6 Months

 Yesterday marked 6 months here in Cuenca. So many of my plans haven't come to fruition, including attempting to stay up with our blog. We'll see if I can start this up again. I want to remember everything about our being here, the good and the bad and have already forgotten so much. We have all grown in many ways, as well as struggled in many ways. Overall things are getting easier and we are enjoying things more than we did in the beginning. Grateful that those first months are over. The kids have been fantastic to tackle this difficult transition. They are superheroes who have survived 6 months of school in Spanish! They have done some hard things and persevered through it. Knowing beforehand that it would be hard was far different than living the hard day after day. So many things I didn't think of, furnishing an entire house without knowing the best stores to get everything, not being able to ask for things in Spanish, not able to take all the kids somewhere in a taxi by myself before we got our van, times on my own in a new country when Mark had to travel for work, how many messages do I get every day on Whatsapp from the school/parent groups that I need to translate most of? So many more things that I'm not thinking of right now. 

We are so grateful for the miracles we've seen these months and all the help we've received from people here! We have met some great people who have helped us with so many things. Mark's brother moved here with his family the same day we came and it has been so nice to know someone from day 1. The younger kids have loved having so much cousin playtime! 

We've found some fun activities for the kids and worked to find our groove. We live in a beautiful part of the country, high in the Andes mountains where the temperature is nice all year round. The kids are missing the snow, but I don't mind this weather. Cuenca has 4 rivers that flow through the city and there are some awesome running trails. We love all the culture that is here and the paintings throughout the city on walls and in the Centro. We love going to the little artesian markets and getting fry bread. The plaza de flores is the best! Two dozen roses for $5!! Can't beat that. Oh, and we love all the yummy chocolate. And it's the real deal too. We even visited a cacao museum and learned all about how the process of tree to bar. We also added 2 members to our family, the furry kind of members. We have 2 puppies. They are great fun to snuggle with!

I'll hope to write more and go back to write about our first months here and all the experiences we had, but for now, here are some great pictures we had taken at Parque Paraíso. Our kids are growing too fast.