Planet of the apes

it's a young man's world

Getting to our hotel in Santa Theresa was a 300m
hike up a steep incline. Not a good choice.

Everywhere we look it's backpackers, adventure seekers, vagabond surfers from the US, Europe, and Australia. The trade-off with enjoying the beauty of this area is that one has to deal with the roads here -- among the worst in Costa Rica. The modes of transport are exclusively ATVs and 4x4 SUVs. Average age looks to be about early 20s. It may be a young person's paradise, but suffice to say, it's not the easiest place for a woman almost 7 months pregnant and two small children. We are in the small surfing town of Santa Theresa on the Nicoya Peninsula.

Taking a trip like this is about voluntary displacement. We expect there will be the unexpected. But I grossly underestimated how limiting it would be with Eliza's condition and the age of our children. I'm too used to galavanting freely by myself to the outermost territories of our grantmaking world. Traveling with a young family has given me a whole new awareness of how much I naively assume perfect health, extreme mobility, and some degree of ruggedness. Obviously, these are not to be taken for granted (even for a young man, for that matter).

We finally concluded that the house in San Jose very likely has bed bugs (the signs are telltale), leaving us without a reliable home base. As a consequence, we have decided to come home early. We arrive next weekend, cutting this adventure short by two weeks.

So now we focus on making the most of the remaining days we have here.

Speed boat ride to Nicoya Peninsula. Terrible idea. :(

Kids enjoying the balcony in Montezuma

They've been troopers

Competing with Eliza for the biggest belly

A bug's life... oh, and reptiles

Happier days @La Paz Waterfall

Before we left, Kristi (First Fruit Board member) asked me to assign percentages to the three main objectives of this trip. At the time, I told her it was 60% about quality family time, 20% about enhancing Spanish language skills, and 20% about getting ministry learning opportunities. I'm so glad she asked that question because it has helped guide me in making some important decisions along the way.

La cucaracha

For starters, we have decided to limit our time in San Jose. Malia and Eden have gotten multiple mosquito bites for 11 consecutive nights in the house where we are staying. We tried everything short of buying mosquito nets (which are hard to come by these days in San Jose). That coupled with the daily headlines in the local paper about a troubling spike in dengue fever cases (transmitted by mosquitos) around the Central Valley, and we decided we had had enough. It also didn't help matters that the house has a cockroach problem. The final straw was Eliza's late-night encounter with an unidentified yellow reptile on the kitchen counter. I know we sound like first-world prima donnas to some of you, and maybe beggars can't be choosers (since we're staying in the house for very little cost to us), but it was definitely time to stretch our travel budget a little and get out of Dodge.

Treehouse at Roblealto

The biggest downsides to this so far are twofold: 1) most of the NGOs/ministries we were planning to visit are in the San Jose area; 2) most of the tourist areas are swarming with and catered to gringos (we could easily get by without speaking Spanish). Just before we left San Jose, we had a wonderful visit with two extraordinary ministries associated with Latin American Mission (LAM), a 90-year-old Christian organization operating in this region. LAM has an impressive legacy of spawning some enduring institutions in this country -- from one of the nation's top-ranked hospital (Clinica Biblica) to some of the region's best-known seminaries (ESEPA and ProMETA) to widely-heard Christian broadcasting stations (Radio Faro de Caribe). We visited two such institutions -- Roblealto and Colegio Monterrey.

Granja Roblealto

Founded in 1932, Roblealto's mission is to care for the children of Costa Rica who are in critical situations, at social risk, and who need specialized care. Roblealto works with 1,000 kids per year, getting referrals from all over the country by the government child welfare department. It aims to reintegrate families by providing two core services. The first is a "halfway house" where foster parents care for up to 10 children for a period of 3 months to 2 years. These heroic foster parents are recruited from local churches. The second program is, as our host, Steve Mean, put it, "daycare on steroids." The multiple daycare centers provide all-day enrichment to the children, including health, nutrition, education, spiritual support and psychological treatment.

