twelve

I have been extremely neglectful, and for that I am sorry. I guess I have been doing a lot, but really it’s been a lot of nothing. The Girls came back and I was so happy to see them. I always miss them when they leave, but when they are here sometimes I wish they weren’t. My grade 9s are finishing exams on November 26, so they leave one week before the rest. As much as I will enjoy the quiet in the dorm, I will miss them tremendously. Who knew it was possible to love this many people this much? Not me.

So shortly after midterm break was over, there was some intensive training at the Institute. I think they were doing book 3. Heather and I may have found every opportunity to make our way over there. You know why? There were men. Now, we have become high school girls again. We get way too excited to see members of the opposite sex. I think that it is a problem, and I hope it remedies itself but I doubt it will. We seriously went over there every day for about a week. This is far from normal. Usually we only go Friday, Saturday and Sundays because we have junior youth or devotions. One time when we were there, we saw a lizard on the stairs of the breezeway. I guess the stair had just been waxed or something, because the lizard just kind of scooted across the whole thing. Obviously this was funny. Now, we both started laughing uncontrollably. This normally would have been ok, but they were doing training. We had to move very fast so that we didn’t disturb everyone. Mzungu.

While we are on the subject of boys. Heather and I have a best friend. His name is Peter. We like to call him Peta the Playa because he is a playa. Ok, he isn’t really. We just love him a lot. Now, one day we were harassing Peta about something that I am no longer allowed to mention and we may have taken it a bit far. So we upset him. We really hurt his feelings and it made us feel like horrible people. The next day at evening snack (when we have most of our conversations with Peta) he completely avoided us. This made us feel even worse. We prayed for him and ourselves. So, in order to win back Peta’s heart, we made him a card. It was a beautiful card. And you know what? It worked! We rectified the situation and we are the best of friends again. He even wrote us a letter. We’re going to be pen pals. All the girls are convinced that we are in love with Peta and that we want to be his wives. This is not true. We love Peta, but we are not in love with him. He is just a really, really amazing person.

Ok, so we have youth deepenings with Mr. Moore every Thursday night. He always has a snack or something for us afterwards. Usually, it is a cake that Bonnie made before she left, but one time it was watermelon. Instead of telling us that it was watermelon, he called it his invention. So we were all trying to come up with a name for this new mysterious invention. Shalom began to get annoyed. She looked up from her bowl and said, “We call it watermelon.”

I kept seeing what I thought were super tiny hummingbirds way up in this one tree. I thought that they were pretty cool. One day, I saw a whole bunch in a bush. It’s my luck day, I thought. I can finally get close enough to one of these birds to see them. So I got right up next to the bird and you know what it was? A MOTH!! I hate moths so much. I really do. I was so close that I saw its face. Now if these were small hummingbirds, they were huge moths. I screamed and scampered. It was disgusting, and an experience that I never wished to repeat. Well, you know what? I was fetching Heather’s clothes from the laundry room for her and you know what flew out of them? MOTHS! GAH! I was disgusted. I thought that I had removed them all though so I brought them back to my room. A few hours later, when I was ready to give them to her, I was separating our clothes. You know what flew out of hers? MORE MOTHS!! I ran to Krista and made her get them out of my room. They wouldn’t leave. I had to sleep with a huge moth in my room. I was thinking it would be ok though since it just stayed on my ceiling. Guess what happened when I turned my light off? It started flying around. It sounded like it was in paper. I was beyond happy to be underneath my mosquito net.

Every Friday we meet with the Baha’i girls. We alternate between doing Ruhi with them and having a deepening. Sometimes we are not prepared though and we don’t think about what to discuss for the deepening. Last time, I realized the night before that we had nothing for the next evening and so I asked Mecrice what we should do. She suggested sex. Apparently she was joking. I was not aware of this so I went ahead and prepared a whole bunch of readings talking about sex. If I can be permitted to chuff myself, I did a pretty good job. When the girls found out what we were doing, they were shocked. It was actually really successful though and we got a lot of good dialogue going. It was probably one of our best deepenings. I’m not trying to chuff myself anymore, by the way.

Sometimes I am not very smart. Remember when I made the entry where I talked about differences between Zambian words and Canadian words? Remember when I said devo buns were biscuits? You know why? Because we always have them after devotionals. I only figured this out last week. It took me four months to realize that. You have got to be kidding me. Banani is the only place where devo buns exist. It is not a Zambian thing, it is a Banani thing. I am sorry.

Oh man, I almost forgot. The rainy season is starting!!! Last week there was a small shower and it was so good. Heather and I ran outside, and Krista too, and we just stood in the rain. Some of the girls looked at us like we are crazy. We get that a lot. There has been a lot of thunder too. Pretty much every afternoon/evening now we hear thunder. A couple nights ago we saw lightning. Heather came to my dorm to tell me and I got so excited that I ran outside during quiet time (not really allowed) and stood waiting to see another flash. I LOVE LIGHTNING SO MUCH!!!! Last night there was a lot of lightning again. It was way better than the last time. It rained again too. I love the rain. I got to sleep listening to rain, which is way better here because my roof is made of metal and there is no attic/insulation or anything between it and the ceiling! Now it’s cloudy and a little chilly. It’s very nice.

I have started listening to Christmas music. Too soon?

The week before Halloween, Zambia celebrated her independence from Britain. It was a really fun day. All the classes had to prepare something, and they were all so good. The grade 11s sang the anthem. The grade 9s did a play. The grade 8s read a poem and danced. The primaries danced. The grade 10s did a play. Oh, and the traditional dance group performed. They were all so good. They are such good dancers. I want them to teach me. Hahaha.

LYLT

I leave you with this: