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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Wrapping things up in Santiago

Here is a compilation of pictures and happenings from our last ten days in Chile...

How we do grocery shopping
(Caleb is on Jimmy's shoulders...poor guy needs a massage!)
Barbecuing in the quincho area of our building one last time.  There were supposed to be four couples, but in the end it was just us, Matt and Jessica, and our kids.  The boys always have so much fun with Jessica!
Looks like she's doing interpretive dance, but she was just throwing up a football.


Turning the crank handle that raises and lowers the grill


Landon loves hiding under this little counter.  He just barely fits!

"Un nariz azul mommy!", Caleb yelled to me while painting in the living room as I cooked dinner.  I was excited about his sentence formation, and thought he was telling me about painting someone's nose blue in his coloring book.  Turned out he had painted his own nose blue and was telling me about it proudly.



Video of Landon dancing with the Handy Manny tools, click here.


Caleb's turn to play.
Drumming and singing...

Taken by one of the kids...




During the last two weeks in Chile, Caleb pretty much stopped taking naps.  I was devastated.  His sleep schedule is a mess and his routine is all off, and now this.  This picture was just a few days after stopping napping when he fell asleep for a cat nap while watching a movie.  Now that we are back home we are getting back into a routine and (praying) maybe he will return to napping again when he isn't so overtired...



The day before we left it was very cold and too much so to play in the backyard, so we went out front where the sun was shining more to let the kids play.  Gloria and Laura were with us, and Laura had her new motorized moto that she had just gotten the day before on Easter.  She was nice to let the boys ride it, and they had a lot of fun.  Landon even figured out how to make it go (well, unintentionally).  See video here.



There is a tiny little bakery one block over from our house that someone told me about early on in our time in Santiago, but the one time I tried going in the end of February they were closed for vacation.  I finally got to go the day before we came home.  Its called Dulceria Violeta, and it looks like a little garage or side room of someone's house that has been converted into a full bakery.  Except for this small sign I would have never known it was there.

I don't remember the name of this, but it is basically merengue with manjar (like dulce de leche or caramel) inside.  Yum.

Jimmy thought it looked awful, but it sure tasted good!  Sorel and I enjoyed it ourselves after dinner on Monday.

Monday was Caleb's last day at Pipo :(  People have asked if it was hard to leave Chile, and my answer is that we were ready to come home but not ready to stop taking Caleb to Pipo.  He might not readily admit it, but he had a lot of fun there, and learned so much in just three weeks.  Now I need to do some research and put my thinking cap on to figure out what we can do with him here.... I doubt there are many all-Spanish nursery schools or preschools in Lodi... Spanish speaker Play Group?  If anyone knows of something or has suggestions I'd love to hear them!


These little play areas are in the front yard of the school and for the last week of school Caleb and Landon wanted to play in them each day before we went home.



Eating his grilled cheese sandwich - this came to be expected and I brought one for him each day for the three weeks, and he would eat it as soon as I would pick him up.  This day he ate it in front of the little play house.


When I picked him up they gave me the project they had been working on all month, along with his Easter treat and summary of what tasks he knows how to do, and which he has yet to learn.  This wasn't an easy thing for the tias to assess Caleb since during the first week and a half or two he didn't talk hardly at all, even though several of the things they were practicing he already knows, like his shapes and colors.  It is still interesting to see what they were able to see, and give me ideas of what else to work on with him.
Easter Bunny cups that were filled with little candies for each child. Caleb said he thinks it is a cat, not a bunny.  :)

When I saw this book I understood what Caleb had previously told me about painting with blue one day, and painting with yellow another day (you may remember me mentioning that in earlier posts about Pipo...).  They were painting the backgrounds for this book.  The other days when he told me about cutting and gluing, it was also related to work on this project.  Its fun to see the details of what he was sharing each day come together into a finished product.
"My house and my garden" - This was the theme for the month.
Part of Caleb's explanation of the cover included pinta (paint) and pega  (glue, for the green paper) - apprently he remember the instructions he was given of what to do.  He also pointed out the red manzanas  on the trees.

The book opened up into a tryptic with three different scenes...

This looks like his classroom, with little hooks for their backpacks (mochilas). The roundish paper next to the little kid is some scribbles he did that are supposed to represent a human body (maybe himself?).  The blonde lady with the blue dress is Tia Andrea, Caleb told me.

This is like the backyard at Pipo where the kids play each day, with some ducks and chickens, slides, and toys.  They do have several live animals in back, including birds, chickens, and a few other things I can't remember.  When I asked Caleb to tell me about this panel, he pointed and said "patos" (ducks).  

Lots of painting, gluing, cutting, and it looks like threading and molding for the tree on the right., although when I asked if he had threaded it himself, he said "No, they did it for me." 

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