One Year and Great Expectations For The Next

One Year…..Wow, where did it go?
This blog has been really, really late in coming due to many things going on here but now your long nights of staying up and looking for it in your email, or fasting until the next blog can finally stop. The salad bar of this blog contains great news and a start (yes a START) to the orphanage, a new business, carpentry, my parents and some good family friends kickin it in Colombia. But enough of this tom-foolery, to the blog we gooooo….

Por Fiiiiiiinnnn…

For those of you who no habla espanol, that’s “Finaaaaallly”. The house next to the church is ours, and ready to be inhabited by 16-20 little girls, whose lives will never be the same. It is so so exciting to see things moving and thanks to the many generous donations and support of you who read this, the orphanage, is taking physical form. We worked out a contract with the owners of the house (to rent) and they have taken the past 2 weeks to clean it up, paint, remodel…etc and the house looks great. Generally when people think of an orphanage in a third world country they think about a concrete block building with 4 layer bunk beds and a tin roof resembling Auschwitz. Unlike that idea or model of what an orphanage typically is, our house is beautiful and roomy by even US standards. These girls may come from some of the poorest parts of Bogota, with no family or material possessions to leave behind but they will be walking into a spacious family styled home with a whole church to take them in as their family. I will send pics soon. The next step is that the health and sanitary dept will be stopping by to check out our facilities and then the social care dept to assign us the girls (who will most likely be 4-8 years old). After a year of making phone calls, sending emails and planning, this a blessing to watch this project take form.

Speaking of taking form and the house, I have been plenty busy building bunk beds. However, first let me back up and tell you about a wonderful visit I had from my parents and some good family friends. They came in on the 4th of September and came with the idea to help equip the orphanage with furniture and art and start a business. I will get into the business part a little later. I will admit I was a little nervous how my parents would take the whole new culture thing and not knowing anything about the language. I had my hands full of translating all the time but it went great and my parents and our friends were great with all the changes. Two culture shocks that were a little hard on my dad was that Colombians, like many Latinos, aren’t that punctual so we ended up getting our ordered wood a week late pushing our furnishing project back considerably. The second shock to my dad was when I took them to the local burger joint, which is famous for its monstrosities, which contain just about anything you can squish between two sesame buns. I have had 5 or 6 of these guys and its one of those foods that looks like a great idea in the beginning but half way through its sheer guilt of wasting food that keeps your jaw chewing, which places the A-bomb of a burden on your stomach to digest what look like 2 eggs, 4 pieces of ham, tomatoes, lettuce, hash browns, and an all bee…um…an all dog/cat/whatever got hit out in front of the store that day….patty. Well that little $1.75 warhead put my dad to bed rest for 3 days and after some antibiotics, an IV and some sleep he was good as new, but unfortunately had to leave the following day.

(yeah!! get it daddy!--->)

That left me with 9 bunk beds to make and I have to say despite the load, I love it, because I really do enjoy wood working. I should be a regular Bob Vila in a week or so. Thanks to the generous donation of some Southwestern Booksellers and a Timberview offering, we were able to buy the wood and tools to make the beds, tables and some storage boxes. Oh, and without forgetting my mom’s contribution, she painted three beautiful murals, including one that was of mountains and a stream, which I believe will add a nice touch to our Latino home (maybe next to a poster of the currently running mayor as that seems to be a funny Latino thing).

Oh, and they got to witness my host dad, Octavio’s, 70th birthday party which included mariachis. Another distinguished guest for that party other than my good looking girlfriend (uh huh) was the one and only Danielle Wegman, in from Chicago.

The Business

Ok stay with me, not much more. Brian and Sue Templin (family friends) came with my parents with the intention of training and planting their business (The Detailed Difference) which restores and repairs damages to common surfaces. The business not only employs two people from the church but will provide financially support to the orphanage. They (and now WE) fix anything from leather furniture, wood floors, porcelain sinks to wall paper that are found in hotels, nice restaurants, offices, homes…etc. So basically wherever the first impression is important we make the small fixes that would otherwise be the eye catching flaw that downgrade a facility. I like the idea of restoring and since it really helps those whom we do the work for it’s a blessing to be handed such a great idea. However, this isn’t exactly slapping putty on a hole in the wall, what we have come to learn is this is a fine art in which we have a lot of mediums to master. Brian and Sue have spent the past 10 years finding the best tools and products throughout the US and Europe to really deliver a quality and lasting repair. It was sort of all words to me before they came down and after a few days I was really blown away by how much studying and work has gone into this, from the special German lacquers and waxes to the top of the line air-brushes and so on, it wasn’t the maintenance box of wrenches I was thinking of earlier. The day after they arrived, Aida, Carlos and I started training and it was great to see how excited both the Colombians and Americans were for the business and for each other. Aida, a single mom and business savvy woman will be doing the sales and administrative part. Carlos, a hard working kind man (who works nights stacking milk in trucks outside of Bogota at $300 a month to support his family of five, including a 3 week old baby) will be the one who does the repairs. I am wearing both hats and doing both sales and repairs, until the time comes when I can pull out and they are managing everything.

Door-to-Door AGAIN?!!!! Ha ha ha, wow, the last thing I would have guessed when I was in College was that I would still be selling door to door after College and in COLOMBIA at that!! No, but really I can say with the utmost sincerity, I am so so thankful for my bookselling experience with the southwestern comp. during my college years. I would be utterly lost had I tried to start this thing without that experience. So in my summertime selling manner I hit the pavement today in the restaurant district. With my leather bound pre-approach binder I began knocking, approaching, going through my Spanish sales talk and had to laugh at my current situation (sales is sales, whether in NY suburbs or Colombian barrios). At the end of 4 hours I had talked with a 20 or so restaurants and had three appointments set up for next week so it went well, but there are lots of hard knocks still to come.

Well that’s it for now, and I know there are some things I could still talk about but this has been really long so I bid you farewell. I would love to hear from you all so please respond or if you have some good advice to give, I am all ears. Chao pues.