A one-day-old chick for sale

One of the most remarkable aspects of Roblealto is how it's operating costs are locally self-sustainable. Granja Roblealto raises and sells one-day-old chicks to egg breeders and poultry farmers. It generates $10 million in revenues, $1 million in profits and contributes $440,000 directly to Roblealto's social programs. Impressive!

Founded in 1956, Colegio Monterrey is a private bilingual Christian school, preschool level to high school. It uses an innovative educational model to teach 900 children and teenagers to faithfully fulfill their duties within their family, society, and God. Amazingly, it costs $5000 per year (many of whom receive scholarships), and yet it continues to have a waiting list of prospective students. It too is operationally self-sustaining. Among it's graduates are mayors, congressmen, magistrates, judges, UN staff who have all been taught to have a Christian perspective in formulating their agendas.

We are still planning to visit with a few other ministries in the days we're back in San Jose. In the meantime, however, we are enjoying the spectacular beauty of this country. Right now we're off on a week's worth of soaking up the central Pacific coast. The kids are loving it, Eliza is feeling much more at ease, and I'm going to sign off now so that I can get up early for some dawn patrol!

@Volcan Poas

Thank God for that glass barrier!

Toucan indigenous to CR

Butterfly garden

My first surf session. Haha!

An iguana at our hotel pool

La Vida en La Ciudad Grande

Today marked the one-week point since arriving in Costa Rica. It's taken that long to get our bearings.

When people think of Costa Rica, they think of pristine beaches, ziplines through rain forests, exotic flora and fauna… Well, our first week has contained none of that. Rather, it's been a fairly typical life in a congested Latin American capital city for a family very inexperienced in such a life. It's what prompted Malia's first words when we arrived at the house to be: "I want to go home" (along with the saddest sullen expression). Now the house is not that bad, mind you (see pic). It's just been an adjustment. It probably wasn't a good idea to call this trip the "40-day vacation" to our kids. I think we set the wrong expectations. Even our Spanish tutor told us, "San Jose es muy feo!" [The city is very ugly.]

We are starting to get more of the hang of it. Eliza's found a decent grocery store (she got a kick out of cooking Shake 'n Bake chicken and mac 'n cheese tonight, even though we probably wouldn't eat that at home). I'm learning to stop sweating bullets while driving an '87 Toyota stick shift sedan (the car we're borrowing) in San Jose traffic. We're getting used to the bug bites and heavy exhaust fumes from buses and cars (trusting that our baby in utero won't grow two heads as a result). The girls have been very creative in entertaining themselves with rocks, sticks and broken glass laying around the street (no, we aren't being absentee parents, just letting them live a little).

Two highlights this week:

1. Visiting a Christian NGO called Casa Viva which has successfully introduced and rolled out a foster care model for at-risk children despite a previously skeptical Costa Rican government. It has been winning over its skeptics — now receiving 35% of its support from the child welfare agency of the government — and is poised to scale up significantly as well as help consult other countries in the model.
2. Visiting a local Nazarene church where my friend, Allan Matamoros, preached about life in the Muslim-majority world leading a Latin American mission called Pueblos Muselmanes Internacional. A very high percentage of his support base is from Costa Rican churches.

One of the decisions we made was not to enroll in the local language institute. Our fear was that we would settle into an expat-dominated community and fail to integrate into Costa Rican life. It's caused me to reflect a little about how easy and tempting it is to develop a sense of cultural superiority when in a foreign country. One travesty about Costa Rica is how much of the best land and most lucrative businesses are owned exclusively by expats. Among Western Christians, there is an unspoken superiority we have that our starting point somehow is more advantaged towards living "good" Christian lives than other cultures. Perhaps it's true in the sense that America and much of Europe's founding was based on Judeo-Christian principles. But in day-to-day existence, the call to discipleship is challenging regardless of the cultural context. I heard the story of how one of the most storied and historic missions, Central American Mission, founded in the 19th century by Scottish missionaries, was recently asked to leave by Costa Rican church leadership, essentially over their unwillingness to relinquish control to nationals. [Although, in fairness, I'm sure my shorthand version of the story I heard is somehow incomplete.]

Regardless of where we are, I'm reminded that we need to be "jealous with [His] jealousy" -- to be passionate to see people living lives of genuine and deep faith within their own cultural context.

