February 22, 2007 Update

February 22, 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Another week has passed and we are doing great. I hope all well with every one of you in the U.S.

Our first week with the baby has gone really well. I have recovered very quickly from Joseph’s birth and Joseph is such a quiet, sweet little guy. He rarely makes a sound unless he is hungry or has the hiccups. As of Tuesday, he had already gained 9 ounces. When I walk with him in his sling, the people here are very concerned that he is squished or hot; however, he is very comfortable and snug just as my other babies were in it.

We are continuing to get more settled into our rent house. We purchased a refrigerator and a stove, so now we can cook and store food. The diet here is different from what we are used to, but the food is very good. I will have to learn to cook with the ingredients that are available here. For instance, our Argentinian friends who speak a little English have never even heard of peanut butter, or peanuts for that matter, as they are nonexistent here. We have been eating lots of dulce de leche (something like caramel that is made from milk and sugar and used to eat with all sorts of breads and cookies), polenta (like grits) with meat, milanesas (like chicken fried steak, but more Italian) with rice, fruit, eggs, and of course lots and lots of pan (bread). The diet here does not have much variety, but the food is good and carne (beef) is the cheapest and most available meat. Barbequing meat is very popular, but we haven’t done that yet; however, we did have some at Gabriella’s parent’s house. One of our new friends, Noelia, a baker, is going to teach me how to cook some things on Sabado (Saturday), which may expand our current diet a little.

They do things differently in the stores here. In the meat department, all the meat is laying in the case in huge pieces or slabs. The customer tells the butcher what type of meat and how much he or she wants and it is all cut there in front of you. You can tell the butcher exactly how thick you want your steaks, etc. I like this feature a lot. Furthermore, in the fruit department, there are bags that you fill with however much fruit or veggies that you want and then the attendant ties your bag closed and weighs and prices it. The eggs are sitting on a shelf or in a basket unrefrigerated and fresh from some local farmer. The customer takes as many eggs as he or she wants and puts them into a bag or carton. At the bakery, the bread is sitting out in baskets or in the display case and you have to tell the attendant what kind and how much you want and they weigh it out and price it for you. The one feature that we don’t like as much is the unrefrigerated ultra pasteurized milk. The milk isn’t that bad if you take it home and refrigerate it, but it will be nice when we have some fresh milk again.

Dane left for Buenos Aires with Elijah on a bus last night because our vehicle was supposed to arrive on the ship this Friday and the lawyer wanted him to come early to begin the paperwork process; however, he called this afternoon and said that the ship has been delayed until Monday. Due to this, he may leave there this evening and be back tomorrow morning. It would be cheaper for him to come home and head back there Sunday night than to stay in a hotel there for the weekend. Buenos Aires is a much more expensive place to stay than Obera.

I know many of you would like more pictures. We have not sent many because they are so large and we don’t want to tie up your computers all day downloading pictures, so we will send a few at a time.

I better stop writing for now and will try to write again soon. Take care.

Jessica



Sarah at the back door of our house.

Abby filling water bottles in our bathroom.

Dane’s office in our bedroom.

All our boys in our bed with Elisabeth in the background.

And me at our kitchen sink.

***I’ll have to get a picture of Dane to send to you so you can see how much weight he has already lost from all the walking. I keep teasing him that I’ve already lost about 30 pounds (from having the baby of course), but pretty soon he is going to need some suspenders, at least I have my regular nonmaternity clothes.

