Scribbles in the Sun

I'm off on another whirlwind adventure tomorrow....this time to Summerland BC where I'll be looking after Chris and Angela's boys.  I'm so super excited to see everyone after almost 7 months of Hiebert withdrawl!   I'm attempting once again to polish my ninja packing skills and only take a carry-on because I'm too much of a cheapskate to pay for baggage that just a few months ago was free.  Harumph.  I'm quickly realizing that Canadian packing is different than Caribbean packing; a few sweaters and jeans take up waaaaay more room than tanktops and shorts in a suitcase!  But I'm determined.  I may wear the same 2 outfits for 10 days, but I'll make it happen.  Here is my suitcase all packed up! And now after closing the suitcase, I'm hoping I might make it to Edmonton in time to look for a new carry-on....the handle and wheels are all of a sudden misbehaving on this one!!! P.S.  I sent out a newsletter yesterday AND made a blog post toda...

So I've been mulling this over for awhile....and I even wrote the idea for this blog a few weeks ago on a grocery list and I've had to hold onto that outdated grocery list ever since.  I finally have a nice quiet morning to sit online and I really want to throw out that piece of paper today, so here I am blogging.  I've shared with a few people the awkwardness of moving back to Canada and trying to figure out greetings again.  In Venezuela I'm used to greeting people with a quick kiss to the cheek....well, more of an "air kiss"....and if it's a friend, that's usually followed by a hug. Of course, coming back to Canada, there's no better way to alienate people than by going around kissing and hugging everyone.  Now I'm confused; do I hug? Shake hands? Do nothing?  When I was talking about this with a friend, they mentioned to me that they felt people don't even shake hands very much anymore.  And I think that might be true, I've had my f...

As many of you know, I'm now back in Cold Lake, Alberta for my home assignment year.  It's been interesting getting used to being back for more than a week or two of holiday!  The local Walmart and Canadian Tire stores are still quite overwhelming but I'm definitely loving the short amount of time it takes to get around town!  It was a beautiful fall, and it was great to enjoy my first fall season in 4 years!  However, fall leads to winter and winter leads to snow.  There has been snow here for a week or two now and I'm getting re-acquainted with shoveling and  scraping car windows...Winter has lost a bit of it's romanticism for me!  I do look forward to celebrating Christmas with snow, and I pulled out my decorations yesterday in hopes of getting some decorating done this coming week. Sometimes I look through the Venezuelan news headlines, and this one caught my eye today:  A group of women made the world's largest hallaca !  This is like ...

Good news for the week:  we got our cedulas as well as the ID needed to sell our vehicles!  Thank you so much for praying!! Our paperwork is now all in place and the last few hurdles to jump are packing, moving my belongings to the Hieberts, Meetup group tomorrow, arranging to sell my car, a bit of last minute shopping and finally getting on the plane on Friday.  Still feels like a mountain of thing to do, but I'm thankful for a quiet day today to work on it. Of course, I love all things 80's ESPECIALLY hair bands so you will forgive me for posting the following video that came to mind while I was writing this.  What would the day be without some cheeziness from Kelly?

It's been a find-a-worm-in-your-mango kind of week.  No, really....today I took a nice big bite then saw a worm meandering through the mango.  Thankfully, I hadn't swallowed yet! Blaaaaeeech.  Right now this transition phase is a bit of a beast, it's tiring, it's a rollercoaster.  But there are bright spots, and I'm thankful for teammates, family, and friends here and back in Canada who are walking with me through these crazy days, worms and all! My great news for the week is that yesterday our passports were delivered back to us, with our visas stamped inside!! Woohooo!!!!!! Thank you to everyone who has been praying for this to happen!! That means that I am one step closer to home assignment.  My flights are booked and although there are still a few things to be done here (renew my identification card, arrange to sell my car etc) I can *almost* allow myself to get excited to travel.  Things are never set in stone here and plans can change in an instant ...

Just an update on the visa situation for those who are curious... I was able to renew my passport at lightning speed and got the new one in only one week! Today we were able to submit our paperwork to renew our visas.  I have a temporary visa for Venezuela, which means that I have to renew it every year, but the positive side to it is that I don't have to leave the country every 90 days like you would on a tourist visa.  I need to renew my visa before I leave the country for home assignment in Canada, because it was a pain in the rear to get in the first place and I sure don't want to lose it now!!  So now we wait for word on how long it will be, my hope is that it will be ready in under 2 weeks.  Right now we are sitting at just under 4 weeks until departure so it would really be great if God would speed up the hands that are dealing with our papers and passports!

It's been a bit of a stressful week for me here in Caracas....It's that time of year again, when I make the trek to the immigration office to renew my visa (which usually turns into 4 or 5 treks).  My last trip to the office yesterday included an officer who had no interest in answering any of my questions, who yelled at me (because he didn't understand what I was asking), and who walked away from me while I was still asking questions. I followed him out as he left the office, and he started yelling at another lady who had obviously been waiting to talk to him. I know that the Angers have also had some run-ins with him while they have been waiting for their ID cards but thankfully God gave me an extra helping of grace as I walked back to my car. It's been a rollercoaster, as we are still learning how things work here when it comes to our documents as foreigners but I'm thankful that it looks like things will work out so that I can arrive in Canada in August.  Would ...