"A perfect unblemished record"

A perfect unblemished traffic record. That's what I (Ben)had until yesterday. I turn 30 in a couple of months and I've never gotten a traffic ticket. We were helping Rhonda move into her new apartment. I didn't know where I was going so I was following Chris who was following Todd and Rush was following me. We made a U-turn at an intersection where it just so happened that there was a motorcycle cop.

He pulled all of us over plus one other car. I was a bit nervous because I didn't have the registration to our van with me. I had left it in my folder at home. Well, he walked down the line of cars stopping and saying, "licensia!" Thankfully, he never asked for our car registration. He came back a few minutes later and handed me my license with a big yellow boleta (ticket). No discussion, no plead of ignorance, no blame shifting to the people in front of me. Just like that, my perfect record now has a blemish.

The Past Two Weeks...

Well, if I had to describe the past two weeks in one word I would say; Opportunity! What I mean is that we have had many opportunities to really be immersed in Puerto Rican culture. Ben's parents left last Wednesday, and they spent the Sat. before they left at an "express" clinic. Ben's mom had a pretty bad sinus infection which went into her ears, so they spent an entire day trying to figure out what was going on and how they could get her better. Ben's Spanish has improved tremendously due to all of this interaction. It's very interesting, because all of the Doctors or at least the ones we've dealt with speak English, but when it comes to the nurses and the staff we have a really hard time communicating. Unfortunately, the incident with Grandmother has not been the only time we've dealt with a doctor over the past two weeks.

Last Thursday Ben and I had an appointment at 11:00 to meet with an OB/GYN that was recommended to us by our neighbors. Brenda and Adriel (neighbors) have a little boy who is 3 weeks older than Lydia. So, she told me about this doctor. As most of you know we are having a baby in July, so one of the first things on our to-do list is to find a doctor. We left our neighborhood around 10:30, arrived at the office at 11:30, saw the Doctor at 3:00 and left there at 4:15. One might wonder how this is possible. They told us that it was an unusually busy day at the office, but because we can't speak Spanish a lot was lost in translation as we waited and waited.

Then on Friday we decided that Lydia needed to go to the Doctor as well. She had a runny nose and felt like she had a little bit of fever. I did not want to have to take her to the E.R. over the weekend, so I called one of our teammates to see where we should take her. We went to a pediatrician here at one of the local hospitals. He was WONDERFUL! I hate that Lydi had to be sick, but at least we found a Pediatrician. It turns out that she was in the beginning stages of pneumonia. She's been sick off and on since mid-November, and I thought that she would be totally fine once we moved to this tropical climate. I am pretty sure she was sick when we left, so she just didn't shake it once we got here. The worst part of all of this is that she has had five shots and two finger pricks since Friday. It has been really hard on all of us! It has probably been worse for Ben and me, because it has been really hard watching our little girl go through all of this. I think that her being sick has definitely been worse than any culture stress that we could be experiencing.

We had a great experience with the Pediatrician and we took her back today for a follow-up visit. She is going to do one more round of antibiotics and we have to continue doing breathing treatments every six hours. Once her cough goes away then we can slack up on the frequency of the treatments. She has been such a trooper. The Doctor asked us if she was always this happy and content even when she's sick. He was surprised that she wasn't fussier than she was because of her sickness. It's so hard to tell with her when she really is sick, because she is usually such a happy girl. Hopefully, we are on the mend, and needless to say I am still searching for a Doctor. I liked the one we met, but I told Ben that if I had to go through what we went through last Thursday once every month I would have a break down! So, I'll keep everyone updated with the Doctor hunt. We still have a few weeks, before we really need to make a definite decision. I will try to post some more smiley pics sometime soon. Please pray that our Lydi will continue getting better!

We've Landed

It is very hard to believe that it has been so long since I sat down to update this site. We've had quite a bit going on recently. The biggest thing on the Parmers' agenda has been moving to work with the ILDP (International Leadership Development Program). Our new home is much different than Birmingham, definitely not anything like Wedowee... I guess the best way to describe our new home of San Juan, Puerto Rico would be to say we are finally "home." What I mean is when I unpacked our boxes I was able to put our suitcases at the top of our closet, because unlike the past year and a half in the States we won't be going anywhere for a while. I guess the Lord figured that to keep us in one place for a while we would need to live on an island, so here we are...

It is absolutely beautiful here!!! Everything is green and most every tree has some kind of colorful bloom on it. The weather has been great. The day we left it was 27 degrees and snowing. When we landed it was 82 and of course sunny:) It has been very mild as far as the temperature goes, but it is also very humid and it's only the beginning of March. So far it has been a smooth transition, we spent our first day out exploring yesterday. We went to the rain forest (El Yunque). The first week here was spent unpacking boxes, buying a car, hanging pictures, organizing, and going to Wal-Mart about 100 times.

Ben's parents are still here with us and they will be here until next Wed. (12th) I hope we will be able to do some more exploring while they are here. I'll try and send more pics of the places we see. I should be able to do a better job of keeping everybody up to date with our lives. It might take a while to get into a good routine, but I will definitely be updating more often.

I'll write more about Lydi later, but the most important thing right now is that she loves it here on the island. Music plays everywhere you go, and she dances all the time. People will walk by and she says "HEY!!!" with so much enthusiasm. They usually stop and say something very quickly in Spanish, and she's not sure what she thinks about this new language. It's been a lot of fun to watch her as we've moved into our new apartment. She loves her room, and her new bed. Mostly I think she loves that she can roam freely from room to room this is a luxury she's never experienced before!