More drama than I wanted

I just got back from a trip to the US. Don't get me wrong, it was wonderful, it's just that there was way more drama than we are used to down here. Since moving to Mexico, our idea of drama is two hummingbirds getting into a spat, or the neighbor deciding to paint his house lime green with purple trim. But I did learn some important lessons for next time.

It started with a late night flight to Portland. There is only one direct flight to Portland daily, and it leaves at 8 pm. Walt dropped me off at the airport. We noticed on the way in that they were burning the grass around the airport. A common occurrence, but this fire was pretty cool as it was bigger than most. The immigration office at the airport was open so I got my FM3 stamped. A good start.

Sitting at the gate, we noticed that the flight board had a couple of cancellations, and other flight appeared to be delayed. My flight had no information at all. Hmmm. A half hour before the flight, the board changed, and all the flights were either canceled or delayed. When the Mexicana staff was asked, they admitted that the grass fire had gotten larger, and the airport was temporarily closed. Don't worry, everything would be normal soon. Stay around the gate. I went down to Starbucks and got on my computer. Walt had already turned his computer off, but I was able to send my sister in Oregon an email letting her know we might be late. She responded and said to call her when I got into Portland.

I went back to the gate and called Walt, and realized that the minutes on my phone had expired. No cell phone. I looked around to buy a new phone card, and realized that I had left home with no pesos. The store did not accept Visa. The only store that accepted Visa had no phone cards. I looked around at the pay phones, some of which only accepted Latadel cards, and some which took other calling cards. One phone took Visa, but I figured I wasn't that desperate. Then the flight board said that the plane would be 2 hours late taking off. Stay around the gate.

4 hours after we were supposed to take off, the airport reopened. Our plane had been diverted to Puerto Vallarta, so we would have to wait for it. Another hour. Stay around the gate. One o' clock in the morning, the plane came, and we started loading. Half the plane was loaded when word filtered down that Portland airport was not going to accept our plane. By the time we would arrive, their customs office would be closed. So we all got off the plane, and were told to stay around the gate. Or maybe we should go get our luggage, and then come back and stay around the gate. Maybe the flight would go in the early morning. At this point I decided that no one knew anything, and I was going to try to get the next day's flight, so I went down to luggage (the luggage had obviously been unloaded from the plane hours before), went to the ticket counter and cancelled my ticket and made a reservation for the next night. (Are you sure you don't want to wait? My supervisor says the flight may go soon, if you stay around the gate...)

Now to call Walt. I put my ATM card in the machine, and it decided that it had expired, and it kept it. OK, not panicking, no cell phone, no money, no ATM card. I still have Visa. Except that the pay phones only accept Latadel or International calling cards. I found one that would allow collect calls, and discovered that our Vonage phone would not accept collect calls. I was thinking at this point that I might cry...Considered IMing Adam in Thailand, and asking him to call Walt and tell him to come to the airport and pick me up, but decided that was ridiculous...Finally found a phone that took Visa, and made a credit card call to our Vonage phone. I had to call that phone because the Mexican phone was in another room, and Walt would not hear it. Praise God, Walt woke up before the answering machine kicked in. I said, "I'm still at the airport". He assumed I meant the Portland airport, and told me to call my sister. When he realized I was still in Guadalajara he raced to the airport (30 minutes from home)

The next night with pesos in my purse and minutes on my cell phone, I took the flight to Portland. The immigration office was closed, but my stamp was only a day off... got a first class seat, we arrived on time, no problems. Except that my luggage went to Oakland instead of Portland.

More drama to be continued...

More drama, Part 2

Because we had already missed a day with my parents, my sister and I drove straight to Sublimity. Got there at 2 am and went to bed. Of course, I had no luggage, so I slept in my underwear, with my contacts soaking in eyedrops. I'm sure the luggage will be delivered the next day.

Morning came, put on my same old clothes. It was wonderful to see my parents, it had been a year. Late in the morning, my dad came in and said he felt a tightness in his chest. My sister asked if he wanted to go to the hospital, and he said yes. (Dad will never voluntarily go to the doctor) Turns out Dad had a heart attack. Sublimity is a small town, and they wanted him to be under the care of a cardiologist, but the Salem cardiology section was full, so Dad was flown by helicopter to Portland. (He offered to fly it, but was politely turned down.) We followed in my sister's car. We got there about an hour later, and Dad had already had an angiogram, angioplasty, and had a stent put in. We visited with Dad for a few minutes, during which he said he never wanted another helicopter ride, that they were noisy and there was no reason they stayed in the air, and then we went to my sister's house, about 30 minutes away.

We stayed up near Portland for 4 more days while Dad recovered. I bought a few things at Target so I'd have something else to wear. After a couple of days, I could feel the lack of my meds, which were in my suitcases. But all things considered, who cared? My brother Jon came out from Colorado, and we 4 kids and Mom had a lot of fun catching up with each other. Finally Dad got to come home, and we drove him back to my parent's house. At the back door, wrapped in garbage bags, were my suitcases. Dad is getting stronger and feeling better every day. Life is good. Short, but good. The drama of the first part of the trip doesn't seem all that important.

