mi equipo!!" (I know, it's my city, my team!) I couldn't believe that I was witnessing someone with a KC Royals t-shirt on in Guatemala. So of course I had to take a picture of my teacher, Juan Carlos, and I in his Royals shirt! Too funny!

Writing Course/Therapy

Tonight I just finished my sixth master's class out of nine in my program. This was one of my favorite classes. We had an awesome professor which makes a world of difference but also I loved the course. It was called Teaching the Writing Process. And boy did we write. It was great. We wrote from picture prompts, we wrote from story starters, we wrote from our heart. Writing for me is kind of like therapy. I can dig deep and write and possibly share it but it is more for me to just get some feelings out and let those things off my chest. I really used this class for that! :) Just trying to get my money's worth! We also talked a lot about going through the whole writing process. I am definitely a "I like to write one draft of something and turn it in" kind of writer so it was kind of hard for me to actually go through the whole process, but it was great. Conferencing with other colleagues, revising, revisioning our papers, getting other's opinions, making me dig deeper. Tonight was our last class. Our professor had asked each of us to write a piece, go through the writing process with it and share it in class tonight. I decided to write a letter to my nephew, Noah, who we lost almost three years ago. I wasn't sure I could read it in class without crying so I recorded myself reading it and put it to music and pictures. Despite my quick and nervous reading, I was pretty proud of the way it turned out. Just thought I'd share! Hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed remembering our precious Noah and getting to write to him.

Ready to Go Home!!!

It's always about this time of the year that I start getting really ready to go home!!! Christmas tickets are bought so early and I kind of forget about it for a little while! Then I make it all the way through October and all the sudden November is here. Wow, it's November 2 today! Crazy. Then I start thinking about Thanksgiving and needing to find something to do for that long weekend and then suddenly I realize that after Thanksgiving there is like two more weeks left of school before I will be leaving to come home for Christmas break!!! When it's so close, it makes it hard to wait!!! I just saw all these really cute pictures of my niece and nephews dressed up for Halloween and it made me really miss being home. They are getting so big and sometimes I feel like I am missing so much of the day to day things. I came across this picture from the summer and it reminded me of how much I love each one of these little lives. They are so precious to me. I can't even imagine what it must feel like to know that this life is actually a part of you. I can't wait to go home and spend every minute spoiling them and loving on them. And of course to see my parents and my sisters and brother in law too! :)

As I was looking at this picture, it reminded me of a conversation I had with Sam this summer in the car.
Me: "Sam, I don't want you to grow up. I just want you to stay small forever and be my little Sam."
Sam: WHY?
Me: Because when you get big, then when I come home you won't want to do things with your Aunt Kammie and you will just want to hang out with your friends and not spend time with me when I'm home in the summer and for Christmas.
Sam: (Crazy laugh) No I won't Aunt Kammie. I will always invite you to my birthday party.

Awwww, the innocence of a young child. I hope he always wants to hang out with his crazy Aunt Kammie! :) I am so ready to be home and to see all of them and give them all a giant hug!!

Work Group

Last Sunday, I went to Antigua to work with a group from Blue Springs, Missouri that was here. I met Emily last year when she and her husband were here adopting their son. I knew them through a few different connections and met up with them to have dinner one night. I found out that Emily was bringing a group from her church to come down here for a missions trip. Then I found out that an old old lifelong friend and her mom were also on the trip. I have known Lisa and Amie for pretty much my entire life! Amie is a year younger than me but our parents even go way back. I grew up with them. I hadn't seen either of them in several years but it was really fun to reconnect and see them in Guatemala!!! I met their group on Sunday morning and helped them out with construction at a small school outside of Antigua called Kairos. We mixed and carried buckets of cement for the good part of the day. It was hard work but it's always nice being able to serve with one another side by side. It was a hard day but as always good fun was had as well!

Roatan, Honduras

I'm going to try to get back to blogging. I do the same thing time and time again. I get so overwhelmed at everything I feel like I want to blog about and then just don't do any of it. Baby steps, baby steps. I am taking a writing course right now in my master's program so it has inspired me to start writing more. We'll see how it goes.

