DRC Day 20

My plane for home is leaving right about now, and I am not on it. :(

Aside from that fact, we had a better day today. We went to the fabric store, and the grocery store. We ate a supper of yummy Indian food complements of the neighbors, and we supplied the ice cream for dessert. (They didn't have brownie mix.) It was everything I hoped for and dreamed of. I even took a picture of my ice cream, but haven't gotten around to testing the waters of adding pictures on here yet.

We don't really know where we're going yet, come Monday. Probably Hotel Royal. Kelly was going to talk to them for us, but I haven't heard back from her. She arrived last night and stayed there. She came with us on our outing this morning, and it looked nice when we picked her up. It just doesn't have kindly neighbors who hang out with us 24/7 while our kids beat on each other (and play nicely and share sometimes too) and who cook dinner for us once in a while. It's also ridiculously expensive. So... we'll see. So far I don't have any better alternative.

I guess you can all be praying that someone here cancels their reservation for this coming week. :) And while you're at it, just pray for our visas to be issued (and Darren and Valerie's too!) so we can all go home. Sunny Day is nice, but I am so ready to be home. Not so much ready to sit for 30 hours on an airplane with the kids, but I'll tolerate that in order to be home. :)

So what else can I ramble about...

I'm unconvinced that Eli actually speaks/understands Tshiluba. They tell me he does, but any words I try and say, he seems not to know what the heck I'm talking about. So either I really stink at Tshiluba (which is a distinct possibility) or he has a hearing impairment (which he doesn't seem to really) or he is really good at blank stares and selective listening. He prefers the point and grunt/whine method of communication. (He gets that from you, Brandon!) Generally he gets his point across, but the whining is getting really old. Come on, kid, you're had 3 weeks of English immersion. Let's hear your best! (Ok, I'm kidding... Sort of.)

Julia (David's wife) saw Raya today for the first time in a couple weeks, as she had the priviledge of accompanying us on the shopping trip this morning. The first thing she said was "She's getting fatter!" ha. I guess it's pretty obvious. She's gonna be a big fat American baby by the time she gets home.

Oh, and Amber and I are super-talented at mosquito nets. We have generally stopped bothering, since every time we put it over the bed, by morning we have at least one mosquito inside of it. Which is perfect. So... whatever. We just keep Raya covered, (Eli sleeps with us. I have given up on the whole crib thing. I got tired of moving him many times a night. Thankfully he hasn't seemed to have gotten any bites. I guess they like us girls better.) We try and watch for mosquitos in the evenings and smash them before we go to sleep. (A flyswatter would be great.) We actually didn't bother with them at all the first couple weeks we were here, having rarely seen a mosquito until relatively recently. But there are quite a few outside especially in the evenings. Although my itchiest bites are from some other bug I think. Some sort of gnat or something. I don't know what it is, but they are more annoying than mosquito bites I think.

I guess those are my only riveting updates for the day. Maybe tomorrow I'll try and load some pictures on here. We'll see.