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Having anathematised Microsoft to the abode of the damned a couple of posts back, today we redress that balance as I freely admit to being totally in love with one small, sweet, inconsequential little feature of Windows; changing wallpaper.  Go to control panel, select personalization, desktop background, slide show, and how often you want the picture to change, and it will transform your desktop background into a kaleidoscope of memories (depending on what photos you have stored on your box of course).  I love every time I go to the computer and seeing “oh I remember that…”, “look there’s so and so…”,  “hasn’t Joni grown…”.  The other day I arrived to a picture of the Nazca lines seen from the air, and once I’d recovered from remembering how that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, I got to thinking “flipping heck, I’ve flown over the Nazca lines, what a ridiculously privileged existence have I been blessed with”. 

Gratitude is a good discipline, I think we find what we’re looking for, whether that be reasons to criticise or reasons to be thankful.  I know if I can find just ten things to thank God for each day, in less than three years they will have added up to ten thousand.  I also know that I’m not disciplined enough to keep counting them in any formal sense for a whole three years, but I am trying to be more consciously aware of God’s daily blessings around me (starting with wall-paper by Windows, and the Nazca lines). 

Today I am giving thanks…

… For my daily early-morning dog-walk along the lane, sharing the peace with our plethora of local wild-life, guinea pigs, woodpeckers, caranchos and chimangos (two varieties of birds of prey), and the beautiful tijeretas which have once again safely migrated back from who-knows-where to spend the summer here;

… For the two kilos of potatoes that I have dug out of our garden, (even more so since the original seed potatoes came free), and the successful garlic experiment, not to mention the sweet-corn and butternut squash plants that are just starting to push through.  And I positively purr when Joni says “the things we grow in our garden taste much nicer….” 

… For my English conversation students, because I enjoy work, and because they pay for our kids’ swimming lessons.  I also give thanks when they go on holiday and I have a free hour.  Work is a blessing, and rest from it is another one! 

… For Maxi, the small autistic child who I have just started working with.  May that be a fruitful relationship for all concerned. 

… And more than anything else for the blessings of watching my own kids growing and learning every day, each in their own…

inimitable…

style:

Mummy mummy can I do that with you?

I’m not sure, it’s just a one person job really.

Ohhhhhhh, you never let me do anything you always have all the fun. 

Ok, come and do this bit for me. 

Great! 

And what fantastically fun thing was I selfishly trying to keep for myself?  Cleaning the toilet!  Is it too much to hope that his enthusiasm might last till he’s 15? 

Simple maths would suggest that if I answer more emails than I receive, then eventually the backlog should clear.  But for some reasons the maths isn’t working.  I’m starting to suspect my inbox of breeding. 

I don’t normally swear on-line, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade and Microsoft truly are a bunch of (word to rhyme with) bankers.  I had to sign into Martin’s Skype account, and then when I tried to sign back into my own it gave me a load of guff about needing to update my security information which I had to do at this web address.  Now, I understood that Microsoft are web giants, but apparently they don’t have anyone who is able to produce a hyperlink, since the only way to get to the given web address was to write it down with a biro on a piece of paper and then type it back in, since I wasn’t even able to highlight it to copy and paste, let alone click on it.  I thought maybe there was some sort of security reason why they wanted people to type it in, but well, see for yourself https://account.live-int.com because although I’m not an IT professional, I am able to produce a hyperlink, and you will discover that clicking it merely takes you to a sign-in screen.  Here I attempted to sign in using my Hotmail account (Microsoft own Hotmail), but I have long-since stopped checking the Hotmail email address after I decided I didn’t need any adverts for penis extensions (i.e. about two minutes after I opened the account, given Microsoft’s non-commitment in dealing with the spurious use of their products).  And apparently this short-sighted lack of interest on my part means that I no longer have an account with Microsoft, which is rather inconvenient if I ever want to sign into Skype again.  Fortunately I did manage to find a work-around, but I am not sure how long this loop hole may be available for, so if I disappear from Skype, at least you know why.  And the moral of the story is keep reading those medical ads. if anyone feels like writing a good competitor for Skype that isn’t dependent on having a Microsoft account, I’ll be the first in line. 

Apart from that, the week was taken over by writing a sermon and organising a birthday party for a 6 year old and twenty-five of his friends.  Both went fine for different reasons.  The sermon is up under the sermon’s tab at the top of the page (it’s in Spanish).  The party was in Spanish too, it looked like this;

Tomorrow I have to teach English and go to the bank which between them will take care of the morning, but if you are a sender of any of the hundred-and-five outstanding mails in my inbox (and those are all genuine mails since the nice man at Usermail has a nifty device which strips out the penis extensions – in a manner of speaking – do take note Microsoft) then I promise I will get to you at some stage in the hopefully short-ish-term future. 