We had a four day weekend in October for Revolution Day here in Guatemala. About three weeks before, I got an email from a co-worker that said, anyone interested in going to Roatan Honduras (a beautiful Caribbean island with white sand and clear water beaches...aaahhh)? She said, we are going to charter a plane there. I was like WHAT?!?!? A chartered flight. Well, when it came down to it, it was cheaper if we could find 19 people to go to fill up the seats on the flight than it was to buy a commercial plane ticket. And the flights on TACA airlines make three stops and take about 5 1/2 hours where our flight made no stops and took an hour and 15 minutes. Oh and we could pick our departure times for coming and going! So I signed up, and 19 of us were headed for paradise for four days! Chartered flight and an all inclusive resort, doesn't get much better than that in my opinion!

This was our plane that took us to and from Roatan. Just us and two very young pilots! :)

Here we are getting on the flight! No going through security, no getting to the airport two hours early, nothing. The company did all of our departure taxes and passport checks in Guatemala before we left. We just showed up about 6:30 and were in the air by 7. Oh and they even have a parking lot where we could leave our cars right by the hangar.

Because of our early departure time, we got the resort, had breakfast, and were on the beach in paradise by 10 am!!! It was awesome. The beach was absolutely beautiful, not too crowded. Maybe partly due to the political turmoil in Honduras, but we didn't mind at all!

Where I spent a lot of my vacation!

What more can you ask for, even the ice cream man walks up and down the beach?? :)

So beautiful, I couldn't get enough!

Cold beer, waiting for us at the all inclusive!!!

Each night, the resort had an "activity" that you could take part in. On Saturday night it was a beach party! It was so fun, they had fire spinners and then dancing in the beach bar with a dance off and all. So we were dancing and the girl with the microphone was calling out different places and getting you to cheer if that was where you were from. There were three of us girls there and we were cheering for Guatemala. So the girl says, hey there are some more friends from Guatemala back there, come up here and dance with these three girls. So these two guys came up, Steph and I were dancing with them. I asked him what he was doing here, for the holiday? He said no, for work. I said, oh so you live here? He said no I'm just here for work. I asked how long he said he arrived that morning and was leaving Tuesday. I said, oh me too. I asked what he did for work and he said he is a pilot!!!! They were our pilots!!! haha. It was too funny. So we hung out with our pilots for the weekend too! They were fun! Then one night was karaoke night. They only had songs in Spanish so a few of us tried them out. Yes I even sang! haha. They had wigs and all for us to wear. Here is our pilot in a different uniform. haha.

The beach bar where we spent most of our time. It started storming on Sunday afternoon and rained all Monday and the rest of our time there, so we spent a lot of time here playing games, cards and hanging out. Dance lessons, games, drinking, so fun!

Even in spite of the storm, we still managed to get a little more beach time. Here is my famous feet on the beach shot! :)

We had five kids in our group of 19, so I had fun being Aunt Kammie for a few days. They were so cute and so fun to watch play and interact with each other. They had a blast playing in the sand.

Playing cards on the beach!

And of course I always enjoy getting to know the locals a little better! :)

Flying back home. We met some other people that were stuck on the island. TACA was not flying any planes out of Roatan when we were scheduled to leave. People were stuck in the airport for a few days. Because we had our own plane and we did not have to make the stops in the places where the visibility was also bad, we were able to wait until the visibility cleared in just our area and then we ran out to our plane and took off! It was only a little bumpy at first for like ten minutes and then we were in the clear the rest of the way to Guatemala.

So on our plane ride home, I really had to use the bathroom. The small plane had no bathroom, just a place in the back where the luggage goes. I knew I wasn't going to make it the hour more that we had in our trip. So I ended up having to have one other lady stand in front of me while I dropped my drawers and filled a cup and a half up with pee in the back of the plane. No shame here. Then I was in another dilemma, what was I going to do with two cups of urine for the rest of the plane ride. No fear, we had a couple empty bottles that I had to dump my pee into. It was quite the experience and I can now say I have peed in the back of a plane. haha. Something to be proud of. Right...... So here I am with my bottle and a half of urine. Never would have guessed that I could pee that much in one sitting. Over 20 ounces. :)