Kure Luque Team Spirit

98 days. That is how long I have been away from Katherine and Ofelia. Since mid-August I have been back in the US, living in Cleveland OH and working on getting my PhD in Organizational Behavior. 98 days is a very long time to be away from one’s wife and daughter. It feels even longer when that distance is from Cleveland to Paraguay! So many frustrating Skype conversations with digitized pixelated video and choppy unintelligible conversation. And how exactly are you supposed to carry on a conversation when there is a 30+ second delay? We have had to adapt and adjust, and in general make the best of a difficult situation. We have done well with it, found ways to remain close and connected, and most importantly– it is about to end!

Tomorrow I board a plane and begin the long journey into the world that is Paraguay. It will take about 24 hours to complete the journey (provided I don’t get waylaid in Panama or Bolivia!), and it will be worth every minute. We will have the pleasure of reuniting as a family in Paraguay before returning as a family to Cleveland. Having already made the re-entry transition, I know that temperature is the least of the differences that must be adjusted for. It is an extreme culture shift traveling between these two worlds. The beautiful thing is that we will now do it as a family– as it should be.

So before I embark on this journey I’m posting up a video of Ofe that Katherine sent to me. This is the type of thing that has kept my spirits up and focused on making it to our reuniting. I cannot wait to see them both. We have a lot of catching up to do. What a wonderful Thanksgiving this will be.

We’ll see you all soon!

Ofelia y su animales from Weylin Burlingame on Vimeo.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Media, Paraguay, Process, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.