Christmas

For our Christmas tree this year we finally decided to use a real branch after many attemps at making one out of cardboard and paper, and we made a lot of ornaments as well as borrowing some of Alyssa's ornaments and other decorations.

For presents we made every family a DVD with pictures on it and we also gave them a few other things like headbands we made and shadow puppets. For our family I gave mom a bag I sewed, dad a Burundi ornament, Mekdes a clay dolphin, and I gave Biniyam a sword.

We hade a Christmas party at the McLaughlins and the school kids had a Christmas play and we sang and talked.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to everyone who sent gifts, especially aunt Theresa, who sent us a surprise big package.

Our Christmas tree.

Biniyam playing with toys.

Our Christmas dinner, when he was alive, we were going to keep him but then it was confirmed to mom that he was a rooster, and she doesn't want a rooster.

Our weekend getaway

This weekend we came to a hotel called club du lac in Bujumbura that's right on lake Tanganyika, it has a big beach, a big swimming pool, good internet, a playground, and 2 African gray parrots, one that lets us pet her.

Yesterday we went to another hotel to check it out, it was really pretty and it had a little chimpanzee that came right up to you and let you pet him, it also had a mom that was kept in a cage because she was mean. We ate lunch there on the beach and while we were waiting for our food the chimp climbed up the deck and came over to our table and grabed Mekdes's fanta and ran away.

It's a lot hotter in buja than in Kibuye and we spent most of our day swimming, we can't swim in the lake because it has crocodiles, hippos, and bacteria.

We gave him a bottle of water and he took the top of and drank it

We can see the mountains of the Congo from the beach.

Thanksgiving in Kibuye

This year for thanksgiving we celebrated on Saturday because on Thursday all the doctors were working, we had a big feast at the Cropseys house and lots of people came, we had pies, ham, fruit, cookies, and a lot more, we even got a turkey from America.

Mom made a carrot sufflet that tasts like sweet patatoes and some cornbread pudding that she makes at home, she also made some pumpkin cookies.

On Friday the kids all had a craft party and we made turkey's out of candy, like we cut of the tips of the candy corn and the candy corn was the tail feathers and the tips were the beaks, grandma Cropsey sent us all the candy and the instructions since we can't buy it here.

We had to stick them together with frosting so we could eat them, we used whoppers for the head, Oreos for the body's, peanutbutter cups for the belly, and sprinkles for the eyes.

Here are some pictures of the turkeys: 

The waterfalls

Hi,

The other day we went to the waterfalls that are about 45 minutes away. There are like four different waterfalls that were there and one place where we could look out over the top of one, but mom wouldn't let us get near the edge.

We also saw like 7 monkeys in the trees looking at us, they were gray with white around their face and we're super cute, but they were so fast I didn't get a picture of them. 

We went there with some of the med students, our teacher, a doctor from Kenya, a pediatrician, and our P.E teacher. 

Chameleons

Hello,

We are chameleon-sitting a chameleon named Gooseberry, he is brownish-green and when he's sunbathing he gets dark brown stripes. The other day at church we found our very own chameleon in the grass, we named him Buddy, he's very bright green with blue stripes. 

They take care of the flies around our house and when they eat them it's really cool, first they see it and stick their head toward it then they open their mouth and start to stick out their tounge and then really quickly they snap out their tongue and pull it back into their mouth with the fly on it and munch it up.

Their eyes are also really cool, how they move in different directions at the same time.

Here are some photos:

Halloween

For halloween this year I was a ancient Egyptian, Mekdes was a jellyfish, and Biniyam was a turtle. We made all our costumes like for my cape we used a curtain, for my dress we used a sheet, and for my wig we used egg bags.

The night before Halloween we got one pumpkin and each carved something like an eye the nose or half the mouth.

And for halloween we wore our costumes to school and during lunch break we had lunch at our teachers house with a special meal where there was a menu with foods in disguise like pepper was called black and floting eyeballs were a soda drink with mango and a candy eyeball in it. Then we played games and went on a treasure hunt.Then that night at 5:00 we went tricker treating around the missionary houses of Kibuye. 

All the house helpers and workers got a good laugh at us as we walked about the day dressed up.

A Burundian house

Hi everyone, 

The other day we went to our house helper Amoni's house, it was about a half an hour walk and it had just rained so it was pretty muddy, by the time we got back my feet were really hurting from my boots rubbing against my heels. 

All of the houses are made of brick and some have banana trees surrounding them, a lot of people have chickens, cows, and sometimes goats. 