To anyone who diligently read our newsletter and then obediently moved across to the blog for the promised update, I apologise for not writing it sooner.  Friday I was in Santa Fe, meeting with the University, as described in said newsletter.  The bit I didn’t mention was that we were then on camp with Scouts for the weekend, so Friday evening onwards was a whirl of cutting out stuff for activities, packing other stuff for me and the kids (kids as in mine and everyone else’s) followed by a weekend of running around after them all (ninety six in total; the three San Francisco cub packs plus my progeny). 

Meanwhile, back to validating qualifications.  We went to do the sworn statements during which two friends had to agree that I am indeed a professional of special education.  The policeman at the desk said, that’s ridiculous, how can these people possibly be asked to recognise you as a professional of special education if the whole purpose of the exercise is that the University is supposed to be doing the recognising?  To which I smiled and confirmed that the same thought had indeed occurred to me.  Oh well, he said, if that’s what they want, let’s get it done.  So we did.  After all what would a tiny western mind and a lowly policeman understand of these lofty matters? 

Armed with my folder containing its two-inch stack of paper, I met with my contact at the University of Santa Fe.  He took all the paper out of the folder, swiftly realised that his stapler wasn’t nearly up to the task, put everything back into the folder, filled out a form, produced another document, and we hand-delivered the whole bundle to a different office located within the bowels of the admin block.  And now I have a number.  If you’re reading this in the UK (or probably anywhere else other than Argentina) you may not realise the significance of having a number.  This means that I am now officially “en trámite” (“en tra-mi-te”; undergoing bureaucratic process).  This means that I exist, I am part of a bigger system, someone is taking responsibility for dealing with my case, and if anyone asks, I can quote an official number at them which is often sufficient to suggest that positive proof is on my side.  In actuality a reference number is no guarantee of a swift resolution, or even of any resolution at all; they still might say no, or furnish me with another list of hoops to jump.  But I am now further on than I have ever previously managed to progress with any of the myriad of institutions upon whose doors I have bashed to date, so at least until they say no, I can enjoy my new status of being “en trámite”. 

As writers of Christian song-lyrics descend to unfathomed new depths…

As with Calvin, the revenge of the Killer Bicycle has been an on-going theme in Joni’s life for quite some while.  However, having banished it to the darkest corner of the garage for several months, it appears to have learnt its lesson (helped by Joni growing a couple of inches in the interim).  It was finally brought out of its dusty exile this week, and of course now he can’t get enough of it;

  

Danny comes along for the ride, and to wipe chocolate down Daddy’s back by way of a side-show;

  

Everyone’s a winner! 

Still here, still translating.  I finished the Manchester document.  I’ve started on the Cambridge one.  That took quite a lot of preparation.  Imagine a photocopy of a document from the 1980’s.  Then scanned in and saved as a PDF.  Not wonderful quality but legible; to the human eye.  But in order to upload it into the translation software it needs to be in Word.  So convert from PDF to Word.  Machines are pretty good these days, but for reading poorly photocopied then scanned and saved as PDF documents clearly you need the human eye.  So it took me the best part of a couple of days to go through the Word doc and render it into recognisable English in order to turn it into Spanish. That was even less fun than it sounds, and even now while I’m translating, I’m discovering various places where arc should have been rendered are.   It was rather tempting on the other hand to decide that leaching might be a more socially useful occupation for children than wasting teaching on them… I could even think of a few specific examples to put forward as potential candidates; starting with that year 9 geography set.

Then I need to have the whole lot printed out in both languages, not on our printer it’s rubbish, so that’ll be a trip to town.  I’m hoping to be able to present the whole thing to the University next week. 

There’s loads of other things going on, which half of me would stay and blog, but it’s been a ridiculously long day, and the other half of me has already gone to bed. 

I’m busy translating.  The University of Santa Fe kindly furnished me with a shiny new list of documents that I need to present along with my degree certificates.  The list includes a translation of the syllabus and programmes of study from both my degree courses.  Manchester kindly furnished me with a course handbook ninety-two pages long.  Cambridge kindly informed me today that their course handbook tops the hundred and wonder if I would like it scanned or posted.  The professional translator here in San Francisco charges one hundred Argentinean pesos per page.  Since there are around eight Argentinean pesos to the UK pound at the moment, that’s two hundred pages at twelve pounds a sheet, so that won’t be happening. 

