Creating Fun

Do our kids spend their days wishing they were in some other place?



Are their days filled with hard schoolwork?



Home-schooling IS work, but with schedules prepared ahead of time, they can get done quickly and have more free time.






There are many opportunities for fun times outside, when it isn't too rainy and muddy.  The two bush apple trees in our yard make good climbing trees; L sticks to climbing the smaller one, while long-legged K can scramble up the larger one, taking care to avoid the very painful biting ants as he searches for ripe apples with his friends.

Naturally, ripe fruit attracts a lot of village kids, many of whom don't bother to ask if they can pick & eat the fruit.  One day last week the translators noticed that some well-meaning person had tied some "magic" onto the large apple tree, probably hoping to scare away the kids who were causing problems.  Of course, we didn't condone this, so the translators took it down for us.


 But K & L continue to enjoy simple things, like watching a coconut being prepared.  First you take off the very thick, greenish-brown outside husk (that many people in North America don't know about).  The more well-known hard dark shell is now visible, and this one needs to be poked in order for the coconut milk to be poured out before the coconut is cracked open.

K & L really enjoy the cooking of Johannes, the man who works for us in our house (I would call him our "house-help", but that doesn't adequately portray all he does for us).  He makes wonderfully creamy mashed potatoes, yummy meatballs (from scratch, of course), and his salads are an artistic creation.





Unfortunately, because of the really bad roads, we cannot get a regular supply of vegetables, so salads are a rare treat right now.  Starting the week we arrived, L & I planted tomato seeds (NOT from a packet; from a real tomato :) ), and I am hoping to eventually be able to harvest our own tomatoes.  Their chance of survival is slim, between goats wandering around our yard, cutting ants in the flower bed, and village kids sitting/walking in the flower beds.  I have learned from hard experience that putting sticks next to plants is a sign to others that these are ones you WANT to grow.



These muddy legs do NOT belong
to our male child... :)

So while the tomato plants grow, our kids also grow.  And dirt is a part of their life too.  But they clean up pretty well :).













Which is good, because they also need to help clean up things in the house that haven't been cleaned for many years, including this bunk-bed that was eventually set up in L's room.

A butterfly we rescued from the school room window and released outside...