They gave us fanta, which is a treat, and bread rolls with honey inside them.

We went outside and played with all the kids who followed us there, we made a seesaw out of a board and everyone thought it was a lot of fun. 

Here are some pictures: 

Church

A typical church day is at ten o'clock we walk up to the church and go inside, there are rows of wooden benches and we normally sit near the back. There's lots of singing and dancing, but there are really load speakers that seem to vibrate the church, after the singing the preaching starts and since the whole thing is in kurundi we bring books to read. 

The church is surrounded by a big field and after a while we go out and play in it, we get a crowd of kids following us, sometimes it gets rowdy and they crowd around us and sometimes start kicking at us and trying to grab us.

Church is about three or four hours but sometimes we go home early.

They are building a new church next to the old one.

Frogs

Hi,

We have been finding lots of tree frogs because of all the rain, we find about two or three a day and keep them in a container, we let them go every night.

I've found seven frogs here so far, five green ones and two brown ones. 

They have sticky feet so they can climb up walls and they can also jump really high and fast. We figured out that because the containers white they change lighter after a while.

Here are some photos:

Here's when we let them go tonight.

  

Here's one climbing up the container.

And here's one showing it's belly.

Kids at the hospital

Today we went to the hospital and colored and played with the kids who have broken legs and they just sit there all day for about a month.

It was really fun and they are nice. Here are some pictures of the kids,

This little boy is shy but he's really cute and likes playing with Biniyams paper boats.

This girl is nice and likes dads chicken gloves.

This boys name is Willie and we spent the most time with him, he likes paper airplanes and smiling at us, his dads also nice and made us paper cameras.

There are rats in the hospital scurrying under all the beds and creeping us out, but other than that the kids are really nice and fun, and we'll probably keep going to see them every week.

Force de Secret

Today we made up a detective group called Force de Secret, it's secret force in French, and we solved our first case: 

 The Cropseys lost the key to there house and couldn't find it anywhere, then we said we could help and no one thought we could find it because all the  adults had looked everywhere, then the kids went down and looked for about 10 minutes and found it laying on the grass, we brought it up and everyone was very surprised that we found it. 

Right after that we went down to our house to play and mom came running down from up the hill yelling " Fire! Fire!". We went out and saw that one of the guard houses was burning, then we started running up to tell the other adults, then everyone started running down with buckets of water and it got very smockey, all the kids had to stay up away from the fire until it was out. Now that guard house is mostly black.

It was a pretty exiting day in Kibuye. 

Plants of Burundi

These are some of the most common plants here, 

Bananas,

Pineapple 

And papaya

These are only some of them the others we have are passion fruit, mangos, guavas, lemons, avocados, and oranges, the oranges here are more like lemons because they are yellow and are more sour, and the pineapple does not sting our tongue, once I ate about 30 pieces and still felt fine.

Mekdes's birthday!

 Hi,

On Saturday.  was Mekdes's birthday, we had a birthday party for her and all the kids came and had chocolate zucchini cake with whipped cream frosting, the chocolate comes from coco which we can buy here. 

Then we played pin the tail on the chameleon and played outside, after that some of the younger kids went home and the rest walked up to Kibuye rock, you can see the hospital and the church from there. We slide down the rocks and climbed on them and then went back down.

We always attract a mob of kids behind who follow us up there and a lot of kids call us muzungus which is white person in kurundi.

When the all the younger kids went back, Anna and Elise came over for pizza dinner and a movie, Allysa made us ice cream and we ate that also.

For her birthday I made Mekdes a mobile out of origami swans

And Anna Elise and I made Mekdes a Barbie house out of cardboard and styraphome and the kid beds are face masks the cloch is an oven thermometer and the chairs are toilet paper rolls. 

Bye!

School

Hi guys,

It's been great here!

School started on Monday and it's really fun, here is the schedule:

Calender and Bible in the morning, then the four big girls have history and geogaraphy, then science with mom, reces, then Anna and I have language arts, and then math. We go home from 11:30-2:00 for lunch and rest, then we go back for French we have P.E on Mon,Tues, and Thurs, and music on the others. 

We have a fort called guava fort that is on a guava tree and we play there a lot during reces. 

There are bats on the school house that we named and like to watch, they are friendly and pretty cute.

Bye! 

Our house

This is the front of our house, the little house next to it is is the guard house where the guards sleep. Our neighbors are going to be the Cropseys and the Faders who's houses are being built.

