Seis in a New Place

In August of 2007, I headed to St. Olaf to play some noon ball. My turn on the court came – the shirts/skins determination was made. I was shirts. Awesome. I wasn’t going to play if I were skins. Just ‘cause. One of my teammates gave me my assignment. “That mountain there is Will Healy. That’s your guy. Good luck.” I whisper under my breath, “yeah, good luck.” “What was that?” “Nothin’. Let’s go.” I was w/o question the weak link on my team. Didn’t make a shot, including 3 from point-blank range. Didn’t grab a board either; failed to box out even. Will was schooling me. Man, I was frustrated. This guy was making me look stupid. Then came a loose ball. I left my feet and made myself into a bowling ball. I took Will out – right at the shins – and that pin fell with a mighty crash. I quickly got up, looked back towards him briefly, but not to see if he was okay. I then bolted off the court, got in my car and left. Didn’t say a word to anyone, but many had words for me. I...

I wasn't planning to write a post for awhile but you all have been so kind and caring about how school went for the kids, I thought it was worth writing about.  So, after I dropped the kids off yesterday, this is what I wrote: Oh my. Here I am, sitting in our condo....by myself. I don't really know what to do, or how to feel. These last few weeks have been such a roller coaster. Up until now, it seemed like we were on a vacation (I can't speak for Kevin because he is starting his third week of working remotely - so not so much a vacation). But today, driving the kids to school and dropping them off at a place that felt so unfamiliar...so foreign made it feel real. This is it. Here we are. Now what...? Then I just left it there.... I tried to keep busy all day, running around town trying to find the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, doing some laundry, etc but I had a nervous feeling all day long...What have we just done? We dumped these kids off in a place that...

If your adolescent years spanned the ‘80s, you may have a certain power ballad in your head right now.  Go with it.  Nostalgia.  Mmm, so good. How about some ‘Warrant?’  “Kheaven isn’t too far away-ay-ay.” Clapton? “Would you know my na-a-ame? Cleve Chris-toph-er-son, Kevin? ß [insert cracking, falsetto voice here.]” I don’t speak Spanish.  My wife is a guru—a Spanish/El.Ed double major in college; Spanish Immersion School teacher; seasoned traveler.  And my kids have all spent their school years in Spanish partial immersion classrooms with some of the most gifted teachers I’ve ever seen.  But not me.  I struggle with language acquisition mightily.  I don’t even do English so well.  I don’t read much, my grammar is horrendous and I’ve always had a jingle-linguistic way of communicating verbally – heavy on words/phrases that I make up, puns and tangents that often derail efforts to deliver points of original intention altogether. A...

The adventure has begun. The Christopherson family has arrived in Mexico! We have a place to lay our heads in Playa del Carmen for the month of August and are happy in our little condo. Barely surviving the packing up and renting out of our house, we pulled an all nighter on the finishing touches of emptying out the house for renters and headed to the airport at 3:00am (thank you so much Kathy and Iver for the ride). Our journey with 9 suitcases and a layover in Austin, TX was wonderfully uneventful. We split up at the Cancun airport because we couldn’t fit all six of us and our luggage in the car. (Did we bring too much? We can’t decide...) Anyway, WE ARE HERE! Let the dream begin! We are ready to collapse but wanted to get our blog out there to answer some questions. I wrote this as we arrived. We have been here for a week and a half now. It seems more like a couple of months. We first feel like we should answer some questions. Often people ask why we decided to take this adve...