Free Friday

It felt wonderful to sleep in until 8:30 this morning. We have a completely free day so far, unless something comes us. We do want to stop in at the preschool for an hour maybe, just to see if we can get a better idea about how the routine goes, but other than that we’re not doing much. I’m hoping to get some more planning done, and we do need some more lunch groceries. Erika and I are responsible to buy the food we want for breakfast and lunch, so we’ve been eating oatmeal and cereal for breakfast, and sandwiches for lunch and then we get our cooked meal in the evenings.

Since we had nothing going on today I did some more brainstorming for lesson plan ideas for a few hours and then watched some Friends. I also laid outside in the sun for a while. At around 2pm we heard Mrs. Birner over in the preschool because she likes to come in and read to them on Fridays. We thought it’d be nice to watch that, and see how Charity is with the kids. We didn’t realize preschool is shorter on Friday, so after the story and a few songs, it was already time for them to leave. Cute little Stewart came up to me and said he wanted to play. I could not resist him—he is one of the cutest, smartest, and most polite children I have ever met. So we played 3 rounds of What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf, and then they all went home.

I had texted Dee earlier in the day to see if she was going into town at all, because if she was we were going to catch a ride to pick up those groceries we needed. She came up with a better plan: it’s Dave’s birthday today, so she invited us to go out for pizza tonight with them and then when we’re in town we can do the shopping we need to do. And that gives Anne a night off of cooking for us, which she was happy about. J

We’re getting our first bigger rain, with loud thunder. I love storms!! I know Mom and Dave would love it too. It’s cooling everything off and it feels so good!

At 4:30 we did our regular walk with Dee and Mrs. Birner. It’s so good to get outside every day. If we don’t take a walk, it just feels so weird.

There are some pastors on campus this weekend for a meeting, so we’ll have some people staying in the guest house across from us. We also met Pastor Hartmann- it was nice to see him again.

We were going to meet up with Dave and Dee to go to supper at around 6pm, but there was an issue with the water being out on campus for most of the day, and Dave was working on getting that fixed, so we ended up leaving closer to 7pm. Pastor Hartmann also joined us. We ate at Pizza Inn which is at Manda Hill Mall and the pizza was just delicious! I also had a grape Fanta, which I don’t think I’ve had since leaving Africa. While the pizza was being ordered, Erika and I went to Shoprite to pick up some more groceries for the week. After supper we went back to Dave and Dee’s for dessert—Dee made a delicious pistachio dessert for Dave’s birthday.

Today I definitely had some reminders of growing up here in Africa: the water was out, so we couldn’t flush the toilets or take a shower, and yes it was fixed for a while but then the power went out which made the water pump stop working again (or something), so now the power is back but the water is not. Also, while driving into town tonight I saw many cadiddles and cadoodles. This is the first time we’ve really been out and about at night. My family will know this, but when we were little and would see cars driving that had one headlight burned out we would hit the ceiling of the car with our hand and yell “cadiddle!” If the car had a tail light burned out we would yell “cadoodle”. (Correct me if I’m wrong Dave-o.) I’ve also seen one or two capiddles. We would yell “capiddle” when we saw someone ‘piddling’ on the side of the road. J

Erika and I have also been interested in the stars lately, not only because they’re a lot brighter here (even though we’re in a big city) but we want to find all the constellations we can’t find in the Northern Hemisphere. Pastor Hartmann helped us figure out where the Southern Cross was (we were getting confused because there was another set that looked like a cross, but he informed us that was the false one) and Orion’s Belt. So now we have to see if we can find some smaller ones. I’m excited for when we’re at the game park on a night drive—that’ll be the best time to see some good stars. It’ll be pitch black and we’ll be in the middle of the bush!

Yo family—I know you read my blog everyday so you feel like you know what’s going on in my life, but I still want to know what’s going on in yours, so please go online—preferably Facebook chat. I’m usually online between 8pm – 11pm my time, which is 12noon – 3pm your time. So if you have off of work or something, please go online to chat to your dear sister/daughter. Thank you!