We're Here!!

I know, I  know, we're already behind on sharing our adventure with you.  I'm going to cut myself some slack (which is something I'm working on during our sabbatical anyhow) and remember that in the past 12 days we have traveled with two small children to a foreign country, started language classes, acclimated to a million new things, and made some huge decisions about our year.  So, at the end of the day I've been pretty tired and blogging hasn't won out over sleep.

But we do have a lot of stories to tell, so here goes (in some sense of chronology)...

Our travels here were long but pretty smooth.  Staying with Michael's Nana for 10 days and then his parents for three weeks before we left was the best decision we could have made, for everyone's sake.  It gave us a chance to get regrounded/regrouped after a really intense summer and to be loved on by some of our favorite people in the world.  At some point when I don't have a ton of stories and pictures about our first week in Guatemala to share with you, maybe I'll go back and share some more about our summer, but for now let me catch you up to the present.

Landing in Guatemala City (for a family that isn't too keen on big cities to begin with) was no bueno -- picture us at 8 o'clock at night, with a cart full of luggage and two kids who have never left the United States, standing in the airport "meeting area", surrounded by Guatemalans -- many of whom were simply there to pick up their loved ones, some of whom were there to try and sell us things, and presumably some of whom were there to see if we were naive foreign tourists who were going to let our bags out of our site -- was quite a way to start our time here.  Oh and did I mention our hotel shuttle wasn't there as planned and we didn't have their contact info handy (this is where we do win the award for naive foreign tourist :( ).  Our hotel "shuttle" (aka an old Volvo station wagon with no seatbelts) arrived after about 15 minutes and off we went...

Relatively uneventful first night in Guatemala, which was good.  And then we were off to Antigua to spend our first week here and then head out to Lake Atitlan to see where we ultimately wanted to settle.  We never ended up going to the Lake; after a week of time here and a very fortuitous encounter with an expat who had a lot of great perspective on living in Antigua and the expat community here, we decided to make Antigua our home for the year.  In all honesty, that first week was rough because I don't do well with uncertainty/having too many choices, so not knowing where we were going to be living was causing me a lot of internal struggle.  Ultimately, it mostly came down to two questions:

1. Where were we going to have the best balance of immersing in the Guatemalan culture that we love, while still connecting with other English-speaking expat families?
2. Where were we going to feel the safest? This was a concern of ours that I remember expressing to the director of the school out in San Marcos de la Laguna (the little hippie town on Lake Atitlan that we were considering moving to) last spring, since I've never traveled abroad with kids and was worried about access to medical care in case of emergency.  Add in Gemma's fall from this summer, which still has my nervous system on pretty high alert, and that an expat baby died in San Marcos due to (what it sounds like) was lack of access to medical care last week :( and our decision was made.

So, Antigua it is.  We toured an amazing Montessori school here and the kids are stoked about attending.  We are about to sign a lease on a really sweet townhome near the school.  Every expat we meet here suggests that we get a car, but part of why we love Guatemala is walking everywhere and having the opportunity to even briefly interact with the locals...

"Buenos dias" and "Buenas tardes" being two of the kids' best phrases already!! <3

So, no car for us and instead a house near the school, even though it's on the very outskirts of Antigua.  More on the new school and house in a subsequent blog... I don't want to overwhelm you all with too much in one post.

For now, the gist is that we're adjusting relatively well.  Gemma's been a little more agitated than normal, which we think is part of a very normal adjustment to "what the heck is going on here" but both kids have been loving Spanish school and are really excited about starting preschool.  Damien has already mastered counting to 100 in Spanish and with his incredible photographic memory is remembering a ton of Spanish words already.  Gemma, so sweet, is often asking or telling us about the colors in Spanish.  And for Michael and I, our conversational skills have come back pretty well and we're mostly working on the (ever so frustrating) things like verb conjugation.  So the language immersion is going well and as we get more settled hopefully the cultural immersion will continue to grow.

I'll stop there for now.  The pictures do the best service to our time here.  And just the general notion (and if you noticed, the name of the blog) that we're living at a slower pace and trying to remember what our most important values are as a family...

Hope this finds you all thriving in your lives and we look forward to more frequent posts on our end, and more communication with you in the weeks and months to come...

With love and a deep breath,
Selena (and the rest of the LeFevre Shelley Family)

Family selfie!!

Ready for some travel!!

Each with their own carry on....

First you go up...

... Then you go down!!

And sometimes you just make a bridge (that's what happens during a four-hour layover!)

<3 <3 <3

In my twenties, when I would travel abroad, I'd always love taking pictures of my last steps in the U.S. and my first steps in the country I was going to.  With little ones in tow, you can't really do that on the fly, so let's call this our close-to-last steps in the U.S. (and not even pretend that with the craziness of landing in Guatemala we stopped to take a picture of those steps! :))

I think the captain said this was somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico

Desayuno tipico... huevos, frijoles, platanos, y pan.
(Our first meal in Guatemala!!)

My loves!!

This is probably half disbelief and half curiosity... a turtle in our hotel breakfast area!

Hola tortuga!!

Our beautiful apartment complex for our first week in Antigua!

The kids are totally enamored with these beautiful flowers (I can see why)!

Girl on a mission

Be still my heart!!

Again and again!!

The way her curls glow in the sunlight is just incredible!

We bought these snazzy new rainjackets for our trip, but other than one day where it almost rained haven't needed them.  Part of me loves that, and part of me knows that it's a sign of global warming since we landed at the end of the rainy season.

 Oh the walking... did I mention how much we love the walking!?  We've been averaging about 13,000 steps per day since we got here, partially due to the fact that we walk 45 minute to Spanish school each morning!!

I wish  would've taken a "before" picture because these nachos are immense!!  It's one of our favorite restaurants from when we lived in Antigua 12 years ago -- the prices here (and everywhere in Antigua are higher now) but some things never change!  And yes, to answer the question of the day -- we're eating and letting the kids eat whatever we want here, since following all of our food sensitivity limitations while living abroad would be a nightmare... so far, so good!!

Michael went in a little travel agency to ask directions to our Guatemalan friend's salon...  10 minutes and three other Guatemalan people's help later (reference super helpful/friendly people here :)) we still didn't know where the salon was, but at least I got some cute pictures of the kids!

Did I mention the architecture and history here? <3

For a dude who loves volcanoes (and anything in the category of natural disasters) having this as our view every day is pretty incredible!  

'Nuff said!!

And then this... <3

The moments where living at a slower pace means this... <3

And this!!

And not to be outdone, this!! :)

First time having ice cream.  

And if you can believe it, first time having (real, dairy) ice cream! No surprise, they're both hooked!

The (chicken) bus station!  Oh and did I mention the view??

When you're at a park in a foreign country,  you only have your diaper bag with you, and your kid's semi-loose tooth gets bonked by the swing, you use... a sock to see if it needs to come out! ;)   Wasn't quite ready, so no Guatemalan tooth fairy visits yet!!  (Apparently the tooth fairy here pays 5 quetzales, which is about 75 cents.)

Modeling himself after the locals, carrying their goods on their heads/backs.

The kids playing "family" like Damien used to do with his BFF at Wild Sage.
Gemma usually decides she's going to be the daddy and Damien gets to be the mommy!

In Parque Central, watching the cannonball explosions... not sure what they're celebrating, but every few minutes a loud bang happens and smoke and then confetti appear in the sky!

Marimba band concert in Parque Central

With some really great dancing, and the backdrop of the ruins and the volcan.

Joining in the fun!!

Yoga meets marimba dancing!!

That's it for this installment.  Hasta luego...