The riding came easy, the stopping a little harder.  But by the end of the first day he had the hang of it.  The starting, on the other hand, needed some more practice.  So yesterday we went out to the parking lot at our church just two blocks away and practiced some more.  ”Left foot down, strong foot up.  Push off with the left, push down with the strong!”  Three tries and he was racing off around the parking lot with Michael while dad lounged on the grass under the trees.

We now have a very potent combination.  Two boys on bikes and a bike path just three blocks away that stretches out 15 miles in either direction.  So this morning as Erika and Maggie went grocery shopping the boys and I set out to ride the Old Plank Trail and see how far we got.  We were feeling pretty good as we rode 3.4 miles round trip to a park and had peanut butter and tortillas for a snack.  We got home and were working around the house when Michael came in saying that our neighbors were going for a bike ride and he and Jacob wanted to go too.  The Gaiers live across the street and have become good friends in these short few months.  Three of their kids are the same age as our three, but they also have another five.  So their whole family was heading out for a bike ride and we decided to join them.

Three adults and nine kids age 2 to 19, we headed out.  I was worried about Jacob keeping up so the deal we made was if he got tired, he and I would hang back and ride home together while Michael rode on.  It never happened.

We stopped at two parks, assorted water stops and one small crash.  9.77 miles in all for our second bike ride of the day.

As you may suspect, Jacob was asleep in about 15 seconds tonight.  Hardly unexpected given his two bike rides and 13.2 mile total.  The last entry for this excursion comes from my iPhone which provides some fun stats and a GPS map of our route from the second ride of the day.

The Ounce invests in the healthy development of at-risk infants, toddlers, preschools and their families.  We use an innovative cycle of family-focused programs, research, training, policy analysis and advocacy to help young children succeed in school and throughout life.  The essential theory of change is that early interventions are cheaper and more effective.  Simple interventions like getting parents to read to their children in the first two years of life have a multiplier effect and pay dividends for a lifetime.  

The division I will be working in is called the Bounce Learning Network.  In 2000 the Ounce started a model early education center on the South Side of Chicago.  Since then they’ve researched the heck out of it and developed a research based practice model that is replicable in other places.  The job of the Bounce Learning Network is to work with partners to replicate the model.  There are now 9 centers all over the country (from Miami to Seattle) established through public-private partnerships and the division is expanding rapidly.  My role in all of this is as the Program Associate to the Senior Vice President who leads the division.  I’ll function essentially as a senior aide to her.  Her job is to to do the high-level strategic thinking as she goes from meeting to meeting, while my role is to take the outcomes of those meetings and make sure whatever was decided at those meetings gets implemented.         

There are so many positives about this job that they’re hard to enumerate.  I’ll be working downtown which means I can take the train to work (our house is a 5 minute walk from the commuter rail).  The Ounce is one of the leading agencies in Chicago and well known nationally for it’s work in early childhood intervention.  It’s staffed by smart, driven people in a fast paced environment.  The complexity of the work is amazing and interesting.  It will push me to be the best I can be and I will learn a ton.

I’m sorry to go on and on, but I’m very excited about this opportunity.  I feel very lucky not only to have gotten a job (or several in fact) in this difficult time for the economy, but to have found essentially my dream job at a place that will be a good match for me long term.  In case you haven’t heard enough, here are the websites of the organization where there is even more information about what I’ll be doing:

One of the highlights of the night was a video from Erica Murray about how she had dropped out of school and was in California to get a nose job followed by a montage of photoshopped pics of her and Britney Spears both sporting bald heads and causing general havok.  In reality Erica was in San Francisco receiving treatment for leukemia and preparing for a bone marrow transplant.  The rowdy night was interrupted by a poignant moment when, after the video, they brought up a live webcam link to Erica on the big screen and the whole auditorium went nuts. 

I often write about how technology has changed our lives and brought us together in ways unimagineable a few years ago.  Usually these ways are good, heart warming and fun, like tea parties between grandparents, video sharing on youtube or a way to fight flu epidemics.  But technology has also brought us together in times of difficulty.  I know this first hand from the way in which we shared our miscarriage with those of you who read this blog and from the other night when I read of Erica’s passing on her blog.  

Erica was my friend and while we were not super close I am grateful for the time I spent with her.  These past months I have followed her progress through her blog, followed the ups and downs as the bone marrow transplant appeared to be a success and was deeply saddened as she relapsed for a second time.  Given our moving about these past months it would have been so easy to lose contact and hear from a friend months later that she had passed away.  I am grateful that didn’t happen.  

Given that Fletcher is a school of internatianal relations our dispersal after graduation is even more pronounced than your typical graduate school.  My friends that I communicate most with are in Boston, Bosnia, Jerusalem and Hanoi.  But as I read the news of Erica’s passing I was once again grateful both for the strength of that community and for the ways that technology has allowed us to remain close in joys and in sadness.  Every single person’s Facebook status remembered her, her blog was a gathering place for sharing memories and condolences and tonight I was able to read the eulogy given at her funeral.     

Erica will be missed – by me and by the whole Fletcher Mafia around the world.  I am grateful for the life of Erica and for the ways in which I could still be a part of her life and her death even from so great a distance.  I am also grateful for the ways in which technology has allowed me to be a part of your lives and you of mine.  I am grateful for the chance to share in joys and sadnesses whether it be in a pregnancy in Eastern Europe or a miscarriage in Honduras.  For now, I will forever remember Erica’s smiling face on that web cam as she recovered from her “nose job.”