Tomorrow we overnight at a volcano called Volcan Poas. It will be good to get out of the city.

Malia's note to Eden to mark our adoption becoming official

We are official!

Can you believe it's been almost two years since Eden became part of our

family? Today we finally got our day in court to finalize our adoption in

the state of CA. As the judge was reading the oath, we were trying not to

be distracted by the girls fidgeting around on our laps. Meanwhile, the

court recorder was so moved that she was crying as she typed. One almost

forgets how big of a deal this is. I guess it's a good sign that it feels

uneventful to us -- like Eden has always been a part of us.

Best line by the judge: "You do realize that she will one day be a

teenager. And you still need to take responsibility for her then too."

My response: "She already acts like a teenager sometimes." God sure gave

me two sassy ones. :)

Ladybug and Monkey

Needless to say, the girls had a blast trick or treating. Malia has been this ladybug for the last 3 Halloweens now. Auntie Cathy made it for her and it still fits!




The girls with their neighborhood friends



It has been hard to motivate Eden to communicate with us, so I was surprised to see how quickly she picked up on saying "trick or treat"! The rewards were too huge to pass up I guess :)

Fall...and New Challenges

Paul just came back from spending a couple of weeks in Africa for work, so we spent his day off at the pumpkin patch with the girls. I think Eden wasn't quite sure about it :)








When Eden first came home, she was pretty good about sticking right by us so we relaxed a bit on allowing other people to play with her, hold her, etc. We've learned it's called "trauma attachment", where the child may stick to you like glue because they are afraid of all the big changes that have happened and feel insecure about what will happen next. So it turns out that as she's adjusted and gotten used to her new home and surroundings, she is also now getting very comfortable with other people very quickly. A little too quickly. Any new adult she meets is a potential caregiver to her and she will readily follow them around since they're more likely than mommy to offer her sweets and let her have her way with toys and other kids.

It's way more complex than I just described and I know it may be hard for someone who hasn't had the experience of trying to bond and connect with an adopted child to understand. I don't expect everyone to understand it, but we're just asking for the support of our friends and family in stepping back from loving on Eden and allow us the time to form a solid attachment. We will fill people in as we spend time with you, but basically we ask that you not touch/hold her, offer her food or toys, and if she comes to you for any of these things to redirect her to one of us.

We have appreciated the love all of you have shown her, sincerely. Thank you for supporting us in this way.

New Friends

The girls met Millie and her mom this weekend in Palo Alto (Eden and Millie are from the same orphanage/city). Super-encouraging time for Eliza!

Eden's Repertoire

Eden turned two this past weekend and we decided to document her progress in English thus far. She has recently started to try and repeat things we say in English, which is a big change from before when she didn't seem to want to try.

This weekend also marked four months since she became a part of our family!

Her words "backpack" and "map" are nods to Dora The Explorer, her favorite show, and "jie jie" is big sister in Mandarin. She consistently calls Malia that and is also pretty consistent with calling Paul "dada". I, along with about 20 other people/things, am called "mama".

We'll do a birthday post as soon as we can get pictures from people who took them at the party. I was too preoccupied to even look for my camera!

Oh and the scratches on her face? I wasn't even home when it happened and Paul was outside talking to someone. He heard Eden crying in the house and came in to find her face bleeding! Malia says Eden fell into this straw table we have in the family room. Well, until Eden picks up some more words, we'll have to take Malia's story.

We Love Auntie Pauline!

My sister Pauline was out here visiting from Philly the last 2 weeks and she left an indelible mark on all of us. First of all for Eden, who set a new record for time it took to bond with a new person! From day 1 with Pauline, Eden was hooked. I was even a tad jealous :) And Malia has always loved auntie Pauline, but just didn't understand where she's been the last few months! When Malia woke up to find her gone again one morning she was inconsolable.

And as for me...her presence somehow turned my relationship with Eden around. I know it sounds quite dramatic to say that, but it's just true. It was a combination of having her around to help with the girls, which gave me a much needed break, and also her fresh perspective on Eden that I learned a lot from. She has a lot of experience working with small kids and from that a lot of good techniques and ways to approach them that I took lots of mental notes on!

