O Christmas tree!

 

What's new?

...scouring the second hand market for warm clothes and shoes to wear in England in December. Can't say I am looking forward to the cold. Joshua would like to wear his usual outfit of shorts, t-shirt and crocs, but somehow I think he might be a bit cold!

...We have a brown out. The power goes off fairly regularly here, but this time it is very low, enough for a few dim lights, but not much else. Thank goodness for a split electric/ gas cooker. There is no generator here! When the power is on we now have a much faster Internet connection. Thanks to Zuku and the new under sea fibre optic cable we now have 1mbps each instead of sharing half that between 8 families.

...We have brown sludge coming out of our taps. Yesterday we filled up the bath and came back of and it was full of brown sludgy water. We figured we were probably cleaner skipping baths!

...Joshua has gone on a trip today to visit a tea plantation and Bethany is going on a walking safari on Friday. Nairobi is bordered by a national Park so you don't have to go far to see animals.

...Christmas has come to Nairobi. There is a Christmas tree and decorations up in the shopping centre and yesterday at school they put up a huge tree and the little kids (year 1 and 2) decorated it with their hand made decorations. They sang carols and had mince pies and mulled wine or mice pies and mold wine as Bethany called them. It is a lot more festive here than Dodoma, but it still doesn't feel like Christmas to me with such hot weather. Still I am looking forward to seeing Caleb as a Weaver bird in the Christmas production!

Rain, Rain and more rain.

We spent last week battling the flu and the weather. Caleb came down sick first followed by me and then Bethany. Joshua is sick this week and Daniel (the most unhealthy person in the family) has escaped it. The rain was also pouring down all week which made the journey to school a nightmare. Wednesday it took an hour to get to school. I spent a lot of time in the school cafe with other mums trying to wait our the traffic. Thursday I felt so ill I actually spent the whole day in bed and Daniel had to take the day off to watch the other two invalids. On Friday evening I was much better and took Joshua to the memorial of his French teacher. The school had put together a book of memories to send to the teacher's mother, now 83 and living in Marseilles in France. Her son had been teaching in Kenya for 25 years! It was my first time driving home by myself in the dark and I really put my foot down. Needless to say I wasn't car jacked!!

This week the weather is much improved which is fortunate because Mon and Tues Afternoons were sports afternoons for the lower school. Sports day is split because there are so many children. It is much more manageable with 2/3 year groups at a time. I forgot my camera for Joshua and Bethany but have some shots of Caleb performing.

Currently

Currently:


Looking forward to:
Bonfire night. On Saturday we were going to go to school for a Bonfire and fireworks. This will be a first for the children as we never celebrated in Dodoma and they don’t remember Bonfire night in England. However it has been postponed until next weekend as Joshua’s French teacher had a heart attack and died on Saturday morning, so it was postponed out of respect for him.

Proud of:
Bethany and Caleb who were both selected for the school swimming team (Thank you MAF Dodoma pool) The only downside of that is that Bethany has to train after school and doesn’t get home until 5pm. Fortunately for now, Caleb is training at lunchtimes. They are both swimming 3 times a week, with 3 lots of sport on top of that, so I think they will soon be much fitter.

Not Enjoying:
The rainy season. There is a lot more rain here than there was in Dodoma and this is making the traffic even worse than usual. There also seems to be an increase in cockroaches in the house and big black caterpillars. I have bought a new can of ‘DOOM’ to try and deal with the problem. I was quite pleased by the fact that the huge cockroach I found crawling up my leg didn’t gross me out too much.

Enjoying:
Our American neighbours. We get on really well with them, the kids get on great and it’s fun learning new recipes and new words and new ways of doing things. E.g. Popcorn and apples with a movie on Sunday evenings, sloppy Joes, Popsicles, candy, couches and mid term breaks. Unfortunately they will be moving off the compound soon to a bigger house (they have 5 children), but hopefully we will still be able to hang out together!

The beautiful weather in Kenya, well at least until the rain started and the stunning jacaranda trees.

Currently watching:
Hustle Season 2, morally questionable to say the least but very clever.

Currently reading:
Again, a bit short of books and wondering whether a Kindle would be the way forward.

Currently working on projects:
Getting a comfortable sofa. When we arrived we had to get new foam and covers made for our sofa. MAF sofa’s are notoriously uncomfortable. We spent 6 weeks sitting on cushions on the floor, but when they returned the finished sofa it was done really badly and was as uncomfortable as ever. Now we have another sofa much more comfortable, the only problem is it is white. Very dirty children + white sofa = much less white sofa. I am doing my best to keep it clean with a few throws, but after a week I am thinking we may need a better solution.

Currently praying for:
The way to plan our time in the UK so we see as many people as possible without exhausting ourselves.

Birthday cake

 

Yes I am still making novelty cakes with disgusting icing. This time I made fondant icing as I couldn't buy it here. It worked out OK, but I don't think you would want to eat to much of it.

Birthday girl

 

Bethany has had a weekend of birthday events. She didn't want a party this year, but she had the cake at a BBQ on Saturday night, lunch out on Sunday and movie and popcorn with neighbours on Sunday night. Today she has taken a cake into school and we will do ice creams for all the kids on the compound after school.

Happy Birthday Bethany

 

8 years old today!