After Oregon, I spent a few days in the Bay Area visiting friends and shopping, and then met Walt in So Cal where we spent time with the kids. We were very glad to get home to the spatting hummingbirds and the neighbor's lime green color swatches on his house. When people ask what we do, I say, we watch the sun come up. We play with the dog. We decide whether to cook or eat out. That's enough drama for a while.

Panoramic View from the Terraza

We continue to enjoy the seasonal changes that occur here in our new home. At this time of year the Jacaranda trees are in bloom. You can see a panoramic and some closeup views here. The panoramic view is a visual of almost the whole "View from the Terraza". You will have to come and visit to see the entire panorama from our terraza.

Other changes? We graduated from Spanish school three weeks ago. The locals think we speak very well, but we beg to differ. There are constantly words we need to use, but don't know. We think it is the fact that the school stresses grammatics and pronunciation, among other things, and that impresses them. If you know of anyone that wants to learn Spanish quickly and to speak well, we highly recommend Harvest Language Center.

Update on Thailand

This posting will be slightly different than the others, in that we just wanted to talk about Adam and Cindy in Thailand. All our postings to date have been primarily about what we have been up to. However, we saw what God was doing through Adam and Cindy with their work with orphans at Christmas and just wanted to share some of that with you because super things are happening there.

In our last post we showed some pictures of their houses that are being built for the orphans. Adam and Cindy currently have five, three girls and two boys, with differing stories about their backgrounds. Suffice it to say these five now have a loving and warm family environment in which they can grow to become model adults. Without this environment, who knows where they would end up. We have come to know and love these five kids in a very special way. In fact, we are "Opa" and "Nana" to them - how cool is that?

Since we were there, the walls have already gone up on the houses as you can see in these pictures. These pictures are several weeks old and probably by now the roofs are on. The work is progressing very rapidly, and it is anticipated that construction will be completed this summer. The plan is that each house, Adam and Cindy's as well as Sean and Prang's, will have five bedrooms with the idea of taking in ten orphans each. The houses are situated on approximately a half acre of land. We already know that there won't be a problem of filling the houses as Adam and Cindy already have five and live in a rented house! If you tell God you want to do something positive - look out!! Adam and Cindy have always impressed us by the fact that Adam gave up a lucrative computer scientist position in CA and Cindy a full-time teaching position in the San Diego school district to follow this call to Thailand.

At this point they have had the land for almost a year. House construction began last Fall by clearing and leveling the land and now building the houses. In a recent e-mail exchange with our kids in Thailand we found out that the land and houses have all, through God's providence, been paid for. However,the driveways, landscaping, including lawns, shrubbery and fencing, as well as necessary furnishing, appliances and garden tools are still needed. Adam and Cindy are like us, in that they love to give but hate to ask. Since we also don't like to ask we are simply saying that here is an opportunity to support an extremely worthwhile cause by helping out and providing the last items of the construction. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, you can do so by following the instructions at this link.

The "Miracle" of Christmas in Thailand

This posting will primarily consist of pictures. We say "miracle" because we could not have planned or pulled off something as perfect as this. It began with a thought last January, that with potential cheap airfares, we might have Christmas in Thailand with our whole family. First miracle was, after we laughed and figured it would never happen, we actually proceeded. Next miracle was Adam and Cindy said "sure", just before they got three new kids in the house. After this everyone adjusted their holiday schedules and said yes. This was followed by the airfare, because of Christmas, being double the "cheap" airfare but then God miraculously not only provided the additional amount but the entire airfare for ten of us round trip from LAX. Adam and Cindy then got three more kids but continued with "sure", stating that we could all stay in their house. The next miracle was that friends of Adam and Cindy's, Dave and Shirley, offered their house to provide some amount of relief by taking in Jason and Caryn and their two girls. These little miracles continued, but the final one was a real answer to prayer. For the last two months prior to leaving we had tried, in vain, to rent a Toyota Commuter van that would easily accommodate all eighteen of us plus some of our extended family in Thailand. All we could muster up was a minivan for seven people. When we got to the car rental place we only saw a Toyota Commuter van in the parking lot. Inside the gal said, "I am sorry, we have no minivans. All we have is the Commuter but we will let you have it at the price of the minivan". Was that a no-brainer or what? That was followed by the two most wonderful weeks together touring Chiang Mai together. And of course, the overarching miracle is that the whole Heine crowd from North America were able to see for themselves first hand what God is doing through Adam and Cindy on the other side of the world. A real education for them to see what it means to obey God and give up lucrative careers in CA and do what He has called them to do. How good is that? The God of miracles is alive and well and is still doing what He does best - taking care of His own!!

Here is the link to a small subset of the pictures we all took.

New addition and Christmas is coming!

We have a new addition in our home. We just recently acquired a puppy. She is a Nordic Spitz and if you are like most people, it is a relatively unknown breed. However, we "just happen" to have a breeder here in our area. The dog, when full grown, will be medium size. They are often trained in search and rescue or conformation, and they are very smart. (Hopefully smart enough to figure out the housebreaking thing before we leave her with housesitters!) Our puppy's name is Hilde and we are enjoying her very much.

