New Years Eve!

We celebrated New Years last night with a party and fireworks!  I spent the whole of the day doing hospitality things, mainly organizing the visitors and helping set up all the activities for the festa (party).  It was a really long day, of course, but I loved it.  I was incredibly busy from 9am until 1230am but it was still great :o) The festa started at 7pm with a movie: Merry Madagascar (which, btw, is completely hilarious. a must own for every parent) and then we began the stations.  I had set up 8 different stations with crafts or games: making a prayer card, a crown, necklaces out of beads, etc and my favorite: chubby bunny.  This game is awesome, Ithe counselors used to do it at the YMCA camp.  You put a marshmallow in your mouth and say “Chubby bunny” and then slowly add one and repeat without ever eating the marshmallow.  It was completely hilarious, I think the boys about 12-15 were the best at it because they understood the competition in the game and they had no inhibitions about having chunks fly out of their mouths.  It’s a completely disgusting game but so hilarious!  Sadly, I left my camera at my family’s house so I didn’t get any good pictures or videos. The stations were run by visitors and missionaries and they were going really well, until we tried to switch stations.  My American head just assumed we’d have a loud speaker or something and someone would say “Switch!” and bam, it’d be done.  But no, of course not, what was I thinking?  I looked around for the loud speaker and it hit me: I live in Mozambique.  So the switching was hectic, to say the least :o) We only switched stations 3 times (instead of 8 haha!) but it still took almost 2 hours.  So in the end, it worked out just fine and the kids were happy :o)  Then we watched another movie, gave them a second (and fancy) dinner with soda and sausage sandwiches, and finally headed down to the soccer pitch for fireworks!  This was my favorite part of the whole evening.  Here in Africa they’re allowed to set off fireworks on their own wherever they’d like, but they’ve only got 30 minutes.  Very scary for any American-raised girl…this whole “anyone can set them off” business.  I’ve never been so close to fireworks in my life.  The hilarious part was that the fireworks scared some of the children, there’s a beautiful display in the sky and their crying from the sounds…typical, but still a little funny. When the fireworks were all going off around the community it was stunning.  It was so beautiful.  All across the horizon all you could see were sparkles and fireworks.  The trees and houses covered up some of them, and that’s when all you’d see were sparkles.. but they looked like fairies to me :-) At one point someone right next door to us set off a truly professional firework that kept bursting and bursting for like 2 minutes.  It was so cool.  Last night was my favorite day here, by far :o)

now go backwards

Date: December 28th, 2009

My uncle took me out driving Sunday morning.  Yep… wow… I don’t know where to begin except to say I didn’t realize just how intuitive I am until I had to try and fight to ignore every instinct in me.  Driving on the right side, staying to the left, thinking the left side is the slow side… all weird.  But by far the hardest part was remembering that I didn’t know the length of the car, which meant I had to pay close attention to everything outside to the left of the car.  My uncle got pretty scared a few times, I must admit, having been sitting on the left side with a clear view of just how close I was cutting it. He was a good sport :o)  But it’s hard to think, “You’re close to the right, so you probably won’t hit anything on your right.  It’s the left side that you can’t see Rebecca.. the left side! watch out you almost took the mirror out!”  Haha, no no, I don’t think I got that close.

Other things I had to remember, which I don’t have to think about at home: potholes.  massive ones, the kind that can take your car OUT. There aren’t very many 4-stops even though there are hundreds of intersections… yeah, that was fun.  Drivers here like to pass a LOT.  and that means you can be in your lane then all the sudden have a car 10 feet in front of you, coming your way in your lane. Yep, your lane.  that’s fun, too.

The best analogy I can think of to explain how weird it is to drive on the other side is trying to ride a bike backwards.  I felt like I moved to a completely different planet.  And here they ride all their bikes backwards, with little tiny mirrors to help you out.  It felt like someone said “welcome! we don’t ride our bikes the way you do.  You know how to ride, right? Okay, good.  Now go backwards.”

want some cake?

last night was the funniest night i’ve experienced in my entire life. no questions asked, i’ve never laughed that much. i went to bed thinking fiona, heather and i were crazy, just hyper silly girls.. i thought we had turned to laughter in effort to salvage the day where (quite literally) everything went awry. but no, truly funny things happened.

it all started with the cake, the laughing that is. we’re at my family’s house and we were making a birthday cake for erin. so we google a “very moist” recipe and go for it. we even took two trips to the store to get things we didn’t have (slash, forgot.). as the ingredients were coming together my faith in the cake was crashing… it was runny, very very runny. as i put it in the oven i said, “i don’t think this is going to work….” and sure enough, one hour later, we’ve boiled a cake. yup, boiled. haha. it’s turned into this goupy brownie batter mixture, but its delicious! the day before hev & fi made a cake that, similar to this one, didn’t rise but that one tasted of gross eggs.. so in a small way this was a step up because it tasted good :o) we put the “cake” into a pot and messed with it on the stove hoping it would do something, anything, maybe even solidify enough to use as ice cream topping. the laughing fits begin when fiona very seriously asks, “want some cake?” as she drips it from a spoon. haha. at the end of the night, we’ve got our cake in a plastic crystal light container in my fridge.

