enjoying the wait

Still no word from the company Elvis interviewed with several times last week, but they did send an email saying to expect a yea or a nay in a few weeks. So the wait continues. But in the meantime, we have had lots of fun being able to take Suzy to playschool together, have friends and neighbors over for dinner, and have lots of time playing outside. I'm sure we will miss the freedom and the togetherness when he starts working, although having an income would be a definite positive.

Drinking from a water fountain for the 1st time! Didn't have these in El Salvador.

Parachute fun at playschool

If you drive up the main road our house if off of for about 7-8 minutes, the road dead ends with the mountains. We parked at the end of the road and just started walking up the mountain on Saturday and got some great views of LA.

When Elvis was showing Suzy the view of LA during the hike, he taught her that it was called "Los Angeles". When she looked at the picture with me later, she said "Looking at California angels!" which tells me she's not just remembering things, but literally translating them in her head!

Keep praying with us about a job! We watched a movie this week about a guy that came to LA from Mexico and couldn't find a job, so he had to become a male dancer. we're hoping it doesn't come to that ;-)

six things that surprised me this week

1. We have run into more Salvadorans that we know that are now living in LA than people from the US. Elvis's college classmates, an old co-worker on mine from the school in San Salvador, a childhood friend of Elvis, etc. I love how much El Salvador is incorporated into our everyday lives.

2. I was surprised  yesterday that I wanted to go running. I am not a runner nor do I pretend to be, but it was 83 degrees outside, and I wanted to go  JUST BECAUSE I COULD. I haven't been able to run outside by myself in approximately 6.5 years for safety reasons, and it felt good just to be able to walk/run down the street without fear of getting hit by a car/bus, getting mugged, or having black bus smoke blown in your face. Just a little piece of El Sal that I don't miss.

3. Everybody wants to try pupusas. A classmate and her husband took us out to the Salvadoran restaurant last week (and it was yummy!), tonight we are (ok, Elvis is) making pupusas for Gabi and her parents, and we are (ok, Elvis is) teaching a vegetarian cooking group how to make pupusas in February. And we have requests to make them at home for some other friends. I love that everyone wants to eat pupusas.

4. 70% of our neighborhood (the surrounding blocks) speaks English + another language. I am doing an in-depth research project on our neighborhood for my Urban Studies class and was surprised about this. 52% of our neighborhood is Hispanic.

5.  We got filet mignon last night for free from the Trader Joe's donations!

6.Some of you know that Suzy has an imaginary friend named Paki, who only speaks Spanish. This week, Elvis was showing her some pictures of people in El Salvador, and he showed her a picture of his dad (who died 5 years ago). When she saw the picture, she said, "Hey there's Paki!" And then she pulled out her "cell phone" to call Paki, and she asked him what Jesus had said. And I said, "Jesus?" And she said, "Yea, Paki with Jesus!"  

Whoa.

multi-tasking

Suzy wanted to "check her email on her laptop" this morning while doing her business.


Let's just say that she is her father's daughter.


Speaking of her handsome father, he had that 3rd interview this morning and felt really good about it! We are hopeful, although we may not hear an answer for a couple of weeks. keep praying!

fashion show

I bet that by reading this title, you thought it was about Suzy. Nope! As I write this, Elvis is giving me a fashion show of all his dress shirts to see which one says "Hire me!" You see, he took those assessments yesterday for the engineering position, and they called this morning to invite him back for another interview on Thursday!! I am so proud of him I can't hardly stand it! It's hard enough doing an interview in the first place, but when you consider he is doing IQ tests and interviews in his second language after just a month of living here, it makes me so proud. It's also really tough to leave a place where you had earned respect and trust and even status, to have to start all over again. Please pray for him on Thursday morning at 10 am pacific time.
And just in case if you were expecting pictures of Suzy, here are some of her with her new buddy Gabi who lives in front of us. They play outside together everyday and go to playschool together, and Gabi has been spending the past couple of mornings with us while her mom has had the flu. Suzy loves having another little girl around!

movin' on up

We are now the proud owners of Elena the Elantra! She's not going to win the coolest car of the year award, but she seems to be reliable and well-maintained which is most important to us. And we got her just in time, because Elvis has a job interview tomorrow! He already had a phone interview with this company to be a Quality Engineer, and then had to answer some follow up written questions. They called him back the next day to set up the second interview tomorrow, so we are hopeful since things are progressing so quickly! This particular job is looking for a bilingual engineer, with experience with latino culture. I'd say he has a bit of experience =)

Just wanted to ask for your prayers for this tomorrow (monday)...it's at 11 am pacific time. We just want it to be clear if this is where God wants him to be or not.

thanks!

blessed

This is our loot just from today's Trader Joe's donations. Plus a salad and two wraps that we already ate for lunch =) We feel so blessed to have a fridge full of gourmet food even when we are both unemployed.

