Ant Entertainment

Today was such a lovely Friday. Morning tutoring went OK. It was challenging again with my four boys. By the end of our session I decided that I’m going to split them up because I think it will help with management and how much we’re able to get done. I’ll have the two younger ones come first and then the two older ones. We’ll see how well that works next Friday.

English also went very well. I had all six of my ladies there again, and Erika only had two of hers. More of her ladies have prior work commitments. I’m very thankful that I usually always have all six of them there because then I don’t have to worry about something they may have missed. Today I taught them the past, present, and future tenses of verbs. We practiced with all the household chore verbs we’ve learned this week. I think they caught on pretty well. Since I won’t be seeing them again for almost a week (which they seemed kind of happy to have some time off) we’ll probably review verb tenses again next week for the two days we have English class. We finished the day with some more Bananagrams as a large group and then we let them leave a little bit early because we had to meet Christine shortly after 11 to go into town for our visas.

When we got back home after class we were just going to munch on toast and fruit for a light lunch, but then Anne surprised us with making the most delicious little chicken pot pies ever. She made the dough all from scratch of course and it was light and flaky and buttery and on the inside was a delicious chicken, garlic, cheese and onion mixture. Every single time Anne makes something for us she outdoes herself. Erika mentioned she should start her own restaurant. She really could—I know I’d be a frequent visitor there. J So we ate a quick lunch and then headed over to find Christine. Christine is such a nice lady! We don’t know what we ever would have done without her. There is no way we could ever have navigated the visa thing on our own. First we went to one office and they told us to go to a different one. This first building is where I had a very embarrassing slip down a flight of stairs. The stairs must have been slightly sandy and my flip flops had no grip so I just completely wiped out. And of course there were people around watching. It was quite embarrassing but it provided Erika a good laugh. When we went to the second building we got in and out pretty quickly. Unfortunately we didn’t get our full 90 day visa today. We are waiting for the lower fees to come out, which they supposedly said would go into effect this week but didn’t. So all we got today was a 2 week extension on our temporary visas and we’ll have to get our other ones when we get back. After the visa thing we went to the central bus station downtown to reserve our bus tickets for tomorrow. We’re taking a nice coach bus down there for a really good rate. We’re all paid up and have our seats picked out, so we’ll see how smoothly it all goes tomorrow morning. Our bus leaves at 7am so we’re leaving the house around 6. We’re so excited!!

After the business was taken care of we stopped at a different mall downtown that we haven’t been to yet. That one was so nice! I’d say even nicer than Manda Hill mall. We did some grocery shopping so we can have some snacks and sandwiches on the bus tomorrow and hopefully have some food for when we get back next week.

Today was such a gorgeous day—the sun was out again which it hasn’t really been for the past couple of days. We set the mat out in the courtyard and I did some lesson planning for next week and read a bit of my book. In the afternoons after classes the sem students usually do work around campus. I love hearing the sound of activity outside our walls. I always have the urge to just walk around campus and hang out with people—by people I usually mean the kids. So after sunning for a while we headed out to find the kids. We found our usual crew and played with them for a good hour or so. I will never get tired of that. Sometimes it’s hard to make a clean escape though, because they are always hanging onto our arms and surrounding us.

We were invited to go to a play at AIS tonight with the Birners. It is such a tempting offer, but the timing was just not right. We need to do laundry and pack tonight and since we’re getting up very early tomorrow we thought it’d be best to just stay here. So we’re going to enjoy our last night of Anne’s cooking for a few days and watch some Friends and pack. Perfect evening!

Also, for some evening entertainment we watched an impressive ant show. There was a dead grasshopper that was lying on our table for a few days and today we finally decided to throw it away. It had been sitting in our garbage can for a few hours. Well right after supper Erika noticed something gross! The ants had somehow smelled and sought out this grasshopper, retrieved it from the garbage can and were slowly making their way down the side of the bin to the floor. We watched them drag it across the floor to a little hole in the carpet. Then they got the thing wedged under the carpet. Their home must be under that little hole, between the carpet and the floor and they were trying to bring this thing down there with them. It was insane!! It was also kind of cool seeing the whole thing happen. I wonder how they communicate with each other and move in such coordination. We even saw them problem solve—they realized the grasshopper was kind of large so they plucked off the wings to try to make it easier to wedge under the carpet. Anne came over later so we showed her what they were trying to do and as easy as 123 she plucked the grasshopper out from the hole and threw it outside. Such cruel punishment for those ants! J