**************Reading this old email, I realize how ignorant we really were when we first arrived here in Argentina. For instance, they do know what peanuts are here. They are called mani and they do sell them in the stores and our neighbors even grow them. However, peanut butter is something they are not familiar with. The peanut butter that my dad sent from Florida was a big hit with the English students that we met in Obera. They were very excited to try something they have seen on television as a popular food in the U.S.. I'm not sure if it is available in other parts of Argentina.**************

Joseph Timothy Donaldson

Hello,

Sorry it has taken so long to get this information out. We are so busy here that time just flies by. The baby is doing great. I feel great too. He is very quiet and just precious. No, we didn’t name him John Daniel. He just looked more like a Joseph, so his name is Joseph Timothy. The 3050 grams turns out to be the equivalent of 6.7 pounds or technically 6 lbs 12 ozs. He is muy pequeno (very small) compared to the last four of our babies, probably why my labor was so easy and short. I was in mild labor for about two hours and fifty four minutes – hard labor for about 6 minutes – and we went to the clinic when my water broke. Joseph was born ten minutes after we arrived at the clinic – not enough time for the doctor to arrive, or my husband for that matter who left the room momentarily to check on the children in the hallway.

I have included some pictures for you to enjoy. We pray you are all doing well. Take care.

Jessica

Its a boy

Well, Jessica wants to name him John Daniel. I was expecting a girl so I told her I wanted to pray about it tonight and I would decide in the morning. He weighs 3050 grams (sounds humongous), when I figure out what that means, I will let you know J. Jessica’s Labor was very short and she said it was the easiest one so far. She is doing well, everyone at the clinic said that she could not be doing better. The baby is strong and in good health although very purple J. I took our camera to the clinic but I forgot about it until I got back home with the children so you all are going to have to wait until later for some pictures (sorry), besides they are always a little strange looking at first. Jessica is at the hospital with Natalia (an English speaking woman who has been helping us). I am at the house with the children now. Oh yeah, he was born about 12:05 on February 14^th.

I have our phone hooked up to the local phone line (until we get another phone, we can only use either the internet phone or the local phone line) in case Jessica calls from the hospital. They said that she will probably be able to come home tomorrow afternoon.

It really is funny to me how people interact with you when you don’t speak their language. When we were at the clinic, I went into the bathroom of Jessica’s room and tried to turn on the light. There were 2 identically shaped buttons next to each other and I (in the dark) pressed the one closest to the door and nothing happened so I pressed the other one and this alarm started to sound. So I tried to tell the doctor what I had done (it was a simple mistake) so she proceeded to take me around to all 3 of the nurse call buttons in the room and explain to me (in a kind way) that “this button is a light switch and that button is an alarm for the nurse, see the little picture of a nurse on the button” all of this in Spanish of course. I perhaps before I might have been offended because she was in a way insulting my intelligence however at the same time how intelligent could I be for moving my family to a country without speaking the languageJ. Anyways, I was not offended, in fact I really didn’t think anything of it at the time I listened and tried to understand what she was saying. It wasn’t until I was thinking about it later that I laughed to myself because it was such a simple thing. This is a very humbling experience and I am enjoying that part if things. The Lord has certainly prepared a path for us here in many ways that we can see much less the things we cannot see, but this experience of having to deal with life from a position of almost total ignorance should, I pray, teach us something and humble us because we are, in reality, far more ignorant than even this language issue helps me to realize. I pray that the Lord continue to shape me and my family into mature Christians and of course according to His will.

I am tired; it is 2:42 in the morning here now.

Dane

February 7, 2007

February 7, 2007

Dear Family and Friends,
Hello from Obera, Misiones, Argentina. We hope that this letter finds you all well. We are well and still trying to get set up in town while we make arrangements to have a house built on our farm in Campo Ramon.

