Update 3: Observations & Occurances

I'm still hoping to have a glorious blog post full of miraculous happenings, open Heaven encounters, and a hot shower, but life in Mozambique with 3 kids allows for little reflection.  I don't even get to engage in the favorite pastime of the other students here: sloaking (sleeping+soaking).  So until then, I keep jotting down little things that we do each day so later I can remember that I was actually in Mozambique and it wasn't just a crazzzzzy long dream.

1. We haven't had water for about 10 days.  It's not completely out, though.  It comes on for about an hour a day - at random times - and then we have a "hygiene" frenzy.  We get water to wash dishes, kids, hands, flush toilets, etc.  I prefer actual running water.

2. Shawn went snorkeling for Fathers' Day.  He had been snorkeling several times since not for Fathers' Day.

3. Shawn had to have a sea urchin spike removed from his foot yesterday that he got while snorkeling.  Fortunately, one of his snorkel buddies is Johan the doctor from South Africa.  Speaking of, does anyone remember Snorks?

4. Now that we get eggs every Saturday (it's a pathetic comment on life here that eggs get us that excited...) our neighbor, Uncle Dan, makes us omelets if we bring our eggs over.  Luci was singing, "Yay! Yay! Uncle Dan!" after she got her omelet.

5. There was a fire on one of the other Iris bases just a couple minutes from where we are.  I was filling up a tub to do some laundry and a staff person came running over yelling for people to get tubs and go help fight the fire.  We could see the smoke from our porch and from a couple houses over - if you climbed up - you could see the flames.  They were able to get the fire out and a few days later Shawn went and helped put up a new water tank because the old one had melted in the fire.

6. We had "dinner with a dorm" night.  Our house and a couple others brought dinner and dessert up to the Fogo (fire) dorm of kids up to 7 years old.  We ate and then played games and mostly ran around with them.  Judah played with a sweet boy named Noe and two other boys, Willie and Jouma, chased Luci.  

7. On Fridays we don't have any sessions, but instead we all have different areas we volunteer in.  Our area is hospitality so we do anything from clean the visitors' bathrooms, to sort out donations, to airport runs.  This seems to be a really good fit for us.  The kids get to help, I finally feel useful, and part of our job description is to hang out and talk with the people visiting.  Not bad.

8. Just about everyone is feeling better - although our standards are muuuuuch lower these days:)  

9. I'm trying to learn some Finnish.  There are a few Finns here and I figure if I learn some key phrases my Grandpa (who occasionally writes me letters in Finnish) will be persuaded that taking the family to Mozambique wasn't the worst idea in the world.  

10. We were going to go to a Mozambican wedding.  Two people who work here, Ed & Rosa, got married and Luci and I even got the matching capulanas (a traditional Mozambican wrap skirt) to wear, but when we heard that it was going to be about 6 hours long, no shade, and no way to leave early, we opted to skip the ceremony.  From the stories of the people who went, we made the right choice.  Mozambique is hot, even in the winter.

11. I'm going to burn - I mean donate - my capulanas when I'm done with this school.  They are hard to walk in and even harder to keep from coming untied.  I only wear mine if I have to, the rest of the time I use it for a beach blanket.