Gearin up for T'giving

Well I tried to hold out and wait until James wrote a blog, but he says he doesn't have enough material yet. So hopefully, you will hear something witty from him soon. For now, I'm bored so you, faithful reader, get another rambly one from me.

Last week was quite a bizarre week. First of all it was cold and rainy. Well the first part of the week was just cold, but it basically rained all day and night Thursday and Friday and the normally hard ground became one giant sinkhole. I wore pants and all of the teachers at one of the schools were so shocked, they were like 'oh you need to wear pants more often, you look so sharp'. I find it funny that I dress more conservatively than most of the teachers and than everyone under the age of about 50. I've decided though that dressing like a gogo (grandma) is a good thing because everyone respects gogos. I do have one skirt that is just below my knees, shocking I know. That's what I wear when I want to dress like someone in her 40s.

So the cold was nice, but by the end, I was happy to see the sun come back out on Sunday and the warm to return. Saturday was the funeral of a friend of our mma's who was sadly murdered by the guy who did work for her around the house (they caught him) and there was another funeral for a baby who died on Thursday so poor Mma was out in the cold and wet cooking for these things from 3 a.m. Thursday and then Friday morning and over Friday night into Saturday. We were going to go help, but she decided it wasn't worth it because everyone was just standing around Friday afternoon waiting for the vegetables to show up. When they finally did, it was late and she and another lady were the only ones there so they stayed up all night chopping. The whole ordeal meant that she got sick and has been taking it very easy since. At the funeral, she was telling all these ladies that we stayed there over night with her (just because she thought it was funny) and now some of the middle school kids have told us they heard we spent the night at the funeral, so I guess the rumor is spreading. Though it was a really sad occasion, it was a chance to see that we have come pretty far in getting to know people in the village as we knew quite a lot of people there and no one felt the need to stop everything and introduce us. We have been asked to give a speech at a wedding Saturday though so I guess our newness hasn't worn all the way off yet.

This week we're taking it pretty easy. We've gone to work but there's really very little to do. I did help with invitations for one of the school's end of the year party and James was attempting to help with timetables for next year. Tomorrow we've got lots of cooking to do and then Thursday we're off to some other volunteers' site for Thanksgiving. It should be fun as we're getting together with a pretty big group of everyone who is in the area. Next week, we have our big meeting with the principals about what we are going to do next year so we're crossing our fingers that that goes well, and our vacation got approved so we're excited to be off to the Wild Coast in a month!