Hey Everyone!

Sorry we are a day late at updating you all on how we're doing over here. The rain has been really bad over the past week, and the mountain was too muddy to get down safely yesterday...but the sun came out finally this morning!

Yesterday we split the two classes into three classes since we got four new volunteers. We were able to form a "Kindergarten" class, for those who are stuck between the "baby class" and "standard one". Michael and I took over the new group, which has been a good but exhausting experience. We don't have a swahili speaking teacher in the room with us anymore, and the kids have learned how to "say no" a little too easily. But, I really think the split will be good in the long run because we can move ahead in reading and math.

Michael and I had been trying to come up with something that we could get for the kids in our class that they would both need and be excited about. This past weekend, Michael came up with the idea of getting them all backpacks from the market. We were able to get 18 brand new backpacks for 80,000 shillings (that's about 60 dollars). Since today was the first day without pouring down rain, we took them over after break. We called each kid up one-by-one to choose which color they wanted, and then I wrote their names on them with a big permanent marker. They were all so excited. I know bookbags don't seem like much, or very exciting, but their faces all lit up. Most of the kids bring their homework to school in a small plastic bag that they save from market. One little girl, Mercy, brings her stuff to school in a plastic wrapper from some sort of small electronic. I wish that the internet wasn't so slow, because we took so many pictures, and Michael even videoed all the kids running out of the school with their new backpacks on. Unfortunately, I can only get up two pictures today, one of which is of Michael and I with Simon as he puts his stuff in to his new bag. We will have to share the rest of the pictures with you all when we get home.

The other picture that I am putting up is of Love and Oliver. These two are some of the cutest and sweetest kids we have met up on the mountain. They hadn't been to school in about two weeks, and we were starting to worry and miss them. So, on Monday we had Martha, the swahili teacher at our school, take us to find them. We had no idea that they walk at least 30 minutes up and down hills to get to school each day! We got to visit them at their home though, which was a wooden-plank, square house. They live with their grandparents, who spoke no English but insisted that we come in for tea (made with milk that had just come out of the cow in the backyard! Don't worry, I drank it without making any faces to show how I thought it tasted!) . The room that we sat in had cardboard walls covered with old newspapers. Even though they didn't seem to have much, and Love was running around with two left shoes on that didn't match, I left there feeling confident that they were loved and cared for, which is more than we can say for a lot of the kids in our class. I was so glad to see that some of the art work the kids had done was hanging proudly on the walls...Fortunately, they had just been under the impression that school was on break, which explained the kids' absences. They showed up to school on Tuesday morning, despite the pouring down rain that made it easier to sink in the mud roads than to walk in them. Since we now had a much better idea of how hard it was for them to get to school, Michael didn't want them to have to walk home in rain without any covering, so he ran home to get his umbrella and gave it to them. As they walked away, there were probably 5 kids crowded under the umbrella....

We've been playing a lot of Euchre (a card game that I learned from Michael's family). Another couple volunteering here from Canada are big fans of the game too, so we fill a lot of the rainy days playing against them...I'm proud to say that we normally win and I even dealt a hand in which I had a "lay down loner" when we were already up 9-4. For my side of the family reading this, that means I creamed them all! For Michael's side of the family, he says you would be proud!

Other than that, things are good here...we miss you all a lot, and we look forward to seeing you in 3 weeks!

Happy Birthday, Jonathan! I know I'm a day early, but I won't be back to the internet tomorrow!

Love,
Kasey

*at the very last minute, the pictures wouldn't load! Sorry! We'll try again next time!