The above Welcome! paragraph is what we wrote as we retired at the end of 2013.

Now after being retired for almost 10 years, I was reflecting recently on the process Leslie and I went through in our early 60s as we began considerations for “retiring”. We were still very active in our real estate business, in our church and in our community. Our philosophy for future plans centered around the idea “to give back, and finish well”.

We were both active in leadership at our church (Ventura Missionary), taught an ESL (English as a Second Language) class Wednesday nights at the Senior Center on Ventura Avenue through Laubach Literacy, and I was involved working with a youth program (Ventura Military Explorer group) at the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) hangar at Camarillo airport guiding high school students in building an airplane (a replica of a 1930s era Tiger Moth).

Ultimately, we came up with a plan, were intentional in pursuing it, and now get to look back to see how it all worked out.

At the beginning of 2013 we slowly started winding down our business, converting paper files, escrows, etc, into digital format and shredding, shredding and more shredding of paperwork going back years. We began downsizing our home, selling almost all of our furniture and ultimately putting the keepsakes into a 16′ POD container for long term storage. We leased out our home.

A serious decision is to sell all your furniture and “stuff”, keep the keepsakes in a PODS, then lease out your home to live out of the country.

An empty house. We were now “homeless”!

Our goal was to join the Peace Corps, but we were told it would be very difficult for an older couple with no transferable skill (medical, education, ag, etc) to be accepted. So – we needed to build our resume.

We started our journey to the Peace Corps in Mexico City, moved to Guatemala, were still active Reservists with FEMA, and ultimately in 2017 were accepted into the Peace Corps to serve in Guatemala. But God had other plans for us because we ultimately did not join the Peace Corps but stayed as Reservists with FEMA.

In the intervening years we’ve been on numerous disaster deployments across the US, engaging with so many individuals and families who’ve been devastated, to help them start back on a road to recovery. Hard, challenging, but worthwhile.

Over the years I’ve heard people say learning Spanish is easy because it’s a Romance language with a lot of similarity to English.  That may be true for some, but trust me, to learn it well requires a lot of work.

For example, verb conjugations. Each verb has over 50 different “words”, each which really sound alike to my gringo ear (when spoken in normal conversation – rapid!).  Here’s what I mean.  Take “hablar” – to speak.  It’s a “regular” verb with regular rules for conjugation (irregular verbs have special spellings and pronunciations).

We start with this basic list of 25 words (Indicative – and we skip the “vosotros” which is used in Spain but not in Guatemala) for the different persons (first person, second person, etc) and time (present, past, etc).

The Subjunctive (not in English) adds another 25 words – close, but all sound a little different!

The imperatives are commands like “Speak!” but for the correct “person”.  Let’s add some more combinations of variations to “hablar”…

So how many words or phrases for “hablar” – a lot! And to speak fluently, I’ll need to quickly “grab” the right word or phrase automatically from memory without thinking about it!

This past week, I needed to memorize 78 “irregular” verbs – verbs that don’t follow the “regular” conjugation rules like for “hablar”.  Meanwhile, I’m learning (and re-strengthening) nouns, adverbs, adjectives, etc, to add to the mix.

The Peace Corps says that in order to “graduate” from Pre-Service Training (and thus be accepted into the Peace Corps) we must meet a minimum language proficiency level of intermediate Spanish.  But if I want to be effective in my work and be able to communicate easily and freely with my future co-workers, the parents and young people in my site, I’ll need to be much better than just “intermediate”!

Learning español is easy (uh huh…)!

On Christmas morning I checked my email but got an error message – strange, but maybe not unusual since we’re high in the western highlands of Guatemala.  Tried a couple of hours later but the same error.  Hmmm…so I checked to see if our blog was OK and was shocked to see we’d been hacked with this ransomware message:

!

This started a week into a world I didn’t know or understand, but I wasn’t going to pay a ransom! Christmas Day was a Sunday so I had to wait until Tuesday to reach my host provider.  They said our domain was hacked/ambushed but it appeared our data on the host server was still OK.  This is how the “whois” database looked like:

After working with the domain registrar, proving who I was and resetting DNS settings, slowly things came back to normal.

So if the Russians can control our US elections, Yahoo lost a billion accounts to hackers, and Trump says “any computer can be hacked”, what hope is there for our little blog?!

Happy New Year to all our friends and family!

After being released from my FEMA deployment, Leslie and I wanted to see and visit an area where she lived as a teenager while her Marine Corps Dad was stationed at Camp Lejeune near Jacksonville, NC.  During that time, her Dad bought about 50 acres of undeveloped land along the inland waterway and sub-divided it, installing streets and infrastructure, then selling off the lots for custom homes.

Leslie has her own street!

We spent about a week in D.C. before heading back to Guatemala.  I personally enjoyed seeing the two Air and Space museums (the one at Dulles airport and the original on the mall) but we stopped into our Congresswoman’s office and received guest passes to watch both the House and Senate in session from the gallery.

But the sessions were boring.  In the House, congressmen stood before an empty chamber, read their printed speech then handed it to someone in front of the Speaker’s chair.  This exercise was merely to get the speech printed into the Federal Register (official document of proceedings) so the Congressman could tell his constituents back home he gave an impassioned speech before his colleagues about whatever. We left after half an hour…!

But we were lucky this trip.  A “super” full moon with clear weather over the mall.  We deliberately visited the Lincoln memorial at sunset and early evening to catch this view.

After being gone from “home” for almost 2 months, living and working in multiple locations, it was great getting back to Xela again!

The celebration of Christmas is huge in Xela.  Several blocks from our apartment is the “democracia” – a commercial area of several square blocks of small shops surrounding a small park.  During the year, makeshift vendor stalls crowd the sidewalks, streets are shared with people, buses (old Bluebird school buses from the U.S.) belching diesel fumes, small passenger vans (“micro buses”) and lots of motorcycles.

Someday I want to spend some time photographing the variety of “chicken buses” that provide the transportation from/to/and around town.  These are all former Bluebird school buses from the U.S. and for some reason, everyone keeps the Bluebird logo on the roof.

The “micro-buses” come in two sizes: small and packed…

and a bigger version. Leslie and I usually ride this version because it’s taller inside for standing.  Every bus or micro-bus has a young assistant riding the step calling out the destination/route, helping people on and off, and collecting the fares.  A lot of the time he’s helping the driver navigate through traffic, intersections, around obstructions (other buses, stopped trucks, etc) with shouted instructions and  whistles while always hawking for more riders!

But over the past couple of weeks, the streets have been completely shut down.  Vendors have built stalls in the street selling everything related to celebrating Christmas – food, firecrackers (LOTS of firecracker vendors!), clothing, children’s toys, etc.  It has created traffic jams and delays that would make LA rush hour proud.  It takes us almost an hour to go across town when it used to take maybe 20 minutes.

Each section of street is generally geared to one type of product – this street is the fruit and vege section where Leslie’s picking up some stuff for dinner.

Living here during Navidad is certainly exotic, adventuresome (sometimes challenging!) and fun!