We also wanted to let you see what the beginning of December is like here in Ajijic so we have thrown in a couple of pictures of what is in our garden and how we are beginning to celebrate Christmas. Of course our Christmas this year will be with eighteen "Heine's" in Thailand. Ten of us are flying from Los Angeles and eight are already there. Everyone is really looking forward to it.

When Walt's sister, Margaret, and her husband Dan were here, all three hiked up to a shrine that has a beautiful view of "downtown" Ajijic, so we thought we would throw those in as well. The path up to the shrine has twelve stations of the cross and at Easter apparently they go up to the shrine with the person playing the role of Jesus carrying the cross up the hill to the station where Simon takes over. Apparently it is quite a ceremony that takes place the week before Easter and up through the resurrection. We are learning more about our new home each day.

You can find the pictures we are talking about here.

Our new home - before and after

Last week essentially everything in the house, except some blinds we have been waiting for for over four months, was finally finished. Although our camera died, a friend was willing to offer theirs so we could get current pictures of our new home. But as we emptied the last of the boxes we found our old digital camera and were able to use it to get the "after" pictures to compare to the "before" pictures we took two years ago. Our new camera is in Illinois on its way via the "expatriate back door route" and will be here after Thanksgiving ready for our trip to Thailand. After having things in boxes for almost two years, it has been a little like Christmas and it feels good to have all the boxes gone. Here are our before and after pictures. Besides the painting, we had all the doors and cabinets stripped and restained, new granite counters installed in the kitchen and bathrooms (as well as some beautiful copper sinks), and full walls of floor-to-ceiling shelves built in the den and the music room. When Walt's sister Marg and her husband Dan were here, they said that pictures don't really do the house justice. So when are you coming to visit?

Little update

A quick update on the last few weeks. Some people have noticed that we have not blogged for a while, and then Nancy's monkey question. We are still alive and totally enjoying life in Mexico. Here's a status update.

My sister, Margaret, and her husband, Dan, who live in Canada, visited us for a couple of weeks at the end of October. It was an absolutely wonderful time that we were able to spend with them. One unfortunate, or fortunate depending on your point of view, happened at the time they were here. The granite guy came and ripped out the granite, including kitchen sink, the day before they came and we didn't get our kitchen sink back the day after they left. So we had to eat out everyday - fortunate or unfortunate? We would have almost convinced them to move down except for their five kids and eleven grandkids in Canada.... guess we lost that one. We visited Tlaquepaque, an artisans section in Guadalajara. Here are a couple of pics.

We are also progressing well in our Spanish class. We just began Level 3 of the four level course. We will finish Level 3 before we leave for Thailand at Christmas and finish Level 4 in February. There are two other people in our class and then there was another level with four people in it. Our Mexican friends are amazed at how quickly we are learning Spanish and the fact that we speak with hardly an accent (that is assuming we remember the right vocabulary!). That is one of the things the language school stresses - phonetics and pronunciation. In fact the phonetics classes are taught by Mexicans, so I guess we will sound Guadalajaran. The other excellent thing about the school is that it was designed by missionaries for missionaries, so we are getting a lot of vocabulary that is not given in standard language schools. Here we are in class. There are many reasons we are taking Spanish, the primary being that we chose to live in Mexico and therefore it is incumbent on us to learn the language of our chosen country*. In our development you can get by without Spanish. As long as you only hire people who speak English, and never have to deal with the telephone or electric company! Down in the village, about 70% of the time you need Spanish. The villagers are generally pretty gracious about interpreting "granglish", the mangled gringo versions of Spanish. In Guadalajara, believe it or not, it is 100% Spanish, with not a whole lot of patience for those who don't speak it. We can understand the problem of not being able to learn a new language, but don't understand not bothering.....(*Coming from Cupertino, we have 32 years of experience with the flip-side of this issue)

Also in the last month we began our Bible exploration study. We know that this is one reason God brought us down here, to use the knowledge He has given us over the years to share with others. We are having a lot of fun and learning a lot ourselves. The folks in the class have very limited knowledge of what is in the Bible. So we are beginning with some very basic stuff and what we are learning is a lot of the things we take for granted as "common" knowledge. We are getting many challenging and thought provoking questions. So it is very exciting for all of us.

The house is "almost" done. (We hear that is a permanent condition) The only thing left are some roman shades that were promised to be installed at the end of July. (Turns out the order was never actually placed, but it is settled now, and we are hoping to have them next week) The cabinets and new granite were finished last week and they look gorgeous. We would have some pictures but our camera died a couple of weeks ago. It is in a camera shop in Guadalajara being checked out. And yes, "Habla inglés?" ' "¡No!". Like we said, Guadalajara is total Spanish. If they fix it we will take pictures and show the "before and after". If not, we will use the expatriot's approach to getting something down here - ship the item to someone in the US who is coming down here and have them bring it across the border. Until we get our camera back, you'll just need to imagine how the house looks. We are extremely pleased with all the work that was done.