I’ve started on the Manchester document.  First I reduced it down to the pages which are actually relevant to the course content, having sacked everything about student loans, policies on plagiarism and library services.  Now I have thirty pages, of which I’m on page 18 and hoping to have this one out of the way before the Cambridge beast lands in my inbox or on my doorstep.  My theory is that even if the University of Santa Fe insist that it is properly stamped by a professional, it’ll still work out cheaper for someone to read and correct it if I’ve done most of the work for them. 

Fortunately I have discovered Wordfast Anywhere, a free online translating tool, which you can find at https://www.freetm.com/  It’s not entirely intuitive, and the manual’s huge so I haven’t read it all yet.  But it is making a huge time saving even if I am still somewhat confused about my source tags and fuzzy matches. 

So even if I never manage to validate my degrees, now I have another transferrable skill to add to my CV.  Unfortunately despite all my linguistic brilliance, I haven’t yet discovered any language in which to persuade my youngest child to stop pooing in the bath.  Maybe that’s the bit of the manual that I didn’t read yet. 

It is no secret that I have no patience with models of mission which measure success in terms of who has clocked up the most air-miles.  I’m not planning any air-miles this year, but the last couple of weeks we have been out on the road for various motives;

First was our Latin Link team conference to the province of Salta.  We didn’t drive it this time.   Our unreliable beast,  in the words of the old refrain, “won’t get that far”.  Luckily there’s a good bus route.  I left home in possession of too much evidence suggesting that this could well be the worst Latin Link Conference ever (despite some stiff competition), and it actually turned out to be the best ever.  Lots of things seemed to fall into place, and we reached what I think will turn out to be some significant milestones in our discussions.  I suspect there quite a few people praying for us.  And with such stunning scenery as a back-drop, really what more could anyone have asked for:

   

Then we went home for long enough to wash clothes and repack, and me n’ the kids were off to Scout camp at the agricultural college a few kilometres outside San Francisco;

Scout camp survived, and then I had a rare trip out on my own, across to Santa Fe where the University are trying to do something with my qualifications in order to render them useful in this land of much bureaucracy.  I’ve been playing this silly game with various institutions for literally the last four years, and I think last week’s phone call was about the most sensible thing anyone has said so far; “Let’s not try and figure this out over the phone, how about just bring everything you have and we’ll have a look at it…”  Now there’s a plan.  So off I went.  The upshot is that I have yet another new list of bits of paper that I need to generate (naturally), of which item three on the list is a sworn statement made in front of a judge in which two Argentineans have to testify that they know me to be a professional of Special Education.  Spot the flaw?  How about, if I’m trying to get my qualifications recognised here, then until I can get them recognised it isn’t actually possible for anyone here to know me as a professional.  So really I’m looking for two people who like me enough to lie for me.  Lucky I found a plethora of willing volunteers at tonight’s prayer meeting!  Hoorah. 

And just in case I start becoming tempted to measure my own self-importance in all these not-air-miles travelled, we spent this weekend fully tied to the ground, making and selling one thousand eight hundred “pastelitos” (deep-fried jam-filled pastry things) for a Scout fund-raiser:

And now I’m too worn out to go anywhere. Airmiles Schmairmiles. 

I’ve just put up my latest sermon on John 10 11-18 from a couple of weeks ago.  Short and simple but it seemed to work out OK.  It’s in Spanish and you can find it under the sermons tab. 

I’m just about back to functional after having my rucksack stolen last week.  Me n’ the boys were on our bicycle made for three, as ever, and some young scroat with too much unharnessed ability came up behind us on his motorbike, grabbing my rucksack on his way past, and the rest, as we say, is history.  So, for a few days life was a blur of gathering copies of bits of paper and getting them rubber stamped in the right places.  In France philosophy says I think therefore I am, in Argentina it is I have an ID document therefore I exist.  The good lady at the civil registry cheerfully informed me that my replacement ID should take between three and six months to come through, so until then I’m sure there will have plenty of opportunity to get used to the idea that I am a mere figment of my own imagination. 

On a more cheerful note, it stopped raining for the second week of the kids’ school winter holiday, so these are our latest Miramar photos; (The photographically aware will notice that I am still struggling to get the hang of that long lens, compounded by the fact that it was blowing a hoolie so the tripod wouldn’t stay still). 

School goes back tomorrow, and then on Wednesday we’re off to Salta for our team conference.  We’ve just booked the bus tickets at some ridiculous price; apparently there’s some cartel which ensures that the price of the buses are set at just enough per cent below the price of flying to maintain passenger numbers.  It hardly seems worth sending the kids back to school/nursery for a couple of days, but believe me I will be making the most of those few precious child-free hours, not least to organise us for the trip.