Meanwhile, on the Miracle front...

The Chit Chat Café at Mensing's Caminada, Curaçao's largest
bookstore. The café has graciously agreed to host us for
the launch.

The Miracle of Small Things has come home. Thanks to the wonderful people at Mensing's Caminada bookstore, the book is now for sale here in Curaçao, the island that gave it life. The official launch is planned for Saturday Feb. 13th, but we decided that—due to the long wait—it was a good idea to put a few copies up for sale pre-launch.

Why the long wait? Why not do the launch earlier—now, for instance? Or—as we'd originally planned—before Christmas and the big shopping season? Yes, that would've made sense. But living on an island that no one (including international postal services) can find on a map has its drawbacks.

The two bags of books I picked up
at the post office on Dec. 20th

Shipping costs to Curaçao are... well, rather steep. So, to keep the price of the book reasonable (and allow for the bookstore's percentage, too), we needed to order during one of Lulu.com's free shipping promotions. They happen about once a month, but they're not predictable. In the end, I placed the order sometime in the beginning of November and thought (silly me) we could plan the Curaçao launch for December 19th.

The books arrived Dec. 20th.

Of course I'd cancelled with the bookstore already... and it was too short notice to reschedule before Christmas. First two weeks of January were also out (everyone's too exhausted from the holidays, emotionally and financially) — which brought us into Carnaval season.

Curaçao goes all-out nuts twice a year: for New Year's, and for Carnaval (Mardi Gras). There's a children's parade, a teener parade, a big-people parade (or 'adult', but that sounds like it's rated R or something... ) that happens twice: on Sunday afternoon and Tuesday night (the actual Mardi Gras). Preparations for all this starts months before (like, as soon as the thing is over the previous year), and the closer Carnaval comes, the narrower islanders' attention spans get.

No photo can do the madness and joy of Curaçao's Carnaval justice.

During the four or five weeks before Carnaval, any unrelated event will go utterly unnoticed. Therefore, we rescheduled for the Saturday after Carnaval. (And I'm keeping fingers crossed that people won't be too exhausted or still hung-over or nursing feet injuries or something...)

Below is a preview of the poster announcing the event. What do you think? I'm off to Mexico for 10 days today, so I won't be working on it until I'm back... Plenty of time to get some feedback to improve it :)