Coloring

 I love painting. I love bright colors. And all the walls in our house were white. Every single one. Yuck. Sounds like I have a project on my hands, no? I took advantage of my free time during Christmas break to do some coloring in my house. Apparently landlords here don't really care. Fantastic! 

This was our miserable little dining nook before I got a hold of it. 

Normally I wouldn't consider myself a very yellowish person, but I knew I wanted a nice sunny corner here. Tada! Mission Accomplished. 

Could our kitchen nook BE any brighter? 

And here is my sad, boring, pre-color room. Sigh.

Not anymore! Now it's like blue smiled on my walls. I like to call it a Caribbean blue. I really don't have any idea if that's at all accurate, but I like the way it sounds and that's what I'm going to call it. It's a mini vacation as soon as I open my door. 

And last night, just for kicks, I decided to paint another wall in our house that wonderful blue. 

I think the white walls are getting worried.

They're slowing being eliminated. 

Also, I've really been enjoying artwork here! I got one painting like this and sent it home for my Grandpa. Apparently my sisters were a bit jealous, so of course I was obliged to mend the situation by buying more art. Oh, darn. 

 And then I get a receipt like this that makes me feel like some rich snooty art investor. 

Two oil paintings for 12,000? Why, yes, don't mind if I do. 

But on Saturday I did make a more serious investment. I had been visiting this particular painting many times. I saw it at the art market and was instantly in love. Finally last Saturday I went back to visit and came home with a wallet that was a quarter million lighter, and a giant grin on my face because this beauty was finally mine. I think it feels right at home in our newly colored house. 

I still can't get over how great it is!

So that's how I've been coloring my house. Someone is going to have to stop me soon, or Becky and I will be living in a rainbow. Or is that a bad thing...

Safari Time!

What's a teacher to do when she has several weeks off of school for Christmas, and she's living in the pearl of Africa? Go on a safari, of course! 

(Fun fact for fellow word enthusiasts out there. Safari in Swahili means "trip" or "journey." So if you went to the beach, the mountains, or the grocery store, you went on a safari. In a manner of speaking.)

One of the families from our school was planning to go camping at a few different parks, and kindly invited me along. Jackie Bell, the first and second grade teacher at Acacia, also came, along with a few other friends from their church. Our first destination after leaving Kampala was the equator. We stopped and had a lovely cup of coffee at the equator, served in Tim Hortons coffee cups. I'm fairly certain the nearest Tim Hortons is many thousands of miles away. Hmmmmm...

When we arrived at Lake Mburo national part, we saw animals right off. The zebra even greeted us on the road before we even entered the park. There were tons of "deer" variations, warthogs that were affectionately dubbed "bacon" by the children, angry cape buffalo, crazy looking eland, and friendly zebra. Although we never managed to catch one for the Neeleys to take home and train. 

We set up our tents right by the beautiful lake, complete with gorgeous sunsets and musical hippos. It was wild how close the animals were to us. There was always a warthog or baboon hanging around eating something. We had to watch our campsite pretty vigilantly. A warthog stole an empty box, a bunch of monkeys stole a whole loaf of bread, and I was half afraid the cranky looking old baboon was going to steal our youngest camper. Creepy baboons. 

In this picture you can see two hippos surfacing in the water. From that point of view they don't seem so big, but at night when they came out and grazed all around the campground it's another story. Those things are massive! Although we did see one baby that was about goat-sized. That was pretty adorable.

 We went on an early morning drive, and had a spectacular view of the part from this lookout.

This was our group of intrepid adventurers.

 Or it actually might be more correct to call this group the intrepid adventurers. With our awesome skull we found. And a little bit of attitude from the sole boy of the crew. 

It was Ms. Bell's birthday, so there was a celebratory "Gangam Style" dance around the campfire to mark the occasion. I must say, a three year old's take on Psy's dance is pretty entertaining. 

After a few days in Lake Mburo, the Neeley's and I continued on to Queen Elizabeth national park. Although we were not successful in our search for tree climbing lions, which were supposedly very easy to see, we did manage to find some pretty cool animals. 

 Most notable was our awesome sighting of a leopard. Hard to see, but it is right dead center in this photo, in the tree. We watched it napping for quite awhile before it got down out of it's tree. There were three impala that we were sincerely hoping would become dinner. Morbid as it may be, wouldn't that have been awesome! But, alas, the leopard was apparently not feeling very hungry and although it stalked the impala, it let them get away. We were still pretty ecstatic about seeing a leopard that close though.  

 Another great savanna sunset. 

We also saw several different groups (packs/prides/pods?) of elephants in the park. At one point we came around a corner and surprised an already riled up elephant that snorted at us quite a bit and looked a bit scary. Especially since several members of our group were perched precariously on the roof rack and wouldn't have fared well in an elephant close encounter. 

The place where we camped near Queen Elizabeth was pretty spectacular. This was the main pool, which had a water slide down to a lower pool. Both pools have a fantastic, sprawling view of the savanna below.  

Pretty good way to spend Christmas break, no?

Christmas on the Equator

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season.

Christmas break was a much welcomed breather for me, after all the exciting and exhausting things that we had going during the last week or so of school.