at this point in the day, just before we took the cake out of the oven, only one thing had gone wrong: we came to my family’s house in hope of escaping noise and children and ended up attending the embassy’s (family) Christmas party. but that was fine, we hadn’t been upset about that because it was only one small this, thus far that is. after the cake fiasco we are ready to leave for erin’s birthday dinner. we’re in the car, making a u-turn in the street and heather states, “there’s a problem with the power sttteeerrrring (as she’s trying to turn the car around).” we try and get the guards at my uncle’s to look at it but, being Mozambicans, they really don’t drive and have cars, thus no desperately needed car knowledge. so we’re stuck at home. waiting for a driver to come from the center. the driver tells us he’s close, so (mostly me) all of us get moody and emo and very bummed that not only do we have to miss erin’s dinner but we also have to leave now and go back home. we all completely forgot we were dealing Mozambicans here, they say five minutes and mean 30! so when we think the driver will be here in 45 minutes that turns into two hours. we keep putting off watching a movie and ordering dinner because we think the driver will be there any minute. right when i get the movie going the door bell rings. so we take our cake and head off to get dinner with the drivers (who double as very fun cool guys)

after getting pizza to-go, we’ve swapped cars with the drivers. they drive home our wonky car and we stuff into the front of a pick up truck. then begins the jamming of heather’s arm into either mine or fiona’s sides as she attempts to switch gears with a person sitting on the hump seat in the middle. laughing starts again. and also fiona’s very close encounters with her hand and my mouth as she tries to lock the door from the hump seat. more laughter. we’re driving home with laptops, settlers games, and pizza in our laps. as we’re trying to pass out pizza and our arms are discombobulated and intertwined, we’re also looking for the kfc where chico and his friend are waiting for a ride home. we pull up to one and call chico, then realize we’re at the wrong kfc. there are only 3 in the city..we laugh off our stupidity. so then we’re feeling a bit confused, and naturally ask for help (because we’re girls, not boys). well the kind woman in the car next to us (the one we yelled at for ages trying to get her attention through her closed window) tells us with a very confused expression that the road we’re looking for is in fact the road we’re on. haha, we die laughing at this point and from here on our we don’t stop laughing until we’re asleep. so we drive up to the correct kfc seconds later, since we were so close, we get chico and his friend in the bed of the truck and head home. we’re flying over all the bumps and holes in the road, in true heather fashion, and we’re making it home in lightning speed. chico calls from the back of the truck and begs her to drive slower. laughing again, but apologizing at the same time.

we finally make it home to the center and as we’re dropping off the notebook with the car details i look up to heather dying laughing, wanting to know very quickly what’s funny this time so that i can join in. in one second i see why hev’s laughing… fiona is on her hands and knees having just fallen into the sand. she tripped her way off the step and all of her things that were once in her hand are now next to her strewn about on the sand and she’s not moving. other than her laughter, fiona’s not moving, and certainly not getting up anytime soon. and so, we laugh more. the night was wonderful. for a day that came very close to being dreadful, it was amazing. the kid party, the cake, eating fiona’s hand, greasy pizza in the car with three girls squished into two seats, and finally fiona’s graceless fall, the day was amazing. we had a fit of laughter again in church this morning, where hev actually left she was laughing so hard, it was a great night :o)

time for movies!

this is my first attempt at making a movie.. who knew windows had this? i would have had loads of fun in high school with this lol. so this is a short video of some of my boys :o) i’m working on another one to show you guys a typical dinner, but this is just us playing. hope you like it!

My Cuties :o)

These are during the afternoon program.

 

 

Here’s Zequito and Pedro singing the ABCs :o)

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The afternoon program is something Laura does that I’ve kept going while she’s gone.  The boys adore it, it’s really cute :o) I’ve got 3 rooms in my dorm and once a week each room gets to come into Laura’s home for a lesson or activity and a snack.  Laura does way more teaching than I can do, seeing as I’m merely learning Portuguese :o) so I do lots of fun silly stuff with the boys.  We did macaroni art last week, that was really fun and it was my first time ever doing that with kids.  It went way better than I thought it would go!  The boys were really into it, and I ended up having a few boys come in later on in the week to finish their papers.  I’m pretty sure every single boy taped his up on the wall in their rooms, it was seriously adorable.  Last week we did stuff for Laura, but it’s a surprise :o) so that news is gonna have to wait!

..holding a miracle..

8 little kilos, he’s six and he only weighs 8 kilos, even after being here at the center for nearly a year!  About two weeks ago Lucas really scared us.  I went to my family’s for the weekend only to get multiple phone calls and emails desperate for prayers for little Lucas.  It was awful.  And I couldn’t drive myself back to the center, I had to wait until a driver could come get me.  He has ups and downs, good days and bad ones.  But that weekend it was really bad, and the nursing staff was telling everyone to pray and prepare their hearts for God’s will to take the lead.  Scared me to the core, especially since Laura was gone.  I wanted her to be around and Lucas needed her to be around!  But God did take control :o) and now he’s doing better than ever!  He walked all the way to my door (which is really Laura’s door) from the place where they eat dinner, which is probably 100ft and 3 big stairs!  It was so amazing.  I was so excited when I saw he came the whole way, it was an awesome surprise :o)  So now every time I hold Lucas during church or sit with him and his little stacking ups I think, “I’m holding a miracle. A real live miracle is in my lap this instant :o) “ 

and it’s the best feeling in the world.

White Skin

so I only have about five minutes, but the cutest thing happened during church :o) I sat in a different place today, in the back with people from the surrounding community instead of with my boys in the front. I had to sit somewhere with an easy exit for hospitality stuff. But anyway, this little boy ends up sitting next to me and getting really cuddly with me! It was so adorable :o) He was probably like 8? ..8ish. He's holding my hands and rubbing my skin and I'm just thinking it's the cutest thing, but then I realize that he's staring at me. His eyes are following intently where his fingers travel.... it's because I'm white! Haha, I'm pretty sure I laughed out loud when I realized this, despite my sitting in church :o) He was rubbing over my freckles and my knuckles, slowly and deliberately. Then (after realizing) I showed him this big huge freckle on the arm that was further away from him and he rubbed it --no joke-- for like ten minutes. Haha, the joys of living in Africa :o)