(Fun) Week In The Life I

We've been going through a 'quiet' phase lately, just wanting to live and enjoy each day. This is good for productivity, but not blogging.

For a birthday party on Saturday, I wanted to make these coconut-lime sugar cookies, but couldn't find any pre-shredded coconut. We bought a fresh coconut at the local duka and I drained the water out of it while Len readied the chopping block:

I should add that I was hacking at the thing in futility and Len killed it with one swipe. He also zested and juiced a bunch of limes for me, since obtaining shredded coconut took longer than I expected.

A heated discussion erupted Sunday after we found ourselves locked out of the gate and Len refused to let me climb up and rappel in. There is a way, I have planned for this, I was like Rhino the gerbil in Bolt - I was so ready! But he won out and eventually our neighbor, who has a key, came home and all was well. Funny little times.

Another friend asked us to celebrate his birthday with his family on Monday, and for a few hours we enjoyed a small island about 20 minutes' boat ride from where we live.

Len's goal was to introduce the kids to snorkeling. They took right to it! Ruby and Henry each spent over an hour peering into the reef; they can't wait to go again.

Thanks to Neal Stanton for the photos!

 And one of our favorite meals we've had here: fresh fish and calamari, with chips. You order when you arrive on the island, they go catch it and cook it right there. Delicious.

Last summer, our hinged tortoise, Myrtle, went missing. And stayed missing. We have seen NO trace of him for nearly a year. Tuesday morning, he showed up looking for breakfast. It's a miracle! Kill the fatted carrot!

I cannot imagine where he was for these months...we have searched many times and I was sure we would just find bones and a shell one day.

Myrt was hungry - he's eaten two full-size carrots and an apple so far, in addition to whatever he's finding out there.

He is missing a couple of shell scales - good thing there are no other pets around to tease him.

Later Tuesday, we went to support the Salasala ministry our friends lead, where kids living in one of the very poverty-stricken areas get to come and be kids once a week. One of the things I love love love about this ministry is that the only motive is to love others with the love of Christ. And the two couples who quaterback it are immensely gifted and educated and could be gaining accolades in other places, but they choose to serve the poorest of the poor here. Beautiful.

Yes, that's not even a week...more to come as the week gets more fun! :)

This Week's Favorite Books: Week 1

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Celebrate: A Book of Jewish Holidays by Judith Gross, Illustrated by Bari Weissman
Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
Brave Cloelia by Jane Louise Curry, Illustrated by Jeff Crosby
The Oak Inside the Acorn by Max Lucado, Illustrated by George Angelini
Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems
The Story of Queen Esther by Jenny Koralek, Illustrated by Grizelda Holderness
Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Illustrated by Ted Rand
Anansi The Spider adapted and illustrated by Gerald McDermott
Echoes For The Eye: Poems to Celebrate Patterns in Nature by Barbara Juster Esbensen, Illustrated by Helen K. Davie

Choosing only ten books to feature here was difficult, but these are our ten favorites from the last week. Each is superb in its own way and I hope you have a chance to read all of them. The links are to Amazon, only to let you know what the cover looks like. I encourage you to check for them at your local library or a reseller like www.betterworldbooks.com before you buy a new copy.

We celebrated Purim this week, so I pulled out Celebrate and Esther and worked them into our reading . Both kids helped me make Hamenstachen cookies, filled with my favorite Paradise jam made from local papaya, carrots, passionfruit and pineapple. Esther is one of the kids' favorite books ever, with gorgeous illustrations and ample opportunities to vilify Haman while celebrating Mordecai. Celebrate is a great book that takes Jewish holidays and makes the traditions and history easy to understand. Ruby read the Purim section to us, and Henry really enjoys the kid-centric illustrations.

Ruby's love of all things girly is reflected in Miss Rumphius, Chrysanthemum, Brave Cloelia and Edwina. Miss Rumphius is a book I would love to be able to buy cases of and give them away to every child I meet. It's a beautiful tale of being courageous and fulfilling your dreams and purpose in life.

