Getting more settled

It hasn’t been an easy week, but we can finally say it’s been a week of progress.  As for me, after several weeks of stomach problems (including a couple of bouts with salmonella), it looks like I’m finally better.  Actually, it’s a bit ironic that I should say that tonight – I was just talking to someone on the phone, telling him I would have called him a couple of days ago, but I’d been sick!  But that was a migraine attack – a more normal state of affairs.  🙂

Shari is over the stomach problems too, though a nasty cold has replaced them.   Nathanael is a lot better – his recovery was very gradual, but he’s much more like his old self these days.  And Hannah?  She bounced back very quickly.  Whatever secret vitamin she takes, we should all take.

So we’ve been working from dawn until dusk – ok, somewhat after dawn until long past dusk – catching up on paperwork, unpacking and generally getting settled.  We finally got some major pieces of furniture, including this microwave stand.  “Rústica” furniture like this is big in Mexico, and very big in Cuernavaca.  We´re expecting some dressers and a cabinet in a similar style to be ready in a week or so.

Walmart and Office Depot have also been sources of furniture, and some of our appliances came from Home Depot.  So we’ve done the big chains as well as the carpenter or plumber down the road.   But it’s been a tremendous blessing to get some of these things so that we can unpack a few of the many bins.  Our landlords have also been a tremendous help giving us advice and showing us the ropes.

We’ve also been able to finally replace a bad tire (thanks for your help, Tim!), and work on some other issues with the van and house.  So we’re feeling a lot more settled than we were at the beginning of the week, although we still need to catch up on all that sleep we lost when we were sick.

Tomorrow I will go for my placement test at the school, and Lord willing begin classes on Monday.  We’re still working out plans for Shari and the kids; Shari will likely get a tutor for now, so that we can switch off with Hannah and Nathanael.  The nice thing about this school situation is that we can change things as we go along.  There are classes on culture and history that we want to take, but those are all in Spanish, so we’ll start with our grammer and conversation and take on more later.

So we’re still hoping for a little more sleep, but we’re praising the Lord that we’ve finally been able to accomplish some things that we’ve been working on for several weeks.  There’s a lot to learn, but we’re learning little by little.