This week we rented a house in Obera for three months in hopes that Dane can build a house quickly on the chacara. Right now it is a debate whether to build using wood or brick, so we have not made any formal arrangements to begin building as of yet.
The house that we have rented has two bedrooms and an external bathroom attached to the house that can be accessed by going out the back door. Dane bought a little device sort of like a bucket with a hose that you can fill with water and then plug into the outlet so that we can have some running water in the house for washing dishes or whatever else we might need hot water for. He also bought an electric shower head for hot water in the shower. After the first night in the house, we discovered that after dark, the house had a lot of cucharaches (cockroaches), so Dane sprayed the next day and the problem seems to be solved for now, something we are very thankful for. Yesterday we purchased some furniture: a table and chairs, a double bed and a bunk bed so now we are starting to feel more at home. We got a post office box and the address is: Jason Dane Donaldson, CC No. 16, CP 3360, Obera – Misiones, Argentina because if you happen to be away from the house when the correo try to deliver the mail, it just gets sent back to the sender, there are no second delivery attempts. Dane has to have a locksmith make a key for the box because they don’t give you one when you rent the box (strange isn’t it?).
All of our neighbors have been very friendly and are very willing to lend whatever help they can to us even though communication is very difficult because of our ignorance of the language. For instance, our neighbor next door gives us ice and the lady behind him, water (update: We do have our own water connection to the house now). The escribania, Natalia, (like a notary public) has been very helpful to us. She brought us a baby bed today and has accompanied me to two obstetrician appointments in order to translate for us. Her husband, Javier, has many connections in town and has helped Dane to get a work order for internet and telephone service even though that is usually very hard for a foreigner to do in a timely manner.
In many neighborhoods around here, the locals set up stores from their houses called kioskos. From these stores, they sell all sorts of things like: meat, yogurt, milk, eggs, bread, drinks, toilet paper, cookies, fresh fruits and vegetables, cigarettes, wine, light bulbs, diapers, etc. On our block alone, I counted six of them. This has been very helpful since it is some distance to walk to the supermercado (supermarket) and we don’t have a cocina (lit. kitchen but they mean stove) yet, it is necessary to buy food every day until we can get ourselves more set up. The prices for goods at these kioskos we have also found to be slightly cheaper than the prices at the supermarket.
We have found it entertaining that as we learn more and more Castillano, our English seems to be suffering. When we speak English to each other we tend to speak with a Castillano accent and use terrible grammar (something we have probably picked up from the few locals that do speak a little Ingles (English). The little children, Elisabeth and David, make up there own Spanish sounding words and speak to each other a mile a minute which is very funny to watch. We also make lots of mistakes when trying to communicate. For instance, Dane told the neighbor yesterday when he was fixing our water connection and theirs, "Yo quiero comer tu," which is, "I want to eat you." He was trying to tell her that he wanted to pay her for letting us hook up to her water until our meter was connected, but his words got jumbled. He corrected himself by saying, "Yo quiero comprar tu," which is, "I want to buy you," not much better than the first statement, but she understood what he was trying to say and we have laughed and laughed about it ever since. I have the same problem constantly. Today I asked for ten and half pesos worth of meat (about 6 pounds) when I just wanted two and a half (about 1.5 pounds) at the kiosko around the corner – the man looked at me like I was crazy and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until he asked me if I wanted the whole loaf of bologna. Then when I got home I made a phone call on our new phone: 011-54-03755-406640 (expensive call unless you have a great international plan – hopefully our internet will be hooked up soon and you can call us for free and us you on our VOIP phone (806-748-0695) and told the woman on the other end of the line that I was from Jessica, not that I was Jessica. Needless to say, the call was a total failure. I don’t think she understood a word of what I said and I certainly did not understand her.
We heard from Grandmommy that the superbowl was last weekend in the U.S., something Gabriella, our Castillano teacher, had never even heard of, and when Elijah got his American football out and played with the son of the real estate agent, Raul, that Dane purchased our farm from in the front yard, all the children from the neighborhood sat in the street outside our house to watch. They stayed long after the game ended and until we went to bed. I think that we are a most curious sight to our neighbors; however, as I said before, they are all very kind and helpful. Still, we are very anxious to get out on the farm and begin working with our own animals and the land in a much more peaceful environment. Raul did take us out to the chacara (farm) yesterday so that the children and I could see it before the baby comes. It was a tremendous effort as the farm is grown up in underarm high weeds in many places and is very hilly. It is very beautiful though. The children and Dane played in the waterfall at the spring and drank the fresh water that came out of it. Everyone reported that it was the best water they had ever tasted. The tea trees smelled wonderful and are pretty too.

