Mambo! (now you all say "Poa!")

Hey guys! Well. we've officially survived our first week in Africa! In some ways it has gone really quickly, but life here is pretty laid back, so the days seem longer than usual. We already feel really settled in with where we are and what we are doing, and the people make it easy to love this place. We've already experienced so many things, from getting stuck in the mud (twice!) in safari style trucks, to literally climbing on our hands and knees to see an incredible waterfall at the top of a mountain.
Most of our time is spent around the house, just playing with the kids and keeping things moving. We lose power almost every day from about lunch time until around 7pm, and the other night we had to write the students' tests out by hand using candlelight to see. We've already had to get pretty creative to come up with things to do with the kids, but they love to sing and play outside, so that's what we're doing most of the time. We even have a DVD player at the house (this is a HUGE luxury here), so the kids like to watch movies each night if the power comes back early enough. They all sing the songs from the Lion King allllll the time!
We have so many stories to tell you guys, and we're trying to write them all down so that we don't forget anything. The other day, we were beginning to walk up the mountain from the bottom and another volunteer, Amanda, said that if you hold out your hand someone will stop to give you a ride. Sure enough, Michael tried it, and two guys pulled over in their pickup truck to offer us a lift in the back. Don't worry, it's part of the culture here, nothing like climbing into a car with a stranger back in the U.S.! We made it about 1km up the mountain before we got stuck in about a 3 foot deep hole of mud. We all jumped off and Michael started to help them push while I took a couple of pictures. Everybody in the village came out to watch and all the kids lined up for me to take their pictures as the people started talking about the "crazy mzungus". They sent us "on our journey" after a few minutes because they didn't want us to wait around too long. They ended up reaching us again about 30 minutes later, but then they had to turn to another road, so we kept walking on our own.
The mud is crazy here, and it definitely is the rainy season, but it normally clears up in the afternoons and gets pretty warm. Yesterday afternoon, we decided to go farther up the mountain to see a waterfall that Abby had found. She's another volunteer here, and she leaves this week, so we wanted to find it before she left. We spent a little under an hour climbing up the mountain, through villages and really high bushes to come out at the top of an incredible view of the entire valley area. We then had to climb straight down a cliff to the bottom of a waterfall. It was incredibly beautiful, and the whole time Michael kept saying, "If only Tami Walker could see this!" Once we finished taking pictures and cooling off at the bottom, we began to climb back up the cliff, which at some points was more like clinging on to vines. Michael had kept saying that he wanted to see a monkey (because we could hear them in the trees above us), but I'm pretty sure that we just looked like monkeys ourselves climbing up the side of a mountain! It started to get dark once we got to the top, and I fell more times than I'd like to admit because the mud was so slippery, but a boy from the village came out to walk with us until we got back to the main road down to Peace Matunda. The saying for all the volunteers around here is, "It's all part of the experience!"
We've gotten to know a lot of the kids in the area, and we all turn around whenever someone shouts "Teacher!" because that's what the call us all. It's been nice to go to school because Michael and I work with the younger kids, so we aren't with the same kids we live with 24 hours a day. We have 17 kids in our class, so things get a little bit crazy at times, but they scream every song we teach them at the top of their lungs! They love to do the Hokey Pokey. We're going to start teaching the sounds of the alphabet on Monday in class, but I think the kids just need hugs more than anything else! So we give a lot of hugs and a lot of candy. I've even learned not to be embarrassed to sing and dance in front of the group.

We tried to upload a bunch of pictures, but it takes a really long time, so we're still working on how to get them up! We'll try again next time to get more up!