Truthfully I had hit a bit of a low point right before Pauline's visit. The accumulation of the stress of the last 3 months had really worn me down and I found myself in survival mode rather than being able to really nurture my kids. Plus I had all this baggage with Eden from the struggles we've had to work hard to overcome from the beginning. Even when we worked through something successfully, I continued to carry the stress and emotions of it with me.

But spending 2 weeks with Pauline and also my mom really gave me the opportunity to step back and observe Eden from a distance, and appreciate things about her that I was too fried to notice before. And after 3 months of feeling like I was babysitting someone else's kid, we are really starting to bond and feel more like mother and daughter.

The following pictures are all from Pauline's camera :)

Drunken Monkey Dance

Sorry for the poor video quality (directly from iPhone to Youtube).

Connection Is a Tricky Thing

Some good friends of ours adopted a young boy at almost the exact same time that we brought Eden home. I caught up with them today, and they shared something pretty profound. "Connection is a tricky thing," said the boy's new daddy as he described the ups and downs of bonding with an adopted child you've only known for two months. We can totally relate.

What I tell most people now is that, when we have a moment to look at it in the big picture, there's no doubt that Eden is showing great signs of adjusting well. But ask Eliza or me in one of our not-so-cheery moments, and we'll probably give you a much more gritty answer out of either exhaustion, exasperation or a combination of both.

It's really nice to see Malia and Eden playing together in relative calm and peace. Malia is definitely showing more and more signs of being the nurturing big sister. Sometimes Malia even tries to help Mom or Dad empathize more with her mei mei (little sister) by telling us, "She's trying to say____" or "She doesn't know better" or "I think Eden wants______." It's really cute, and becoming less rare. :)

One of the first signs of bad parenting on our part was trying to get Eden to get hooked on TV... we just need the break once in awhile because she's a nonstop whirlwind otherwise. Well, as Diego says, "Mision completa!"... as evidenced by this video.

Amazing Love

We met Eden only two months ago but already it's hard to imagine our lives without her. She has brought us so much joy and laughter, as well as to our knees in prayer!
Some of the funny things she's done as she's been getting used to things in our home:

She brought me this plastic orange and wooden knife from the toy kitchen in all seriousness so I could cut it up for her to eat.



Once I pulled out a toy car from under the bookcase and she kept leading me over to the bookcase and pointing under it because she thought that toys came from there.



I know many of you have heard bits and pieces of how challenging this adjustment period has been for us all. Yesterday at church God led me to realize an amazing truth in my relationship with Eden. You see, Malia has been so easy to love because she so clearly loves me back and shows me her love and need for me in little ways everyday. What I've been facing with Eden has been willful and disobedient behavior, independence that causes her to turn away from me and do her own thing, unruliness and disregard for family skills and rules, and all the while knowing that she doesn't love me (yet) nor does her heart bend towards me hardly at all. And while this has been a huge struggle for me, especially in trying to emotionally connect to her, I realized suddenly that we are exactly the same. The way Eden appears to me is exactly how I appear to God.

Eden hasn't come to know me and trust me in a way that would allow her to love me yet, and we often go for days without a positive interaction. While I do love God, I often go for days without showing God my love for Him in any way.

Eden could go on and live her life without me as long as there is a suitable replacement to fill my spot. I do that when I replace God with other idols that appear in the moment to satisfy me.

Eden goes about her business, coming to look for me only when she needs something or something needs fixing. Um, yeah, I do that one too.

Eden constantly tests limits with me, lashes out in anger at me, and shrugs and looks away when I'm trying to discipline her. Enough said.

And the amazing gospel and how much God continues to pour out His love and grace on my life despite my sinfulness and choosing to do things my way time and time again, has taken on new meaning for me. Eden has become a powerful reminder to me of how very much I am loved by God, and not for anything I have done.

I am so thankful for my two girls and for the different ways God is using them to teach me and minister to me. I can only strive to love them as God has loved me.