We're Here

February 2, 2007

Hola family and friends,

We arrived safely to Buenos Aires Friday morning January 26th very tired from the all night flight but anxious to continue on to Obera, our final destination. We made our way out of the airport with all our things without even having to go through customs (I guess that they felt sorry for us or something with all the children in tow and not understanding Castellano – crazy Americans). The day continued to be one event after another:

1) First the hotel room that we had rented for the day so that we could rest was located in a building at the top of two flights of stairs and with no elevator. There was no way to get all of our luggage (750 lbs of it) up the stairs without a tremendous amount of effort, so we talked to our taxi driver who told us that we could stow our luggage at the taxi headquarters located just a block away from the bus station that we would be leaving from that night. We dropped off our luggage to be stored and then headed to the bus station to buy our tickets to Obera that evening.
2) Once at the bus station, we had to figure out from the hundred or so bus lines there which company would have a bus traveling to Obera that night. After an hour or so we found one and purchased our tickets on Expresso Singer and got five todo cama seats (seats that lie flat like beds). We then ate lunch and rested for a while. ******Just a note to those who might travel to Argentina in the future – if you plan to travel by bus from Buenos Aires to anywhere else in Argentina carry some tissue or toilet paper with you because you will not find any in the bathrooms at the bus station except that small amount that you can purchase from the full time bathroom attendant. Furthermore, most of the toilets do not have seats on them!)
3) After resting for a while, we took a taxi to our appointment with our lawyer in Buenos Aires that we had hired to help us through the customs process when our vehicle arrives into the country. The taxi driver dropped us off and we went to the address that I thought I had memorized as being Gonzalo’s; however, when we got there, no one knew who we where talking about. We walked back many many blocks in the rain to the taxi headquarters disappointed and confused because at this point we did not realize that we had the wrong address. We thought that perhaps our lawyer had packed up and closed up shop without informing us. ***We did discover the next day that we had in fact gone to the wrong address and the lawyer had been waiting with a customs broker for our meeting.
4) We waited for an hour or so at Manuel Leon Tienda, the taxi headquarters (a very nice, clean place with toilet paper and toilet seats in the bathrooms) before they returned us and our luggage to the Retiro bus station.
5) We waited for an hour and a half at the bus station carefully guarding our mountain of things from the thousands of people there until our bus arrived.

Our trip to Obera on the bus was nice and we got some much needed rest. In fact the children fell asleep before dinner was served that night and did not awake for breakfast before we arrived in Obera the next morning.

Upon arriving at the bus station in Obera we had the chore of finding a remise (taxi) that could haul us and our things to a hotel. We checked into a hotel for the night, rested, ate, and rested some more.

The next morning we moved to another hotel around the corner and have been here (Cuatro Pinos) ever since.

Every day we have searched for a place to rent until we can build a house on the chacara (farm) and have looked for internet service so that we can stay in touch with you all at home and so that Dane can continue to work for Brown-McKee. Furthermore, we have hired a Castellano teacher, Gabriella (a third year ingles student), who comes to help us learn the language every morning and who accompanies us around town as we try and communicate our needs with the locals.

The escribiana, Natalia, who speaks very good ingles (English), arranged an appointment with her obstetrician for me this past Monday. Dr. Frontini is more than happy to deliver our baby that is due in two weeks; although, we would much rather have our baby at home. We will continue to pray about this, as either option is going to be a hard decision for us to make because of the details pertaining to both. Anyway, she did a sonogram and the baby is healthy and so am I.

We are all doing well and getting in shape since we have to walk wherever we go. We are continuing to adjust to the schedule here. The people work from about 7 – 8 am and then have siesta from 12 pm (all businesses close at this time) until 4 pm (all the businesses open again) and work resumes and lasts until about 9 or 10 pm. My obstetrician appointment was at 9:00 pm which is typical around here.

We hope you are all well and hope to keep in touch as often as we can. When and if we get internet service at our home, it will be much easier to contact everyone.


Jessica