What Is Happening?

The last month, or so, has been full of news. All of which I want to share, but have not had the time to put it all into written word as of yet. Part of that is because of the emotions involved, and part because I have been so busy running to and fro to various doctors. Following is my attempt to explain summarize it all.

Patrick Visits

My good friend Patrick Borter came to visit his fiancé, Nyna (who also happens to be my sister-in-law). It was really good to see him, especially since he had some adventures getting here.
We really enjoyed having them to our house a couple of times, and just kind of hanging out together. When we did make it to Nádya's parent's house on a couple of occasions it was quite fun for the whole family to be together (Well, nearly the whole family. Jr. still lives to far away—in Parauapebas—to come visit for things like this. We missed him.) for a short time.
Patrick and Nyna are awaiting their fiancé visa, and the last time they were together was in September of last year.
What photos we have of the visit are here.

The Move

We have moved. We are once again living with Nádya's parents. It was not exactly our first choice, but with Nádya returning to work, and me going under the knife soon (keep reading for more info on that), we were running out of options for child-care.
Also, amerInglês has lost a lot of students in the last few months; mostly due to financial difficulties. So the student's financial difficulties became ours.
It is kind of comical, when one steps back from the situation, looking at us trying to fit the stuff from our house into our room. Ha! We might get the 3-D jigsaw figured out someday. More on this later.

Health

Some members of my family in the States has had some pretty serious health problems of late. Here are a couple, followed by my own situation.

Grandpa

My 93-year-old grandfather recently fell—I have not heard why, but my guess is that he was pushing the limits of his abilities. ;) He likes do live that way. Anyway, as a result of the fall he ended up with a blood-clot in his lower leg, and is in the hospital.
Grandpa is an old farmer; he does not go to the hospital for something minor (like cutting off part of a digit, or splitting his head open after falling off a ladder). He is an “It's only a flesh wound!” type of guy.

Rebecca (Karl's Cousin)

Rebecca was in the hospital for a few days (maybe a week—I lost track because of so many other things going on) because her platelets were so low. The diagnosis is “Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura.” Which is medical speak for “blood problems of an unknown cause.” (Okay, so that might not be an exact translation, but that is what it means to me.)
She is on the mend at home now (since last Thursday), but still does not have much energy, and is on chemotherapy treatments. Her platelet counts have been measured at six—when the low end of normal is 140-150.

Karl

For a couple of months I have been experiencing some abdominal pain. At first I thought it was nothing, but when it persisted I decided to go to the doctor. I don't know how much of the time since my first appointment we have spent traipsing around town going to one doctor and another, then to the insurance company to authorize exams. But it has been more than enough.
Long story short: I have a gall-stone, and need to have surgery to get it out.
That means that I will be in the hospital for at least a day, and who knows how many days of recuperation. We are waiting for MediPlan (our health insurer) to approve the operation, so I don't know when this will happen, but probably this week sometime. The doctor wanted to do it today, but MediPlan is dragging its feet.
We will try to let you know when we know more.

[composed and posted with ecto]

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This Week's Update

There have been a few questions recently about how the English School (amerInglês) is going. Here is an update:
Its going well.

What... that wasn't enough? Okay.

After tonight's class, I have the next two weeks off. Well, that is sort of a figure of speech, as this project does not really get taken care of without me.

The students seem to be continuing to enjoy the classes, though it seems that December has taken its toll on attendance. We have been consistently adding students, and even though we have lost a couple we have more than we started with.

One of the things I am constantly challenged with is not having a space that is just for the school. We are seeing that it would greatly benefit from having its own building, and that is a dream we may not see the fruition of until a few years down the road.

We have many ideas about what amerInglês will look like in the future. Its not something we really want to just abandon, but at the same time, we know that we cannot live here for an extended time at the moment.

Maybe saying those things will create more questions than they answer. Ask away. Now on to the rest of life.

We are now at nine weeks with the pregnancy, and all that goes with the first trimester. Nádya is counting down to the three-month mark—she has been drinking a lot of coconut milk lately.

I posted the big news of this week yesterday, but did not send out an email about it, as I knew I would be writing again today. Here is the link to that post.

The pastor of my church at home has, as a mutual agreement with the elders resigned. He is leaving at the end of December. This is not as a result of some sort of sin, or anything. Its just a transition due to a huge combination of circumstances that I am not going to go into here. I took this pretty hard at first, but I know that God has good things in store for Evangel.


If you have questions about anything, we would love to hear them. I know people read these things, but I don't always know what you are most interested in knowing about.

Technorati Tags: abandon, evangel, circumstances, elders, fruition, counting down, figure of speech, email, coconut milk, Our Activities, pregnancy, taken care, Our Story, teach english, first trimester, consistently, live here, constantly

Full Weekend

Since I started having classes on Saturdays, the weekends have flown by even faster than ever. If you have ever taught on a regular basis, you probably know that being responsible for one hour worth of curriculum, class control, and knowing the answers to random questions can be taxing. My classes are two hours long, and I have three of them every Saturday.

I am not saying that I don't enjoy it. I do! I am saying that I am quite finished by the time the end of the last class rolls around.

This past weekend was quite full, and interesting, so I thought I would share some highlights in this post.

Saturday marked the end of Lesson 1 in the course, so the students had a test. After they took the test, there was still some time left in my first class, so I asked if they had any questions. One of the students had a song on his cell phone that he wanted me to write out the words. I asked what band it was. “Whitecross,” he said. I was not sure whether to be stunned, or just laugh out loud.



At one time I had three CD's, and two of them were from Whitecross. I now have many more than three CD's, and I don't know what happened to my Whitecross albums. It was quite a trip down memory lane, though. The song he wanted me to transcribe was “In The Kingdom.” Evidently, he had been at a show they did in Rio de Janeiro (and so was another student in the same class!), so it was a trip down memory lane for us all–except for Nicholas, who is about 14. I think he liked the music, though. Wasn't '80s hair metal great?

As I mentioned, I gave a test Saturday, and my students did pretty well. Of eleven students, six scored above 96%, the lowest score was 75%.

Sunday was the election runoff, and while Nádya went to vote I indulged myself in a Stock Car Brasil race. It was an interesting race in that it took place in Buenos Aries, Argentina–and it had just rained. Every lap, or so one car would go off the track and get stuck in the dirt. Then caution would be called... Yeah it was not the best race I have ever watched, but it was an auto race, so I “had” to watch it.

The things that made the race interesting are the differences from NASCAR. The cars are slower, but the track is not an oval (oval=boring). They ran the race, even with the track pretty much drenched; there were several near-accidents from hydroplaning.

Other differences I noticed were that the doors on these cars open, unlike NASCAR, and the pit crew seems to just wear matching street-clothes. I think I have only watched two of these races, so I want to watch a few more to see if I like it or not. If you are interested in more about this, let me know.

Sometime in the past week I updated my profile for this site. Have a visit, and let me know what you think (I already know that the age is incorrect.).

Oh, and if you are interested in the election outcome, Lula will continue as President of Brazil.