Saturday, August 30, 2008

Friday, August 29, 2008

IT'S A BOY!

Yesterday my brother, Matt, and sister-in-law, Megan, had their first baby!
His name is Miles Matthew Cooke and I would post a picture, but no one has sent one to me yet.

(Family, that is your hint to get cracking)

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

News from Mexico!

It has been too long since I have blogged last. Allow me to do a 60 second catch up:

1. Our Jetta did not get fixed by the time we had to leave (tip: don't go to Dan's Garage in Evart). It ended up needing an entirely new engine. It is fixed now, but it is still in Northern Michigan.

2. My parents gave us their minivan. They were going to give it to us when we got back, but we got the title switched to our names the day before we left.

3. We made it to James's and Sarah's wedding in time. It was a great time with friends, family, and a party bus.


4. We arrived here the same day that our first meetings were scheduled. Lori came with us, and she was such a blessing from God.

5. The house was not what we expected - it is in the middle of the industrial zone, so we don't have any neighbors. The roads are a series of rocks, ruts and ditches that threaten the life of your car everytime you drive. And the house itself was full of the previous occupents' items. We spent several hours removing birdhouses, plastic flowers and other knick-knacks.

6. Lori helped to stock our pantry and clean the house of a couple months worth of dirt.

7. Classes started a week ago Monday, and Jay and I have extremely full schedules. He is teaching all of the high school math classes and physics, and I am teaching language, math, geography and history for grades 5th-10th grades.

8. We locked ourselves out of the house at 3:30 am after driving Lori to the busstop; the house wasn't locked, but Mexican houses don't have doorknobs. We had to replace the window the next day.

9. The first day of school we got home to a burning smell and a smoldering light fixture. The two days without power that followed led to our whole house being rewired, and a quote from the electrician that roughly translated goes: "it is a miracle of God that this house didn't burn down"


10. I am learning Spanish. Slowly, but it is happening.

I have learned that the key to learning a new language is to simply put new words with familiar objects, but I have also found that I am putting new objects to familiar words.
Here are some examples:

"Mowing the Lawn"

"Clothes Drier"

"Burgler Alarm"

"Lawn Ornaments"

"Afternoon Shower"


That is all for now, but we just got the internet in our house today, so expect more regular posting from now on.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Computers and cars are not doing well these days.

Last Tuesday, the computers died on camp. That means that all registration, emails, documents, photos, everything - gone. Not gone for good, but gone until last night. Praise the Lord the server is back up.


Last Wednesday, our car killed a fox and consequentially, the fox killed the car. Well, killed the car's radiator to be more exact. They think it will be fixed by today, which is good because we need to drive to Nebraska in 3 Days, and to Mexico in - gulp- 5 days.