Pictures: Rag curler night! Noisiest bugs/huge grasshoppers, and a teacher and her first grade class

It has been another week of Nampula, Mozambique and I am ready to come home. This week was our last week of school which makes everyone excited and a little unfocused. I had a lot of activities for the afternoons so this week passed right on by. I thought it would be a long week but now that it is happened I wonder where it went.

I was writing down all the things that I have learned and I can't even begin to put it in a list, it just goes on and on. The reason I was doing this is because I was asking God the question "Why?" And I know we don't need to know why before you do what you have been asked to do but I think that you can ask it after, to learn. So as I am making this list I know some of the reasons I have been here, in Mozambique a country most people have never heard of, for 4 months. I also know that I will not know the full impact of this trip for some time.

I will get back to my week though. Tuesday is where I think I will start. Well, Monday was Kaleb's 11th birthday so we celebrated with his favorite meal, Skyline chili and a brigidaro cake. On to Tuesday, we had a regular day of school and then I went to SIL, the school down the street for the missionary families, to hang out with Kelly. I spent about an hour with her and then had to get back for Portuguese lessons. I can't say that I learned much in class that day. I had Amani on my lap, he wanted to be part of the class, and the Stubblefields came over to say good-bye. I am really going to miss them. They have been great friends, I have learned so much from them.

Wednesday, Kelly and Angie invited me over to have dinner, watch a movie and sleep over. One strange thing was that I had to ask Steve to give me a ride. Do you know how weird it is to be a 24 year old who is asking for a ride to her friends house for a sleep over? It was like I was 12 again. We had fun though. We watched the movie "Maricle on 34th Street" and had popcorn and chocolate. It almost felt like Christmas. Kelly and I were shivering with goose bumps on our legs. It has been on the cool side here, 70. I know that does not sound cool to most of you but when you are used to 95-100 and super humid. I can tell you that the three of us spent a lot of time laughing and putting a puzzle together. I am really going to miss those girls.

Thursday I woke up at Kelly and Angie's apartment and got ready for my first chapa ride. I have been avoiding this the whole time I have been here. I don't know how to describe it to you, it is the public transportation. It is also turns out to be transportation for live and dead animals. Fortunately for my first time there were no animals and it was a nice chapa. The smell of it though can cause an instant headache. The ride is short from the apartment to our road so it wasn't too bad. I got home around 8:30 and we started school and the kids worked hard and were done by 12. It was raining hard and I had planned to go to the small market with Angie and Kelly that afternoon. We waited until the rain slowed and then hopped on another chapa to get back to the apartment to pick up Angie. By the time we headed out again to get to the market it was full on raining again. It was fun to be doing something adult like. Until this point I had just gone to their house or they had come here and we sat around because, truthfully, there is no much else to do. We went to the ATM and then to the market where Angie did most of the bargaining and then on our way back we passed a really clean, nice looking bakery. I treated the girls to natas which I will miss dearly and then we went to wait for the next chapa that could fit us all in. These chapas were much fuller then my first 3 rides, everyone was going home from work. The chapas are vans that are meant to seat 12 to 15. They seem to fit at least 20 in at a time. There is no spare room at all for anything! As we were riding back we realized that either the girls would have to ride to my street with me and then get on another chapa to ride back or I would have to see if I could get a hold of Steve to pick me up (this option is out because Steve forgot his phone) or I would have to ride the rest of the way by myself. I decided that I could make it but had the girls tell me about 10 times how you tell them to stop because there are no "marked" stops they just pull over whenever anyone yells. So they get out and I continue on. The chapa has now emptied considerably, it is me and about 6 men and they are all laughing about something. I am nervously watching out window to make sure I don't miss my stop. We are coming up to the road and I start to say "sida", I don't know what it means but I do know that they are supposed to stop. They are playing with me because they keep going, I say it again and again and finally I say loudly, "STOP!" and pull on the guys jacket. They are all having the time of their lives at my expense. It is ok thought I made it home safely and they got what they were looking for, a good laugh.

Friday was our last day of school. Fridays are test days and they normally go fast but the kids were so motivated to get out for the year that they sat down and got their work down in about 2 hours. I then spent the afternoon packing up the classroom and doing more laundry. The Kerns' invited me over for dinner so they picked me up at around 5. The Kerns are Stephan and Sharon and they have 2 boys, Cohen and Christian and are expecting their first girl in March. They are great people and have become good friends. They spent Thanksgiving with us and many other days. We had pizza for dinner that I got to help Sharon make and then we sat around and chatted while the boys put themselves to bed. That was funny, I guess they had never done that before but decided that it was time.

That has been my week. It was a good week, our last full week in Nampula. We will spend our next week and Christmas on Ilha with another family, friends of Sarah and Steve's from Maputo. I am very excited to be there and soak up all the sun I can before coming back to winter.

A couple quick prayer request. I am allergic to something here and have broken out in rash form on my face. It is so incredibly itchy I can barely stand it. Also, we are making the trip to Ilha all in a truck. The van was sold, an answer to prayer, so 7 will be fitting into a 5 passenger car, Mozambiquen style. Thanks so much!