Our Culinary Adventure: A Night in Brazil

In one of my recent posts, I mentioned how traveling is one of the few interests Chris and I share. But I now realize that I forgot about a big one...

We share a love of food. We love eating. We love cooking together. We love trying out new restaurants. (Which, I might add, is quite challenging in Colorado Springs, the world's mecca of chain restaurants.) Our favorite TV channel is the Food Network, and if we ever decide to pay for cable, it will be to watch that channel. We've even gone so far as to throw around the idea of moving to a big city just to be able to experience more culture. (By the way, this plan isn't off the table.)

We're trying our best to pass on this love of food to our kids. We have made it our mission to introduce our daughter to a wide a variety of food as early in life as possible. By 10 months old (thanks in big part to a trip to San Francisco) she had eating authentic Mexican, Persian, Greek and Thai food. She loved it all. Being that she's a Giovagnoni, of course she's also eaten Italian and American. And just last weekend, we introduced her to Brazilian food.

Chris recently came up with this idea to cook and eat different recipes from the countries where Compassion works and then he'd share our experiences on Compassion's blog. I loved the idea. 

Mise en place for Moqueca de Peixe

So our first foray into cooking international cuisine was to Brazil. You can read Chris' post about the experience, but let me just sum it up to say, after the first meal I'm very excited about this new culinary adventure! Even though we cannot travel as much as we might want to in this moment in our lives, we can still experience a small taste of the world through food. 

My Vicarious Trip to Ecuador

Chris and I are very different. We often marvel at how our marriage works when we are so completely opposite. There is one big thing we have in common, though. We both love to travel. And, I might add, for being so different, we travel quite well together. I so look forward to the day when life slows down and we can see the world together. (Read: retirement.) First stop: northern Italy.

Until then, however, I will live vicariously through Chris. He gets to travel for his job. Mostly domestically (and really, who can complain about San Francisco?) but occasionally internationally, as well.

This week he is in Ecuador. I'm very excited for him. Of all the trips to Compassion countries I've been on, (okay ... that's only four, but still) Ecuador was definitely my favorite!

He'll be posting on Compassion's blog about the trip. I'm looking forward to reading along, particularly on the days when they visit the jungle. From what I understand, it's very remote. They have to travel for over an hour in a canoe to get there!

The group is made up of eight women and three men, so I imagine that should any of the jungle fauna decide to make an appearance during their adventure, there will be inordinate amounts of high-pitched squealing. I am confident that my super manly, incredibly strong, extremely courageous, east coast bred and raised husband will not be among them.

After all, he is sporting a mean mustache.

Stop This Train

I have a post on Compassion's blog today and I'm pretty sure this is my favorite one yet. It's my heart, packaged in some words and a few photos.

I know I'm biased, but still. I recommend you read it. :)

My husband, a.k.a. Blog Editor Extraordinaire, exercised his editing powers and sadly John Mayer got the ax.

However, this is my blog, so here is the ending I originally wrote which is the perfect summation of my feelings ...

This makes me proud and sad and happy all at the same time. I truly feel like parent whose child is growing up too fast.

Someone tell me, how do I stop this train?

When I Was 16 ...

I have written a post today on Compassion's blog about how God used the Rwandan genocide to open my eyes when I was 16.

Please read it.

Water

Have you heard? Sunday, March 22 is World Water Day. Here's some suggested reading for your weekend ...

1. A challenging post about bottled water on Compassion's Blog.

2. Healing Waters International: Based in Golden. Partners with Compassion.

3. charity: water: My friend Fay told me about this awesome organization.

4. Playpumps International: I wrote about this innovative organization a while ago.

5. FreePoverty.org: A game where you donate cups of water when you play.

Happy reading!

My Broken Heart

I wrote a post on Compassion's blog today about Slumdog Millionaire. I meant everything I wrote in it, but to be honest, I wrote it from an emotionally detached place.

I'd encourage you to go read it before you read the rest of the this post ...

Did you read it?

What do you think about the question at the end? See, I'm really wrestling with this idea of poverty tourism. Where exactly is the line between educating ourselves about poverty and exploiting the poor?

A warning about the following video: It will break your heart. It will take guts to watch it. I truthfully have never seen a video that broke my heart so completely as this one.

I'm not posting it to be emotionally manipulative. I don't want to evoke your pity or guilt. What I want to do is help you understand what poverty looks like.



You will not see videos or photographs like this from Compassion. I didn't post this as an employee of Compassion. I posted it because it helped me to emotionally connect with the work I do every day.

If during this video your heart was broken for the poor, please don't ignore that.

Do something about it.

Step of Faith

It's been a while since I posted on The Compassion Blog, but I felt like God wanted me to share what I did today.

It was a big step of faith for me.