And right now, there are 2 sweet Korean women outside cutting people's hair for free. They come to our apartments once a month just to serve the people here.

Please keep a job and a car in your prayers...we hope to have good news to share about those things soon!

snapshots of life in Pasadena

Best part of the weekend: Finding authentically delicious pupusas in LA! (we've tried 3 places so far, this was by far the winner!) It was so authentic that there was a sign in the bathroom asking you to not put toilet paper in the toilet. Um, we are actually in the US, not El Salvador.

We checked out the LA farmer's market today, which was by far the fanciest farmers market ever:

Suzy has loved being able to eat lunch outside this week at our apartment and play with her new friend/neighbor, Minh. Elvis loves the grill at our apartment that you see in the background.

Minh cracks Suzy up. Just saying her name cracks her up.

Speaking of the grill, Suzy has a new obsession with grilled okra. Even before she had ever tasted one, just watching them cook on the grill made her crazy. She promptly ate at least 10 whole okra straight from the grill.

Apparently living so close to Hollywood has gone to Suzy's brain. She thinks she's a rock star.
A marimba-playing rock star.

And yes, she may be shooting you a bird.

Suzy with some of her neighborhood friends:

Me on my first night of class!

Rose parade

The absolutely most necessary activity if you are going to be in Pasadena during the holidays is to go to the Rose Parade. So obviously, that's what we did with my parents on their last day! A few days before the parade, we went to one of the warehouses where a ton of people were working to decorate the floats. The most amazing part of this parade is that every inch of the floats have to be covered with organic material- flowers, seeds, bark, coconut shavings, etc. Can you imagine how many itty bitty sesame seeds it takes to cover just a part of those floats??? Here is a picture of the warehouse where they were painting, cutting flowers, and gluing the flowers and seeds to the floats.

And here are the finished products! Elvis and dad walked down to the parade route at about 5:30 am (we are just a few blocks away) and saved spots for us so we had good seats for the parade. This was Suzy's favorite:

spoiled

I dropped mom and dad off at the airport last night after a great week together. They helped us put pictures on the wall, search for a few little things that we still needed, did some really fun things aruond Pasadena, and Suzy had a great time playing with them. Her favorite game is "Granddaddy gotcha!" They definitely spoiled us this week, but the title for this post is referring to how God has not only meet all of our needs and surpassed them with provided a cheap, furnished apartment, but he has spoiled us with personal, special surprises since our arrival to Pasadena. For example, like I've mentioned before, Trader Joe's donates to our apartment complex food that is about to expire from their store on Mondays and Thursdays. And they bring delicious food!! We have had steak, stuffed salmon, pork chops, fruits and veggies, specialty breads and desserts, gourmet cheeses and fresh flowers...stuff we love but could never afford being that we are, well, unemployed. Also, Panera Bread donates leftover bread to us on Tuesdays. So we barely have to go to the grocery store!
One little special surprise for Elvis was the one day, Trader Joes donated a big can of fresh, whole bean coffee...definitely a treat perfect for Elvis!

At our apartment, we all have community service jobs each week. Ours is to keep the community laundry room clean and organize the Giveaway room where people can donate their stuff they don't want anymore. The first day we went to organize it, there was a keyboard there that someone had given away! You see, selling my piano in El Salvador was the hardest thing to sell. Suzy and I both cried. I just really wanted Suzy to have a keyboard to learn on and play with but I knew we would not be able to buy one right away. Now this one is definitely not as nice as my full-length electric piano in ES, but it's perfect for her to have a piano toy. Suzy's special treat!



Although we have absolutely everything we needed already for us in our apartment, I really wanted a rocking chair to make Suzy's room feel like home. We looked all over and didn't find anything, so we were thinking about going to IKEA to buy one we had seen on the website. Then we went to one more Goodwill, and found the same rocking chair that we had seen at IKEA! It's even the same color as Suzy's bedspread. I got my special treat too!
So we feel really spoiled and like God has really paid special attention to us, which makes us confident that he will provide a job, a car, and all those other important things!

outdoorsy fun

It's been 80 degrees this week, which means we've had lots of fun outside with mom and dad! Yesterday we went hiking at Eaton Canyon...remember where they went hiking on the mother's day episode of Modern Family? I'm 99% sure it was there....I'll have to go back and watch it to be sure. It's only about an 8 minute drive from our house! We were going to go on a 1/4 mile nature trail so that Suzy could walk, but that turned into a 2 mile trek up the mountain that led to a beautiful waterfall. It wasn't a hard hike, but just a little stressful because we had to jump from rock to rock to cross over the river numerous times which is scary with a squirmy toddler. But we made it and it was worth it!









We also went to Descanso Gardens, which is also just about a 10 minute drive from our house. A beautiful place to walk, ride the Enchanted Railroad, and check out the camellias in bloom.





Mom and Dad have to leave tomorrow, but before that, we are going to the Rose Bowl Parade! There have been people camping out since this morning so i hope we can see it!