 Here we have avacato trees, banana trees, guava trees, papaya trees, and  mango trees. 

Bye

BURUNDI!

Hello, 

We got to Bujumbura Saterday night and spent the night at a house, the next day the moms went shopping and we stayed in the car and got very, very sweaty. That night we ate at a Indian restaurant and played in the lawn. We spent that night at the house again and the next day we left buja (Bujumbura ) and drove 2 and a half hours to Kibuye.

 It's very nice here, there is a clay mound behind the bamboo fence that we have been playing in and making bowles and pots out of. 

They have chickens here and Anna, Elise, Mekdes, and I share named chestnut, we like to go on chicken chases and catch them and throw as high as we can and the chickens don't really care.

We found a gecko in Biniyams room and made a habitat for him and and kept him for 2 days then let him go. 

Brussels

Hello,

Today we took the train down to the town and explored, we got a box full of Brussels chocolate yesterday when we went down for dinner and it is good!

 Brussels is about 9 hours ahead and this morning Bini and i woke up at about 5:30 this time, we were up until 7:00 and then I went back to sleep and slept in until 12:30 pm! 

We went down there at noon and ate waffles for lunch then walked around the town and had Indian food for dinner and took the train back. 

Here are some photos: 

We went to grand place and saw palaces.

We went to a park and played there for a while, then it started to rain, then it started pouring and we got soaked!

And this is the sunset from our hotel window.

On our way

Hi friends, 

We flew into Brussels yesterday evening and spent the night in The Shariton next to the airport.

All our flights went okey, we had an overnight one and I only got about 2 hours of sleep. I got sick at the end of it and haven't felt so good the last couple of days. The overnight flight was 8 hours and the plane had 2 floors. 

Tomorrow we have another 8 hour flight, but not overnight, to Bujumbura. 

 

These are some photos from the flight to Denver. 

Cancled flight

Hi, 

We spent the night in a hotel in Seattle and got here at 4:30 am thinking that we would get on to our 8:30 plane, but they told us that the flight to Chicago hade been canceled because of a lightning storm last night, we spent 2 and a half hours trying to find tickets to Burundi,  we finally found tickets for all of us but here's the new plane course: we fly from Seattle to Denver and then we fly from Denver to Frankfurt and then Frankfurt to Brussels and spend 2 nights in Brussels then fly to Bujumbura. We are now waiting to board the plane at 10:15 and leave at 10:45.

 Hopefully the flights go well.

The team

My dad met the team in Kenya on a work trip. The Faders ( one of the familys) stayed with my family for a few days last summer. Jason and Heather Fader have 2 daughters named Anna who is my age, and Abby who is 5 like my brother. Jason is the man on the right with the orange shirt, Heather is the woman on the right with the purple shirt, Anna is the girl in the middle of Heather and Jason and Abby is the little girl with the blue flower shirt on the top. The Cropseys, John Cropsey is the man on the left edge with the black shirt, Jess Cropsey is the woman in the middle with the long blue skirt, Elise is the girl on the top left with the pink shirt she is 7 years old, Micah is 5 he is the boy on the top with the blue shirt, and Sammy is 2 and he is the boy that Jess is holding. Alyssa Pfister is the woman in the black shirt. The McLaughlins, Eric McLaughlin is the man in the light gray shirt and jeans, Rachel McLaughlin is the woman on the top with the red shirt, Maggie is the girl on the top with the purple tank top she is 5, Ben is 3 he is the boy with the superman shirt, Tobias is 1 he is the boy on the far left. Carlin is the man in the dark gray shirt. They have been there for about a year working in the hospital and helping the people there. 

I'll try and keep on keeping you posted.

Getting ready

Hi friends! 

In 2 days my family and I will be going to Burundi which is a small country in Africa next to Rwanda and Tanzania. While we are there my dad will be teaching nurses to do Anesthesia in the hospital there called Kibuye Hope Hospital ( it's pronounced kib-eww-yay). He will be the only anesthesiologist there even though there are other doctors. 

The plane ride is 20 hours, we fly from Seattle to Chicago, and have a 6 hour layover, then we fly from Chicago to Brussels, and have a hour and a half layover, and then from Brussels to Bujumbura which is the capital of Burundi. A few people in the team will come pick us up and we will spend the night in a hotel, the next day we are going to go shopping,  Then drive the three hour drive to where we are going to live for the next 9 months. I'm very exited to met new people and see new things. I will try to keep this blog updated on my African adventures.