 | long and boring... crazy tidbits of life here lately! Life has just been a little on the wild side around here lately, so I thought I'd blog about it. Because, you know, thats cool...!
Last Thursday: (grocery shopping w/ Konnie and Caroline day) groceries, yay... excited to go home and cook for some neighbors I was having over! However... dun dun dun... on the way home, at a common Malawian cop stop, they found that the tags on the car I was driving (not mine - it's owned and "maintained" by the academy I work for) were expired... this is a bog time offense around here. So with my limited Chichewa and his broken English, the cop and I discussed for about an hour what should happen. Thank goodness I talked him out of hauling me away and impounding the car! Eventually we got the guy who is in charge of the cars down there to help. I ended up w/ some melted ice cream (first and last time i buy ice cream here!) and no dinner plans, as all my guests had found other means of feeding themselves since I was MIA. Cool advneture.
Wednesday night: Since we couldn't decide between going bowling or going to the drive-in (HA) we were entertaining ourselved by hand-making tortilla chips (or our malawian versians of them!) at mi casa into the wee hours...
(background info:) Theres this spider here called a ChopChop - it has 4 fang-like teeth sticking out of the front of it's face, and it's super vicious. A small one will be the size of your pinky, a large one will be nearly double that.)
Anyway, just as we get to the point of chopping some tomatoes for salsa, Ii see something scurry across the floor... ooh it's a bug right? I alert Andy and Heather, and promptly jump up on the counter! I ask Andy to get it, you know, since he's the dude. He chases it around the kitchen and traps it under a cup, then we get it into a jar after some fuss. Cool! We have a chop chop! My kids will love checking this guy out right now, as our classroom is a living terrarium since we're studying bugs in science class. I decide to go outside to look for a beetle to feed it, but instead of a beetle, I found another HUGE chop chop out there! Of course, I holler for Andy and Heather to come help me catch it. Unfortunately, Andy squished this one in the catching it process, but we got it, and then we put the two in the same cage (with some hillarious difficulty, all of which Heather caught on tape!) I tell you - the term CAGEFIGHTING has never been more appropriate! Both the chop-chops were wounded somehow; but the big one and the little one were each trying to bite into each other; rip the other's legs off, etc. it was rad!!! and this all happened in my kitchen!!
Today, Thursday (groceries day) Konnie and Caroline were no where to be found, sad day, so I set out into town on my own. Nothing like atheraputic day battling the streets of Lilongwe, hu? After picking up a b-day present for one of my students who invited me ot her b-day party tomorrow, the car wouldn't start. Hrmmm...
May I depart for a ninute to explain my car situation. 1- I miss Janie. 2- I'm thankful to be so well taken care of here, and to have access to wheels w/o the hassle of owning them. 3- there are three junky cars that any of the teachers who live on campus all share, there are about 9 of us in the carpool. Last night one of the teachers got into a car accident and I hear that she totalled the academy car she was in. She's recovering well; stitches; we're very thankful it was not worse! Details of the accident are still muddy, but anyway we're down to just two cars, fine.
But now this car was not starting! I called AAA... sike! haha! (ps - there are NO bowling alleys or movie theaters in all of Malawi, that part was a JOKE.) I called to be picked up by the girls who had the one remaining car, but I knew it would be a while. So, I became Malawian, and walked to the grocery store and to the outdoor market! yeah I'm cool. After I made it back to the car, I saw some ABC students hanging out waiting for their parents to finish shopping, so we kicked it. I helped AJ with his math, and then his dad helped me with my car! It was just a battery shortage or something dorky, but neither Bonita Vista nor HIU offered mechanics courses, so how would I have known?? Anyway, rad, I could drive off, and the whole ordeal only took about an hour. Amazingly, I was still able to cook the "Fiesta Casserole" as Nate dubbed it, and we had a FUN dinner! homemade tortilla chips w/ fresh homemade guac and salsa; the fiesta casserole and some festive homemade spanish rice... watch out Betty! ;) Ooh - homemade cookies for desert... May I please announce that the only recapie I used for ALL this was for the tortilla chip dough?!? Malawi does cool things to you like this. But don't tell my mom about my new numbchuck skills, because then she'll make me cook next time I'm there! (whenever that will be) agh!
and with that... i'm POOPED! I should be developing book reports and science projects for my kiddos to do; I should be grading their writing; I should be keeping up w/ my other weekly commitments... but for now, my feet are tired so I'm laying in bed, and I felt divinely inspired to blog a little bit about what life here is like! I'm sure this would make more sense if I were writing while I was actually coherent, but ahh, that's overrated! So ahh... keep an eye out for chip-chops, and know that you've got a friend in the M-Dub who loves ya and misses you! but she also knows that she is right where she needs to be, and she's in love with her 6th graders! |
1 comment:
Well said.
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