Air conditioning and PB&J

Now this is Africa.

I really like rice, bread, and fruit, don't get me wrong. But I've eaten that 36 times, and it's a liiiittle bit old :)

I've decided that Heaven will probably have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and air conditioning.

My kindergarten class understands addition!!!!!!!!!!! I brought out the most brilliant mix of popsicle sticks, permanent markers, poster board, and glue that this world has ever seen. And all my kids can now officially add numbers 1-5 to each other. So that's my achievement of the last two weeks!

My taxi driver and I have get along well--we had an African dance party at our house and he came. A couple days ago he was driving me home, pulled over in this random field, handed me the keys, and said "you're driving!"

Did I mention I've never driven a stick shift before?

And you can't even really call it a road?

It was quite the experience of a lifetime.

I've now been proposed to by three Africans, and a teenager at the Deaf school today sweetly passed me a note explaining his love for me and how he would like me to take him to America, where people drive big trucks in Texas.

The kids at the orphanage today asked me to take them to the park. I was blown away that they had a park here, and got really excited. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the "park" was an empty field and a graveyard, and the kids still had the time of their lives.

Feel free to stop reading here, but shameless plug:
Visit www.tomsshoes.org
When you buy a pair of shoes for yourself, they automatically send a pair of shoes to a child somewhere that doesn't own any.
My kids here don't own shoes. There's the occasional child that has a pair of flip-flops caked in mud that is four sizes too small, but otherwise, they walk through the trash daily in bare feet. Disease spreads so quickly, and all it would take is SHOES. It's so hard to watch, and know that kids in America own so many shoes they never use.

OK, shameless plug over.

I hope you are all doing well, and I'll be home in 8 days! Love you all!