Friday, June 29, 2007

More pictures..



The real thing

Hey Everyone!

Yeah..the last post...oops, I'm still figuring out how this all works.

Only two weeks to go, and the we are done with Swahili school. I for one am truly amazed at how far I've come. Jamie is once again very confortable with her swahili. Its great that we both know it now, and can communicate with one another. Just wait till we come back to the states in a couple years and we can have a personal conversation right in front of y'all and no one will know what we are saying.

The kids are doing well. Annabelle, has tripled her vocabulary this week. She trys to say everything Mom or dad say. I talked to her on the phone tonight and she said "hi" "i love you too" and "bye" and something else I can't remember, with prompting from Mom, but tis wonderful. Jamie said she said "diaper" today which of course is a very important word for a little girl o know. I'm in Dar es Salaam this weekend helping pick up a vehicle and friend of mine and his wife are buying. Its a nice 98 Toyota Land Cruiser, big tires rugged off road suspension, a nice car. We'll drive about 7 hours back to Iringa tomorrow. WE go through a game pack, which when we came through coming to Dar, we say gazelle, giraffe, Elephant, warthog and Junio's favorite Zebra. I'll try to take some video for him on the way back tomorrow.

In other news, we've had rats in our banda recently, the night before I came to Dar, we had set traps, and ended up catching two coming into our house, however, they still were running around knocking things over on our night tables, and making noises under the bed. Certainly an unnerving experience for Jamie. But last night she didn't have any trouble( which is great because I wasn't there to protect her :o) ). Anyway...such is life in Africa. Thank for listening. Peace.

Jer

Onward...through small streets.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Sorry...here are the pictures...yes one is here twice.




This week

Here are some pics of our place: One is a pic of the house we have mostly been living in. Another is a picture of the girl, Jiliani that takes care of Annabelle and Junio while we are in class, and the last is a picture of Junio and his friend Mikayla outside the tent we lived in while they were putting a bathroom on our stone house. We just moved back to the stone banda with a bathroom and it has been so wonderful.
Today both Jeremy and I got to come into to town to run errands. There are only vehicles that come into town every so often and usually there is not enough room for the whole family. So, we celebrated when we found a shop with Ice cream cones. Yeah!! Some of you have asked about our access to e-mail. We only have e-mail when we come into town and use the internet cafe. Sometimes it is slower than mud and we never know when we will for sure be able to come into town. So, thank you all for your patience in our slow returns to e-mail and things.
Swahili school is going well. My class is doing a play of the story of Joseph in Kiswahili. We are writing it and performing it ourselves. I am playing the part of Jacob, Joseph's father and the baker who has the bad dream and gets his head cut off. We have to memorize all our lines in Swahili so it is a little nerve-wrecking. Jeremy is getting prepared to teach a lesson in Swahili to his class on how to play a song on the guitar. He has to completely explain it in Swahili. This should be challenging but fun.
Annabelle is doing well, for those of you who didn't know, she did take her first steps but hasn't really started walking. She prefers to crawl or swim in the dirt. She is always covered from head to toe in dirt when we pick her up from childcare.
Junio is doing well. There is another American family coming tomorrow with 5 and 10 year old boys. Junio will start taking Swahili lessons with the other 5 year old boy on Monday for an hour a day. This is very fortunate because his friend Mikayla is leaving to go back to New Zealand next week and they probably won't see each other again for awhile.
God Bless you all and thank you for your prayers!!