Beauty

My mom and Ben

Outside my parents' house in Nairobi:

On the way to school...

Our path.

Adorableness.

Pictures of our life for the last month

We've been enjoying lots of delicious bananas since coming here.

We walk by this banana tree every day here

at language school on our way to class.

Aunt Jo (Carla's sister) came up to Arusha for MCC meetings from Dodoma,

where she also works for MCC.

Ben was happy to see her and even yelled "JoJo!" when

she came through the gate.

This is the "unorthodox" bbq I mentioned in my previous post.

We had a goat roast for visiting MCC country reps.

I'm pretty sure we had a wringer washer just like this in Eastleigh.

Bedtime stories. This is at our reps place in Arusha.

My Dad, Chuck, and his dog, Mac. My parents had Mac from

1997-2002. He's been living in a great place since then,

but he remembered my dad when he went to visit last month.

He even remembered Mom, Wanjela (an amazing gardener at Rosslyn) and the

campus itself. Amazingly bright dog. He's worked his way

back into my family's home. They weren't planning on

getting him back...but how can you resist this dog?

Another important milestone: Orange Fanta.

My sister used to chug this when we were little.

This was taken when we went out for Ethiopian food with

my parents, Ryan and Kristen and about 10 other Rosslynites.

We were told not to bother bringing lots of toys along...

people were right.

This is outside my parent's backdoor at Rosslyn, Nairobi.

Is it surprising, giving the lineage, (grandparents, specifically)

that he is a big time ham?


Minneapolis airport. Ben loved the moving sidewalks.

Our last day in Winnipeg with the Unger Family:

Big Ben and Little Ben:
Doesn't he realize how special this moment is?

Swahili

Kurt and I are in the throes of language school. Noun classes and possessive terms swirl through our minds as we try to sleep at night. Also disturbing our sleep are the screeches of invisible bush babies in nearby trees, a mosque call that happens more frequently than I think it needs to, and random monkeys jumping on our roof. Vilevile (also) we have a two year old who likes to wake up and yell "Mama!" so he can scramble into bed with us and ruin our sleep for a couple of hours. What a sweetie.

We are about 20 km outside of Arusha now, studying Kiswahili at a Danish development school and training center called MS-TCDC. However, my Danish has not improved. I don't know about my Swahili either, although I am soaking in the classes. After years of living in Nairobi it has always been a bit embarrassing to admit that my Swahili didn't go much further than "Sawa" so it is refreshing to get some formal training. Kurt and I are in different classes so we can't bug each other, but we do see each other at tea time, which is twice a day, if you don't include the tea I also drink at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And speaking of eating, we have been going to sleep with bellies full at the end of every day. Rice, curries, fresh avocadoes and fruit salads for lunch; crepes and omelettes and fresh masala tea for breakfast. And the occasional culinary treat that I would attritube to the Danes - like beef sausages. I don't always eat those. While we were staying with our country reps in Arusha we were treated to goat, duck and lamb as well. Not as delicacies, but as food that was actually cheaper than cow or chicken. We had a big goat roast last weekend and as you can see the bbq equipment wasn't necessarily orthodox. (I say "as you can see" because I hope to post some pictures. However, this may not come to pass - the connection is slow and my blogging skills are even slower - but we press on).

I digress...

Every morning here we wake up early and get ready, sometimes with a hot shower and sometimes with a colder one....then we walk the path from our little "room" past banana and jacaranda trees to get to the dining hall. We drop Ben off at the kindergarten, which is easier at some times than others - you can pray about that - and then go to class all day. We get out and have more tea, and then play with Ben, eat dinner, do homework, and try to get Ben down. It's a fairly small world here but we are enjoying it. We'll be here for another two weeks, and then get an additional month of study in a different area called Lushoto.

So that's kind of our life right now. Ben has impressed everyone with his balling skills already and is keeping up with the big kids. The child care situation is good but it ebbs and flows. He's been a real trooper but I think all of the changes are piling up and overhelming him a bit. He'll be ok and we're looking forward to all the time we can give him this weekend.

Well, class begins in 10 minutes so I'd better try to post this...it just might take that long.