Penguins

I'm a believer in art.  I drew this little picture en lieu of reading more words - articles, pages, and left-brain kind of thought. I felt the need to exercise my right brain; it just hasn't gotten nearly enough in the past few days.

I believe that right brain exercise is important: art, beauty, imagining, creating.  I start to feel like a broken down machine - with a headache - when I neglect those parts of myself.  So there you have it - a penguin greeting us in our window.  Hello there!  

Maybe it's because of the Irish in me, but I do feel that laughter is a great anecdote for fear, stress, and enraging scenarios.  Sometimes I am probably at risk of resorting to it too often.  There is a place to be serious, but also one to imagine, pretend, and to frankly enjoy and "make fun" of whatever is happening.  

Otherwise, how can you begin to find perspective?

All I Wanna Do

Trave

Ling

Acros

Sthe

Coun

Try

Is

Goo

Dfor

Thes

Oul

Eve

Nif

Not

By

Carbut

Bypla

Ne

Itclea

Rs

Thehe

Ad

Andre

Stores

The

Soul. 

Choosing Sheryl Crow was a good idea as we drove through the burning lilac and golden green landscape of Utah.  That electric wahhnnng wahhnngg and the boombadaboom of the bongos definitely soaked up the sun (song reference pun intended!).  Singing out those lyrics that have been tattooed on my mind since I listened to her premier album in fourth grade resurrected the past just a little bit.  When that past plus this present all crash together, I'm reminded that life is constantly moving and reinventing itself, which makes the future feel a little brighter, a little enlightened.  Now fourth grade is a million miles away from this part of route 80 West that we're on (which just so happens to be the same highway taken to the mall where that Sheryl Crow album was purchased) in this Buick born during those ancient days.  

But the West!  It is WIDE and WILD if you haven't met it yet.  Idaho is more than a dust pan and lamas; it is filled with beautiful stretches of green and yellow farmland that lie under this gigantic bright blue sky that inches up just enough at the bottom edge for some mountain peaks.  This is where the deer and the antelope, the elk and the bear all play (or kill).  In fact, Yellowstone warns travelers of the WILDlife by including a bright yellow piece of paper, accompanying a map of Yellowstone, showing a cartoon of a tourist being flung by a bison with the caption, "Many tourists are gored by wild animals each year."  They also had a similar horrific sketch of a little boy being splashed with acid from the ground as he stepped off the boardwalk and onto the geyser's surrounding toxic land.  As we walked through the woods one night, looking for hot springs, we were greeted by a poster asking, "Are you ready for an attack?" and highlighting what to bring or do in the case of an encounter with a bear.

Bear spray?  We were supposed to bring bear spray?

National Parks can feel a bit like a theme park, so it's good to be reminded that these are wild places and somewhat dangerous.  One of the hikes we did was ANGEL'S LANDING which I can picture on the letters of some worn out boardwalk roller coaster.  The Zion NARROWS gave me the same vibe.  I wish I knew what it felt like to see these places as a settler for the first time, after trekking across the desert for so long without knowing if there was anything but dust ahead.  The Southern canyons of Utah is God's kiln, hosting pots and sand castles that are mostly works in progress.  The geysers of Yellowstone are another planet, as smoke and ash are spurting up from the land around you or welling up in rainbow colored paint pots smoldering with chemicals.  And you don't even need a passport or rocket ship to go to these places. 

Sheryl Crow wasn't the only person on our hits list.  In fact, Cat Stevens does a pretty good job of setting the tone, along with Simon and Garfunkal but not to mention Jimmy Eat World, Regina Spektor, Postal Service, and other mixes which provided prime sing-along time if the passengers are GAME.  Our travel wasn't limited to the ancient Buick either, as we probably would have ended up on the side of the highway instead of cruising down it.  No - we drove, we jammed, and that is how a little piece of the west was won.

Now here's a little bit of Sheryl for the closing photo montage.