Cloelia's determination and courage wins me over every time, and has enough army action to satisfy Henry as well. He also likes the maps on the endpages, and will sometimes go get the book to refer to these maps when we are reading other books about Rome or Italy.

Chrysanthemum's crisis resolution and happy ending always leaves me with a happy smile, too. If we had another girl, I would consider both Chrysanthemum and Delphinium as fine names.

The Oak Inside the Acorn is another great story (a little longer) about becoming who you were made to be, and learning to accept change when it comes.

Paul Revere's Ride is one of our school books this week, although we've been reading it for months. I remember my parents reading the poem to me as a child, and the fantastic illustrations in this edition keep everyone's imagination flying along with the horses' hoofbeats.

Echoes for the Eye is a book a good friend gave us when we were home; we've been reading it for a few weeks as the topics come up. It's a great way to help kids see patterns in nature and begin to think mathematically. We read it this week at the beach as well as a local cafe, and the kids enjoyed finding shapes and patterns wherever they looked.

Anansi's colorful wood-block illustrations and story of cooperation made this a great choice by Henry for bedtime one night.

Edwina is one of my all-time favorite reads and I hope it becomes one of yours, too.

We've been plowing through school lately; I try to let the kids set the pace and they've been hungry to learn, but I sense a natural break coming in the next couple of weeks. Our biggest challenge with Ruby has been getting her enough new material to read!

Life Goes On

Yes, it has been so long since the last post here. Nearly three shameful months of not making time to write things down here. But life has been happing. Supersonic. Fast. Some of it heavy and requiring extra processing.

Here are snippets from today, just today...a day like many other days. Full of life and fun and stories that fuel a soundtrack in my mind that includes "Nobody Told Me (There'd Be Days Like This)" and "People are Strange".

Today started out with school in the banda; the kids and I usually lay in the hammock and read there at least once a day. In the last couple of weeks, we've been checking for bees before we get in (after I sat on a big wood bee and earned a huge welt) and also since yesterday, I've been double checking the straps holding the hammock after someone apparently re-rigged it, causing me to painfully crash to the tile floor.

Ruby enjoys telling me how old I am (not in a mean way, she's just in awe that she knows someone this ancient), I'm sure that shouting out in pain over a bee sting is impressive to her.

So, school, a couple of meetings, swim lesson and library time with the kids, going to pick up the kids after these things, spending time with friends, then going to SalaSala, a service learning part of our week.

One boy at SalaSala was too old to be there, although I couldn't tell it by his size. There is another day for boys his age to come and play sports, and he would like to come on that day, but he has to work at the local stone quarry smashing rocks on that day. He is nine years old.

Our friend Shaun led a short message for the children, talking about how God is the tree and we are the branches. Among other activities, the kids had drawn their own branches on a huge tree drawing, and he talked about what makes a good branch good or a bad branch bad. Good branches bear fruit, while branches that don't are pruned. He and Grace, a Tanzanian teacher, did a great job.

SalaSala was good, even great, but after the children left, we heard singing coming from the house next door, a typical local African house. It sounded joyful and happy, but friends told me it was a song announcing to the whole area that a child had wet the bed. In this ritual, the neighbor kids all come around and sing a simple song, while the wayward child is made to carry the matress on her head around the yard. In this case, they dragged her about 50 yards to the road, sobbing the entire way. My friend's daughter was pleading with her Mom to do something to stop it, and so they went out to politely engage the other children in conversation, just to get them to stop singing. Then one daughter put her arm around the shamed girl's shoulders and walked her, still crying, back to her house. My friend has good daughters (and son!).

It's the first time I've seen this particular ritual here. Shaming children really bothers me. Not just in this culture; it happens in every culture and country, but that doesn't make it less ugly.

At bedtime tonight, I answered a pretty normal array of eclectic questions such as, "Why did God make sharks?" and, "How did God know to put me in this family?" and, "Why are boogers sticky?"

These guys are always keeping me on my toes.

It seems like 300 little other things happened today, but it's late and I'll spare you those details.

Just wanted to update you on what's been happening here. Life, and lots of it.