Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

Yes, this is the 3rd blog post today. I'm just doing what I can to catch you all up.
Mom and Dad have been on me for weeks to get this thing updated, so I'm trying to do a decent job now that I'm finally obliging them.
Mom says that many of you have been wondering about my Christmas plans, so this is the Christmas post! yay!!

So, we got out of school one week ago- Friday the 16th. It was a splendid day. I spent most of it eating cookies and making cookies and listening to Christmas music with my classes. But I'm getting ahead of myself- to fully appreciate how wonderful this day was, you must know about the week leading up to it.
Michelle, our dear friend here, asked us at some point if we wanted to help her make cookies for all of the college students during finals week (same week as our last week of school). We, of course, responded with an enthusiastic yes. So on Sunday the 11th we started this quest. We made enough cookies to take to the cafeteria on Monday evening and give 2 cookies to every freshman. Monday afternoon we made enough cookies to give to all the sophomores and seniors on Tuesday evening. Tuesday afternoon we made cookies for the day scholars, and brought them to them at lunch on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon we made cookies for all of the juniors to have on Thursday evening. On Thursday we made sugar cookies for Aly's class and for some of my students who were coming to help her class on Friday. The remainder we took to the cooks at the college and decorated with them. So, over the course of 5 days, we made roughly 700 cookies. It was...AMAZING. Granted, we didn't want to see or eat any more cookies for a good long time after that, but we had a really great time sitting at the college caf every evening and getting to know a lot more of the students. They loved the cookies, and several of them charmed us into giving them way more than their fair share, but we loved every second of it. Yay Christmas!

Since then, we've relaxed a lot. haha We used the first part of our break to simply enjoy the break! We've watched a whole season of Numbers, seen several Christmas movies, and spent time with friends who are still in the area. To our credit, we also cleaned most of our house at least once. :)

So, the plans for the future...well, Christmas eve (that's tomorrow!!!) we plan to spend the night with the Kyser family and get up on Christmas morning and take part in all their family's fun. They've got 3 kids whom we bought gifts for, and our family have sent some happies over for us too. Let me just say, I am thoroughly excited. Christmas evening we'll go to the McDonalds' house with the Kysers and enjoy a meal there. Sam McDonald is a good cook, and LeAnn is pretty amazing as well, and I am prepared to eat way too much. Just like home!

On the 27th, Aly and I are flying to Cape Town, South Africa and spending a week there. Our plans include sleeping, shopping, going to the movie theater, seeing Phantom of the Opera, and going to eat at McDonalds and Subway. I'm sure we'll do other amazing things- I hear Cape Town is breathtakingly beautiful- but right now the fast food is kinda all we can think about. You laugh, but I have missed turkey sandwiches more than I can say. mmmmm....  I'm hungry just thinking about it.

So there you have it! Christmas!
I do have to say, it's weird thinking about Christmas when it's 90 degrees outside and the decorations are pretty slim, but Aly and I have done our best to get in the spirit. Christmas earrings, Christmas t-shirts, Christmas music, Christmas shopping, Christmas decorations...we've got it all.
Of course, I miss my family a lot. I know I'll continue to miss them in the next two or three days as I hear about all the fun and start to see pictures online and all that stuff. I wish I could be home for all of that. But the simplicity here is refreshing, and I haven't once thought about material things I want for Christmas. I've never been able to say that before. I'm thankful for this new perspective, and I will never take Christmas with my family for granted again. This will just make time with them in the future that much sweeter. In the mean time, I hope you'll all give my mommy and daddy a hug from me, and remember as you enjoy Christmas with your loved ones what a truly huge gift that really is. Few Malawian families are intact, and few will actually have any sort of celebration or gift exchange on Christmas day. Remember why we celebrate, friends.
Remember the child in the manger who sought no gift. Remember the parents who were content in that little stable, who later became refugees with only what they could carry on a camel or donkey. This was the life of the Christ child. Thank him for that sacrifice, and consider sharing your wealth with someone who will be eating ngumbi for Christmas dinner- that is, flying termites they picked up off the ground- because they can't afford to buy food. I would absolutely love if you'd make a special donation this Christmas to an ABC student. Help them pay tuition so they can stay in school and change the future of their family and their nation. Tuition is roughly $2000 a year and we've lost several students already because they simply can't make ends meet here. YOU can change that. Consider the least of these...email me or go to the ABC website if you're willing to help meet the needs of my dear friends.  THAT would make my Christmas wonderful.

Catch-up post

First off,
Pepani!!! I am so very sorry for the delay in updates. I have many excuses, most of which are pretty valid, but...I'll spare you a lot of them. 

Let's just say 1. I haven't really had a whole lot to say lately, 2. Our generator has been broken, so power outages weren't fixable for the past 3 weeks or so, and 3. I really have been pretty stinkin busy!

I started writing an update a week or so ago, but the power went out in the middle of it and I never got back to finish it. Again, pepani! So sorry! But I will go ahead and post what I did get written, just so you can see a little bit of what was going on. Look under this post for that one. 

So, I'm not gonna go back and tell you a whole lot about the past month- you can refer to Aly's blog and the Kysers' blog for some things. Our lives aren't all that different, really.
The Inter-house swim gala was pretty insane. I screamed a lot and wore lots of green (my house color...think Harry Potter, except...not) and in the end Nyika (my house) won! Our students swam fast and had tons of spirit and I was incredibly proud of them. They're troopers. It was a LONG day.

Those were the biggest events- other than that, things were pretty normal around here. Time flowed steadily on, days passed, and I consistently forgot to blog. Eish!  We watched some more ABC basketball, got into volleyball, and continued getting to know our friends and made some new ones too!

All that to say, we successfully survived our first semester of teaching! Mostly...technically we have two weeks in the semester when we go back. But you get the point! I made it! I lived an entire semester as a junior high/highschool English teacher in Malawi! The fuel queues get longer every day, the power is out more and more often, the economy is worsening, shortages of other random things are increasing, the ants never go away, and I am simply learning to live in this beautiful place.

Or as Switchfoot would say- learning to breathe. 

oops

Well, I just realized how long it's been since I posted. I am quite sorry about that. My family keeps asking for a post, and I kept thinking it's only been a couple weeks, but really it's been a month. Eish! Sorry about that.
To be honest with you, the past month has been tough. I guess we just hit that point in our time here where things get hard. Or maybe I just got word out. Either way, it's mostly passed. So I'll try to hit some high points for you in the past weeks.
 1. International Day- This is a day where ABCCA celebrates its multiculturalism. It was the day after Thanksgiving. (I had to be in school on Thanksgiving. That was weird.) Everyone wears traditional clothes from their countries and we have a big parade of nations and then people do fun things and we have amazing food from all the moms of ABC and it's basically an insanely huge feast and celebration. Since I know you're wondering, I wore a baseball jersey provided by Clay Adkison. What could be more American than baseball? For those of you who know how I really feel about baseball and are laughing at this irony, thanks. Here's a couple pictures from International Day:





A bird! I ate that thing! mostly...






Burundi dancers! They're amazing.

And of course, Aly and I, looking very American.


(This is the end of this post. I apologize for the incompleteness. See the post above this one for more info about the rest of the semester.)