Week 2: Time is Squishy Here

This would be more accurately titled, "Update 2."  It is much harder to get to the internet than I was expecting...  I don't even know where to start either.  It's funny because there is so much going on, but at the same time each day runs together in a blur of sun, rice & beans, kids, and more African kids.  We had a bit of a rough go last week with the kids all having fevers and other "symptoms."  If we were in America it would be easy to guess the cause - teething, another kid's germs, or a mall play area.  Here, it could be teething, so many other kids' germs, or an unknown tropical disease.  Thankfully, the fevers passed and no one is worse for the wear.

I wish I had lots of stories of all the amazing things I've seen and done and learned, but I'm finding that I spend a lot of time with our kids - the further removed from our American home the more intense the kid tending becomes.  And we are REALLY far from our American home.  I am happy to rest in knowing that we are here for a purpose and it doesn't matter whether I get that from a class or from hanging out on our porch with another mom who is missing class.

It's feels impossible for me to collect my thoughts enough to make a cohesive post, so I'm just going to list some highlights and click "publish."

1. On Saturday our breakfast was delayed.  We are usually up between 4:45 and 5:15am and we go get breakfast (a bread roll and sweet tea) at 6 am.  By the time we were able to get out breakfast at 7 we were hungry.  Shawn came back with our regular rolls, but also 5 eggs a piece for each person in our house and a jar of peanut butter and one of jelly.  There was great rejoicing!  It is the simple things around here that get us going.

2. We have had very intermittent water this week.  I don't care who you are, running water is wonderful and when you don't have it - even for an hour - you notice.

3. Luciana has ringworm.  As a mom, from a place that doesn't have ringworm, I was horrified to here that.  But the woman who diagnosed it is a mom/nurse from South Africa and when I showed her Luci's leg, she was unphased.  "Yeh, that's ringworm." She gave me a cream to apply 3x a day for 10 days and that's that.  She said it's really common here and in South Africa and it comes from playing in the dirt.  I said I would just keep Luci out of the dirt.  I wish there was a font for sarcasm.

4. I had my birthday in Africa.  I was planning to run Grandma's Half Marathon, but instead Shawn took me to "Club Naval" and we shared chocolate ice cream on the beach listening to the waves on the Indian Ocean while our new best friend Sarah from Colorado watched the kids.  Being 31 isn't so bad.

5. One of the people in our house figured out how to make brownies.  We are considering selling them and making enough money to spend the rest of our time here suffering for Jesus in the Pemba Beach Resort.

6. Shawn is starting to have an Irish accent - kind of.  He and a guy named Aaron from Northern Ireland have a common love of airplanes/motorcycles/helicopters/food and they spend a lot of time together.

7. A woman from one of the villages who works with the Iris base lost her house in a major downpour and the school gathered enough money to build her another house.  They are going to build it this weekend and Shawn and I went to town today to put together a house warming wash tub for her.  It just seemed to me that if she was going to get a new house she should get to put new stuff in it.  In America I would have bought a nice house plant, in Mozambique it's clothes pins, a mirror, food staples, some dishes, and laundry soap.

8. There's more and I have cute photos of the kids taking baths, but I don't have time to write it all (please take me out for coffee when I get back and I'd be happy to tell you all about it - verrrry slowly) and there isn't the bandwidth for pictures.

9. Can you feel our love?  We miss you all so much and would love to being hugging you right now.  I hugged/creeped out a girl who had just met some of our friends from Ohio a few months ago.  I just loved hugging someone who has hugged people I love.

No big plans here until the 30th - I'm going on the bush-bush outreach with Asher.  Shawn will stay back with Judah & Luciana and then he'll go on a different outreach.  I'm nervous about that, but I've already jumped off one cliff, what's another one?