Our week of excitement continued with news the night before Thanksgiving of something more to be thankful for.  We submitted and had our offer accepted on a 3-bedroom starter house in a great old neighborhood in New Lenox, IL.  It’s in a fantastic school district and has a great library and park district with tons of programs for all ages.  We’re two blocks from the church we’ll attend and three blocks from the Old Plank Road Trail, a 20 mile biking, walking and running trail.  

We talked for a long time about what we wanted in a home and our highest priorities included good schools and outdoor playspace.  We chose a house accordingly, deciding in the end (after looking at many, many houses) to trade a bit of indoor space for an excellent school system and a great yard- a trade truly worth making.  It’s a simple little house with three bedrooms, a good kitchen, a combined family room/ dining room, a laundry room, a cute bathroom, an attached garage and a fenced-in backyard.  The house has been updated with a new roof, new furnace, new appliances, new carpet and wood laminate floors.  We have an attached garage which has good storage space and is great for shuffling kids into the car in the winter, and a great yard with lots of trees (as you can see from the photos).  Fortunately I have two sons (and a daughter) to help rake all the leaves from the seven maple trees!  Most importantly, it has a short driveway – helpful as I learn to shovel snow for the first time.  

We had the home inspection yesterday and all went well with everything checking out.  Everything is on track for us to close on the house in the middle of December and we should be moved in with plenty of time to spend Christmas in our new home.  We have lots of pictures up here if you’re curious and below is a video tour I took when we were there for the home inspection.  I’ll send our address and phone number once we’ve moved in (don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves).

Note:  The photos above are panoramas that I put together from a composite of 5-10 photos for each picture.  It was a fun little project and a good way to really give a sense of the house which is sometimes hard in smaller photos.  As always full size images are available over at the photo galleries.  

So with that background information in hand we now arrive at the scene of our tale.  We had been at the Finca with our guests for about a week and arrived in San Pedro for an overnight hotel stay.  We stayed at a place called the Microtel which is part of a U.S. chain.  It was an upscale place with all the Holiday Inn amenities you might expect including the continental breakfast.  Davis, fascinated by the fact that it seemed so American after being in rural Honduras, was convinced he could flush his toilet paper (this, clearly, being the ultimate symbol of luxury).  After many attempts to dissuade Davis he decided to call down to the front desk and ask if he could flush his toilet paper down the toilet.  The response was a befuddled:  Why would you want to do that?     

Betsy retold that story to me the other day and talked about how she always uses it in class as the most perfect example of what is normal to one person being so completely foreign to another.  Davis thought it was so outside the norm to put his toilet paper in a trash can at the side of the toilet.  The man at the front desk couldn’t possibly conceive of why he would want to flush it down the toilet.  

After the election it seemed as if the flood gates opened up and it was ok to talk about race and how significant Barack Obama’s election was for us as a nation.  My own reflections have left me without any clear sense of what, in terms of race relations, this election means for us as a nation, me as an individual or for the relationship between two people on a subway car in downtown Chicago.  But what I am sure of is that for Michael, Jacob and Maggie the election of Barack Obama has forever changed what is normal for them and for generations that will come after them.  I imagine them and their children being interviewed in an exit poll years from now as and being asked if they considered race in their decision of whom to vote for and responding in befuddlement:  Why would I want to do that?

Family and Friends,

We really thought that our lives would start settling into a more predictable pattern, but indeed that has not been the case.  Our time here in Honduras has been interesting and exciting to say the least and we are writing to say that it is nearing its end.   We write to share this with you because you are family and we wanted you to know that we are back in the states.

The past two weeks have been a flurry of emotions as we found out that we were pregnant and then yesterday found out that Erika had had a miscarriage.  The miscarriage is the immediate cause that is bringing us home, but there are so many other factors including the security situation here, the frequenc with which I travel and the path that this lifestyle has set out before us.  In the end we decided that this lifestyle is not for us and we’re now in the process of moving towards our next step. 

The miscarriage has sped up that timeline somewhat.  While the medical care we have received in Honduras thus far has been of high quality, after consulting with midwives and doctors both here and in the states we have decided it would be better for Erika to head back to the US.  Erika is healthy and coping well (both mentally and physically).  It is simply out of an abundance of precaution that she is returning so soon.  It also made sense that if we were thinking a change was in order that now might be an opportune time.

We are all returning to South Bend tomorrow (Sept 25).  Erika and the kids will stay in South Bend while I return to Honduras Oct 2 to finish up work on November 1st.  Our trajectory from there will likely take us to Chicago where we’ll settle more permanently.  There is so much that went into this decision and it’s so hard to put in an email.  In the end we just wanted to share this with you so that when you ran into us at a Notre Dame football game it wouldn’t be a surprise.  While we are sad to be leaving Honduras and what in my case was a really great successful job we are also excited to be moving closer to our family and friends in Chicago more permanently.

We have lots of transitions ahead and the next few months will be a bit crazy even by our standards.  We hope you will keep us in your prayers both from a distance and in person and we hope to see many of you soon.  

Love,

Michael-John and Erika