Grand Teton National Park

Yellowstone Geysers

Yellowstone

On the streets of Ogden, UT

The Great Salt Lake

Up in the Uintas, UT

Uintas

Uintas

Uintas

Idaho

At the foot of the Grand Teton

Tetons

Antelope Island, UT

Dias para las Tias

For the past three days we’ve been offering spa service to the Tías. From 12:30 until 4:00 the Tías can come to our guest house for facials, manicures, or pedicures. We’ve been playing peaceful spa music, or Enya, along with decorating the table with crackers, cheese, grapes and boiling water for hot chocolate and herbal tea.

Over the past few weeks I have gotten to know all of these women through the English classes that I’ve been teaching along with helping them in each of the three houses with the children. Most of the time there are three Tías in each of the three houses: the baby house, the toddler/preschool house, and the special needs house. The special needs house is right below our guest house and we often hear them playing music at around 8:00 in the evening, imagining all of them having a dance party down there.

At 8:30/9:00 at night I have gone over in the dark to the preschool house just in time to hear the children going to bed or a Tía reading or praying with them as they drift off to sleep. A couple times I have gone over and little Joshua or Josue has been sitting on the landing, being punished for not wanting to go to sleep. I only know he’s up there by the little feet that are sticking out of the railing. Meanwhile, I sit with the three Tías below the stairs and teach them the alphabet song.

That moment of rest at the end of a busy day is when I get to see their personalities exhaled, which is really enjoyable. We’ve played matching games with vocabulary words such as crib, blanket, bottle. The first game that I created I drew amazing pictures of the items and they had to find the matching Spanish word. Each day I would teach three different groups of Tias, so it was fun to see some of them excel and others laugh and fumble at their lack of English knowledge.

In the baby house there are two Tias that are around my age: Nancy and Alisha. Alisha brought us out to her house in the countryside one day and says that I know more Spanish than I speak, which makes me laugh. Whenever I walk in I hear, “Senorita Saaaaaarah. Beunos Dias!”. There was one afternoon when I was looking for some social company, so I visited them while the babies were sleeping and showed them pictures of Scotland, Europe and friends back home. They both came into our spa a bit camera shy, despairing with a smile at any picture I would take of them.

There are some other Tias that I click with more than others. There’s Merry from the toddler house, who one of the other Tias jokingly referred to as Merry Christmas during one of our games. She’s very funny, in a dry kind of way, and seems to get a kick out of the children, wanting to mess with their minds a little bit sometimes (in a playful kind of way, which is right up my alley). Isabel strikes me as a strong woman yet retains this sense of loveliness and openness. There’s also Marcia, who has a harder looking face and is stooped when she walks or stands because something has happened to her leg. But when she feeds the babies or works with Thalia (who has special needs) she sings to them in the most motherly way, gently holding them and rocking them.

All of the Tias come with their own way of disciplining and mothering the children, carefully watched and monitored by the directors here. Most rooms have cameras , making them very intentional about how they instruct or play with the children. We’ve been told not to pick the toddlers up as much because once we’re gone they start to cry. Everyday all of the toys are disinfected and every piece of laundry is washed. I’ve had to sit and wash the balls in the ball pit: it was not the most fulfilling task, especially since I wanted to shoot the children’s music that played on repeat in the background.

Giving back to the Tias and offering them a day of treats was so wonderful for us. Sometimes I felt like I had found my true calling, since I strangely enjoy picking at things – therefore, picking at people’s toes and nails all day was actually quite fun for me. Jen would pull off their fask masks when they were finished, Sharon would carefully paint their fingernails. We were like the Asian nail places, only we were speaking English amongst our Spanish speaking Tias – quite humorous.

The kids here have such a wonderful home as a consolation to their lack of real family. When the children are adopted, it must not be easy for these women to let them go, but they know they have to. They’ll have a place in the child’s photo album of their years here, but continue on raising children and babies until others are ready to do so.

Muchas gracias, Tias.