One main thing was our Christmas program. The play, Children of the World, has groups from different countries around the world come to visit the manger. Our class, plus a few, was the delegation from the good ol' USA, and they got to sing a cute gospel-choir-esque song. I never thought choreography would be part of my job, and I almost hate to admit it, but it was kind of fun. But, man, Christmas plays take a lot of effort! Huge kudos to Dona and Jane at EBC for putting our church program together for so many years. I always knew it must be a lot of work, but I never fully appreciated the amount of blood, sweat, sweat, and tears it takes. Well, mostly just sweat. But still. We put in hours and hours of rehearsal with the whole group, more hours in music class getting the songs down, and more and more hours in class practicing lines. In the week of the program I don't think I ever spent less than eleven hours a day at school. Lee Erin, Martin, and I were understandable rummy when making the angel wings a few nights before the final performance, and wearing the wings seemed to help. Sorry I didn't get any pictures. Finally Friday came, and the students all did a wonderful job! All their hard work paid off and they had a really stellar performance. I felt like a proud mamma.

All the "Children of the World" bringing down the house with their finale.
Photo from Acacia

Team USA!
Photo from Acacia

The angles are all off duty

On Saturday after the program, Lee Erin and I went for some well deserved pedicures.

New feet!

The next week we only had class on Monday and Tuesday. Due to my vast wisdom and insight in planning, I put a big, end of unit, culminating event in the history calendar for those two days. Stupid. But it did turn out pretty great. Although us teaching were dragging, and felt like it was all mass chaos because we didn't have the time of energy to organize ourselves as well as we wanted, the kids seemed to have a great time. I had been doing a Medieval Europe unit in history. We learned about Vikings, Alfred the Great, the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, and Robin Hood, among others. I personally thought one of the best parts was getting the kids interested in the Magna Carta. After asking, "What was that really important paper that changed the king's power?" I can't even tell how cute it is to a bunch of first through fifth graders shout joyfully, "THE MAGNA CARTA." Teaching is so great when you have good content!  Anyway, as our final wrap up to our unit, we planned to do a medieval festival. Although it was a bit daunting, falling that close on the heels of our program, we pulled it together for Tuesday right before school was out. Different teachers ran different stations, where the students made princess hats and knight tunics, wrote a poem as a bard, planted seeds for an experience as a peasant, played medieval games like blind man's bluff, jousted with swim noodles, and were knighted with their chosen medieval moniker (ie: William the Conqueror, or Sven Forkbeard). We ended with a champion joust-off, and a "feast" of apple juice mead and lunch served on pieces of bread like medieval lords would have eaten off of bread trenchers. We had a grand old time.

Noodle Jousting. You should all try it some time. Great Fun.
Photo from Acacia

In the last days before break, we also tried out some computer coding with "Hour of Code" from Khan academy. By the end all the kids were able to draw Christmas cards with computer commands, and my white board looked like this. For an English Lit major who'd never done any coding in her life, I was pretty impressed. It was actually a lot of fun.  

After we managed to pull through the last few days of school, we had a staff party. It started as just a staff dinner, but one of the TAs wanted to plan games, and it turned into an elaborate program. Admittedly, it was more fun than I thought. Along with the typical gift exchange, it also included an Acacia fashion show, custom written song, and poems written by Mr. Jason and I. This was mine:

'Twas the night before holidays, and all through Acacia,

the teachers prepare, thanks to Ms. Grace, here,

for our elaborate staff party.

The early years are tucked up sweetly in bed,

after peeing in the sand and swinging naked.

Next is kindergarten, don't be alarmed,

Although 16 students to me seems quite large!

Jeremy dances all over everywhere,

and Isaac Michael's wearing Ms. Maggie's hair.

Then Ms. Bells class, and they're quite astute.

They wrote books that have indexes and glossaries to boot.

Their cute cherub faces look at you, gleaming.

It's really quite nice, if Mishel isn't screaming.

Grades 3 and 4 have a lot of fun,

even though their pet cameleon has run.

Like barbarians they tear apart cow lungs and hearts,

 and in the same day make very fine art.

And last of all, we have the big kids.

They're all upstairs, up in my crib.

Lydia and Hannah do their own little dance,

and Ju Hun takes his typical stance.

 But now the children are gone; they've all taken flight.

We say Merry Christmas Break to all, and to all a good night.

As soon as our staff party was over, I went and spent the night with the Neely's in order to get a early morning start for our safari.

Going on safari!

Once back from safari, it was almost Christmas! The Tuggys kindly included me in their plans for Christmas eve and Christmas day. We went to a lovely carol sing with some families from school. Christmas morning, after opening stockings (thanks guys!) we went to a Christmas service at church. My favorite part was singing Silent Night in four languages. Then Christmas dinner, presents, Dutch Blitz, and watching The Princess Bride, which, as far as I'm concerned, could become a new quirky Christmas tradition. So funny.

A poolside candlelight carol service

Now, with a few spare days of luxurious free time, I've decided to paint the house! Not the whole thing, but at least enough color to perk it up a bit for the new year.

So far it's been a pretty great holiday. It has been hard to be away from home for the first time during Christmas. I do miss everyone at home a ton and wish I could be celebrating with family in Oregon, but at the same time I love that I'm here. Celebrating Jesus' birth and God's love here on the equator.