7 quick takes

10 May

7 quick takes

One of my presents.. cooperation with a picture. And the girls made grass crowns for the occasion.

Good morning! How’s the start of your week? In our house it looks like a very normal Monday. Hartmut is at work, Sophie is drawing, Doris is playing with Lego, and I am taking time to write a blog. There is nothing special in our agenda to make us believe that this week is going to be anything out of the ordinary and I like that. I like our normal in this house, and I want to savour it for as long as possible because soon we will really need to start packing up our life here and replant it somewhere else. Less than two months in this place and I am not sure if I am quite ready to leave.
Because our new house is so much smaller, I am already starting to ‘declutter’ which is just a fashionable way of saying that I am getting rid of junk. Although, I probably say that wrong. In Malawi, nothing is junk, as there is always somebody somewhere who can find a useful purpose for the stuff you no longer need. So the result of me shedding clothes, toys, books and the like is making lots of people happy. I wonder with how much stuff we will end up. We are not the biggest hoarders, but it is hard to believe that we came here two years ago with only a few suitcases. I am afraid we will need a little more than that when we move on.
One of the things that takes up most space is our collection of books. I love reading and collecting books is a natural consequence of that. I have always resisted e-books as I have never liked the feeling but when someone offered a Kindle on a forum here in Malawi I finally caved. And now I am so excited! Just imagine how many books I will be able to get my hands on. I will no longer have to read whatever crosses my path to feed my letter-addiction, but I can actually pick and choose. I think I’ll send the girls on a two-month holiday, excuse myself and disappear for a bit. With my Kindle.
I actually don’t feel like writing. I got a cool photography course for Mother’s Day (in all honesty, I actually bought it for myself. But to Hartmut’s defence, how would he know which course I want, and if I have to send hints and links, I might as well buy it myself.) and I cannot wait to dive in. It is all about capturing the essence of where you are, especially in travel photography, and I am excited to learn. Especially since it will be a good skill for the plans we have for next year…
Don’t feel sorry for me and my self-bought Mother's Day gift. The days before Mother's Day I wasn’t allowed to look at anything the girls did. There were loads of giggles, whispered conversations and pages quickly turned around as I walked past. The girls and Hartmut did everything they could to make me feel loved, spoiled and celebrated. They made nice food, drawings, went to buy flowers (fake ones, because real ones are hard to get here) and told me many times that they loved me.
Sophie and Doris tell me that I should also write about our animals. People always ask us if we have a lot of eggs because we have so many animals, and yes, we do. But we never eat them. We all like chicks and ducklings better than eating eggs. At the moment, we have one hen and one duck sitting on their eggs. So exciting! We cannot wait for all the balls of fluff to hatch. It also brings a difficulty though, we cannot bring all the animals to our new house, so the girls have to decide which ones they take, and judging by their sighs and struggles, it is as if I am asking a mother to only take half of her children. The girls find it very hard, and the list of who can come changes almost daily.
Time to wrap up and enjoy the sunshine. It’s that time of the year that it’s pretty cold inside the house so, just like a lizard, I go outside to soak up the sun every once in a while. Enjoy your week!