I Would Fit Right in with This Crew

And Life Goes On

As a follow up to the green chair video, we now have 2 green chairs! And look how happy they are :) The girls have to share everything including their room, so where we can find a small way for them to feel some ownership we'll do it. We've even blocked off a small corner of their room for Malia to have as her "quiet place" when she needs some time away from Eden. It's also for her to play with things that Eden can't get into yet (markers, playdoh, etc.). It was a good idea as Malia goes there for a time everyday and regroups after huge clashes with Eden. It also gives me a little peace and quiet as a result!

We haven't blogged in a while just because life has slowly been getting back to normal and we're increasing our activities and busyness again. No more camping out at home, thank goodness :) We even brought Eden to church the last couple of Sundays and she did great. She loves the nursery and all the toys there and as long as one of us is in there with her she is content to hang out and play.

Eden has been quickly picking up on English and although she isn't speaking it yet she understands a lot of what we say. We started out using Mandarin words with her (well, the 10 or so that we knew) and then we would say things in English and Mandarin, and now it's mostly English. She says "hi", "bye", and "go, diego, go" (no kidding). I've also been using some signs with her, but she hasn't started using those yet. Hopefully soon because it would help a lot for her to be able to communicate with us more.

We're going to go to our first playgroup tomorrow and I'm hoping it's a hit with her so we can add one more thing to our routine.

The Odd Thing About International Adoptions

Adopting a child is not a political statement nor even a moral act. It's about wanting to become a parent first and foremost.

But with that being said, I do worry about two diverging trends. On the one hand, the number of orphans globally has been rising while the number of international adoptions is diminishing. The latter is not necessarily a reflection of there being fewer families who want to adopt, but more a result of geopolitics adding further hurdles for international adoption. The response by Russia to the now-infamous case of the Tennessee woman who sent her adoptee back to Russia is an example of this.

So even though this blog is really about sharing our personal stories, I do want to let people know about an important way we can advocate for prospective adoptees... in this case, allowing North Korean refugees to be adopted into American families. Here's how you can help (click this link).

One Month

On Monday it will have been one month that we've been a family. It feels like longer probably because of all the sleep that was lost :) But we've seen some signs of progress with Eden's adjustment that in the midst of second guessing myself constantly, affirm that we are doing something right.

*She definitely singles us out among strangers. When meeting new people or in a public place, she stays close and will often cling onto our legs.

*She's eating and sleeping much better. She'll pretty much go to sleep on her own in the crib with someone laying down on the floor beside her. Some nights she cries a little and then goes to sleep, some nights there won't be any crying. Her eating has gotten better, less picky, although there's still a lot of room for growth here. There still seems to be a control thing going on with her when it comes to food.

*Her and Malia will actually have fun together! Totally on their own without us trying to help them along. The other day they were sitting together outside and Malia was spontaneously laughing at nothing and causing Eden to laugh along with her. It was the cutest thing ever.

I (Eliza) am the one who's kind of hit a bit of a rough spot. Things started out pretty difficult for me in China, then got a little better when we got home, and now I'm finding myself struggling again. I was telling a friend today it's kind of like when someone makes a joke at your expense...when it's a good friend it's funny and you can take it because you have that relationship as a context for the remark. But if it's someone you don't know well, it's hurtful and offends because you don't know the person well enough to know where they're coming from.

I feel like that when Eden yells at me or pushes me away in a tantrum, or when she rejects food that I'm trying to feed her. I haven't gotten a read on her yet and it's hard to tell if her behavior is toddler-related, adoption-related, personality related. Often it can fall into any of those categories and it matters which one because there is a different course of action depending on it. Lots of adoption stories I've heard tend to be pretty classic examples of adoption-related behavior, which means you can make sense out of them and understand what is causing the behavior. But I just don't know with Eden, she has some of the signs adoption books described, but not consistent enough to form a coherent picture. So I end up taking her actions more personally because I can't find a way to explain it otherwise.

And I keep on thinking about the time we lost with her. How her past is such a mystery and how I wish we could've bonded with her as a baby. I know this is her loss as well, that she'll have questions one day soon that I won't be able to answer for her. And we'll have to work through it together.