7 quick takes...

30 September

7 quick takes...

Pepernoten!

Good morning! Hartmut is in a conference call, the girls are drawing, Imke is doing her exercises and I have time to write this blog before we start school. Did you read something exciting there too? Yup! That’s right, Imke (Hartmut’s sister) arrived on Friday and it is just the best to have family around. I am so grateful it happened and we are going to thoroughly enjoy her time here.
Imke arrived with two suitcases. Not because she doesn’t know how to pack small but because we really used to opportunity to finally get new Dutch and German books, school supplies and a few electronics because they are either not available or just crazy expensive here. And there was a small suitcase filled with pepernoten, haribo sweets, smarties and other essentials ;-)
Imke’s arrival was a great reason to finally try out our new boat engine. Our landlord gave us a small boat that we had used a few times, but we did not have an engine and always used our oars to paddle around. One day our neighbour spotted us and felt so sorry for us because we weren’t exactly going very fast and it was getting dark very quickly, that he gave us his small boat engine to borrow for as long as we live here. Unfortunately it was rather stormy the whole week so yesterday was the first time we got to use it. We packed the boat with some snacks and drinks, took our snorkel sets and beach towels and went on a trip to the island in front of our house. Hartmut was grinning the entire time and I am pretty sure it was the best gift he ever got.
That island (some maps call it ‘Lizard island’, others say ‘Bird island’) is about 1,6 kilometers from the coast and very small and very cool. It is mostly rocks with trees on top and if you snorkel in the blue water around the island you feel like you are swimming in an aquarium because there are so many colourful cichlids. (Fish, there are about 1000 different kids in the lake). The girls prefer the island itself because the rocky shore is a perfect playground for them. We feel so lucky that we get to live here!
‘Can I use my money? My real money?’ I say yes (she earns money when she picks up plastic) and of she goes to the little shop on the beach. I am not sure if she has discovered yet that I won’t say no and that she can just milk that. Being independent is one of the traits that I really want to foster in our girls and going alone to the shop, counting how much money you have and talking with the shop owner about what you would like to have all contributes to that, right? It would be even better of the shop sold healthy things instead of sweets but I am willing to sacrifice that for a girl who can buy it by herself. At least for now.
We started this week in Lilongwe and one of the highlights was visiting the banana farm of a friend of ours. He showed us the whole process, from baby banana tree to shop and it was fascinating. Did you know that a banana tree grows from baby plant to fruit in less than a year and that they only give fruit once? And that a bunch of bananas can weigh up to 45 kilograms? Each bunch has many ‘hands’ (this is what you can buy in the shop) and each banana is call ‘finger’. The world is a great classroom and there is so much to learn!
Ok, I’m gone. We are still on the space theme at school (And I have the ‘Mercurius, Venus, Aarde en Mars’ song on repeat in my head.) and Sophie and I are going to make a paper mache astronaut’s helmet this week. Doris isn’t interested in the helmet (she is in space, though) because she doesn’t like paper mache, too much messy work for her liking. She will probably end up doing perler beads. She has recently discovered them and loves it! Have a great week!