Fun Game

Today we're going to play a really fun game. It's called find the booger picker. Ready?

Wasn't that fun? Raise your hand if you found all of them!

I'm Home!

If any of you read my parents blog (which I'm sure all of you), you know that I've gotten home safely. I should have told you before (oops) but I figured that all of you read Dad's blog.

I don't really want to have this blog for my "normal" life. I'm really not that interesting and I'm not the creative writing Blume child. I still have a few more pictures of my time in Rwanda that I want to show you, so I'll keep writing for a few more posts.

I'm so glad to be home, but I was going through the pictures of my last day of school and I realized how much I miss it there. I really do hope that I'll be able to go back again one day, even if it is just for a short visit.

Oh, and I have a new blog header. It was supposed to be done on the first of May but oh well.

Para as Mulheres

Hoje é especialmente para aquelas mulheres que doaram tanto tecido para as mulheres daqui. Eu queria ter feito isso antes, mas parece que uma vez por semana surgia uma nova idéia do que fazer com o tecido. Eu queria esperar pra poder falar todas essas idéias para vocês.

Em primeiro lugar, a aula de patchwork. As mulheres são tão queridas e realmente querem fazer alguma coisa para se ajudar e ajudar outras mulheres que não tem como se sustentar. A costura é uma coisa que elas podem fazer em qualquer situação... mesmo se estão grávidas. Esse era um problema aqui... quando uma mulher engravida, não tem quase nada que ela possa fazer para receber dinheiro. Tem muito trabalho manual aqui... trabalho em fazendas, plantações, etc. 

Outro trabalho que eles estão começando a desenvolver aqui é trabalho com as prisões. Eu falei pra vocês sobre o genocídio... imagina a quantidade de pessoas que estão nas prisões. Muitas vezes eles tem famílias fora da prisão que tem que tentar sustentar. Tem várias idéias do que se possa fazer com essas pessoas. Uma é uma cesta feito de cordão e tecido. Outra idéia são coisas feitos com patchwork. Muitas coisas!

Um outro projeto é um projeto novo que a mulher da casa que eu estou ficando (Louise) está começando a trabalhar. É um projeto completamente diferente de tudo que podemos encontrar aqui e é um projeto planejado especialmente para a Ruanda. A Ruanda é chamado "A Terra de Mil Montes". O projeto é um painel desenhado com as paisagens de Ruanda, feito em patchwork de mil pedaços. Vai ser bastante trabalho, mas será um trabalho bem valorizado aqui. 

Ontem eu "transferi" todo o tecido para a Louise. Até ontem, nós estavamos usando alguns pedaços mas não tinhamos tirado tudo ainda. Como eu falei, esses projetos vieram um após o outro... nós estavamos bastante ocupados. Cada pedaço que eu tirava, ela dizia como ela achava que podíamos usar. Ela ficou tão feliz. Nós enchemos uma mala inteira de tecido. Isso é MUITO tecido. 

Eu estou um pouco triste, porque não vou poder estar aqui para ver os resultados desses projetos. Eu queria tanto mostrar pra vocês o que vocês fizeram para este povo. Vocês estão dando oportunidades. Eu sei que não parece... só tecido?! Mas é. Vocês estão ajudando de longe. Eu falei pra Louise que ela teria que nos manter atualizados com o trabalho que eles estão fazendo. Nós vamos ver os resultados desse trabalho logo! 

Amo muito vocês e estou com saudades. Vejo vocês domingo que vem! 

Happy Birthday!!

Ans,

I hope you have a really cool birthday today! I thought about you all morning and I wish I could be there with you. Just one more week!

What kind of cake did you pick? Where did you go out to eat? I love you and I miss you so much!

Love,
The Coolest Sister In The Whole Wide World

Oh yeah... I have a blog.

Oops. I kind of forgot I had a blog. Don't worry Dad, I checked my roots today. No blonde. 

I don't really have anything super duper exciting to tell you guys. When I left this morning for preschool, I figured I would just tell all about my day at preschool. I picked an "exciting" (?) day. I just got back and it seems like the last time I was home was about 2 days ago. Fun, huh? 

It started out like normal. All the kids were in an assembly type thing singing and dancing before class. I've been in Claudine's class for the last few days and I'm really happy about that. After about an hour, the kids started coming up to the board and practicing their writing. As we were paying attention to the kids writing, on girl runs out of the room. Claudine went to see what was wrong with her. 

She discovered a large pool of diarrhea all over the bathroom floor. I didn't know about this, so all of a sudden I was with 30 4 year olds trying to figure out what to do. About 3 seconds (LITERALLY) after Claudine left, another girl puked all over her chair, the floor and herself. Good times.

So here I am, with 30 kids who don't understand a word that I say (and vice-versa) trying to tell them to be quiet while I took the girl to the bathroom. I ran her to the bathroom and left her with Claudine (who was already giving the other a girl a shower). I went back to the classroom and cleaned up the puke. Then I still had another 30 minutes of entertaining them while Claudine cleaned up the 2 girls. 

After she was done cleaning up, it was already time for porridge. While we were fixing their porridge, two boys were being really really bad so she had to put one of them in the front of the room by himself. Porridge time went okay. No more vomiting or anything. We started to clean up all the porridge stuff in the hall. Suddenly we hear lots of yelling from in the room. We both went in and discover that the boy who was in the front of the room had grabbed a stick and was beating the other kids. He (obviously) got in trouble. 

The rest of the morning went okay. When it was time for the final assembly, I was pretty happy and ready to go home. As we're saying the final prayer, 2 boys pee all over the floor. Just to top off the day. 

Let me tell you that my days at the preschool are never like this. At times they can get really tiring or seem to go on forever. But nothing like this ever happens. At the end of the day, Claudine looked at me and said "When you get back to your home, please remember to pray for us. We have a hard job." Believe me, I know. Please pray for all the teachers today. I'm sure they're all tired from our day.

Mountain Gorillas

Man, this is another hard one. I have 150 pictures of the gorillas. I with I could show you all of them.

We started by getting ready. Marty told us to wear comfy clothes, hiking boots, gators and carry a walking stick and a backpack full of food. I thought it was a little too much. It wasn't. It was perfect. I was so glad for everything I had. Thanks Marty!

We met up close to our hotel and decided which group we wanted to see. We decided on the Susa group.It is the hardest hike and most of the time the longest. We were so lucky. We only had to hike 2 hours uphill to find them. It was hard but so worth it.

At first, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. We kept on walking all over just to find one gorilla alone. We had tons of pictures like this. If you squint your eyes really hard, you might be able to see the gorillas.

At last, we got to this clearing in the forest. It was so beautiful. There were probably 15 gorillas. Really cool! Here are some of the best pictures I got.

Look at all the cute babies!

How many can you find?

This one's called Silverback number 1 or The Big Boss.

He's holding his right foot with his left hand. So cute!

For Grandmommy

Sorry to all the rest of you for having to look at pictures of me.

Riding on the roof rack.

With Natalie.

Giraffes!

With gorillas and Pippy Longstocking braids.