Teeth and Soccer and Chicken and Funny Things and Butterflies

Suzanne left today for her 10 travel trip. Today was relatively chilly. It looked like it was going to downpour the whole day, but didn't start until around 11pm or so. It was also really windy, which was a problem at the soccer fields because the dust and sand was blowing everywhere. I was wearing sunglasses, and the kids thought it was hilarious when I took them off, because the only clean spot on my face was around my eyes. Oh and on the way to soccer, Kirsten and I saw a jaw on the sidewalk. Probably from a dog, definitely not a human jaw.

At 1pm we left soccer to go to Brian's reading program at the center. MB gave us the keys to all the doors we would need to open. When we got there the security guard let us inside. We were able to open the gates on the outside of the doors to the "big room", but when we tried to unlock the "big room" door, we ended up breaking the key inside the lock. Eventually MB showed up, and luckily we had broken the key with the door unlocked, and just didn't push the door open hard enough.

Someone tried to break into the center towards the end of the day, and of course that was a total distraction and show for all the kids. Luckily the breaker-iner didn't get anything.

Sha's tooth was really bothering her. She has a deep cavity that is eating a large hole right through one of her back molars. She was in so much pain, so Taura took her to the hospital. She got some medicine there, and they are going to pull her tooth out next week. I am teething as well; my wisdom teeth are coming in and the right one is pretty uncomfortable.

We left the center around 4:30. A woman who volunteers at the reading program, Cynthia, took us home. Kirsten and I went out to the Pick and Pay to purchase a few things that the house needed, a few things for Ilga, and a bunch of stuff for myself. I got some boneless chicken breasts to make chicken cutlets for dinner, and some toothpaste and hand soap and butter...etc. I finally took a shower when we got home. It was much needed. Saturday soccer tends to be dirty.

Kirsten and Ilga helped me get dinner ready. It was chicken cutlets and pasta. I looked in Ajay's cabinet for some flower, and I found a bag of some white powdery stuff. The front of the bag wasn't in English, so I asked MB if it was flour just to make sure. She looked at my funny, and turned the bag around, where it said "White Flour" in English on the other side. During dinner Ilga told us about her day, because she didn't go to soccer. She got in a taxi to go to a meeting this morning, but when she got to the building and got out of the taxi, she realized that the entrance was closed, and needed to go to the front entrance, which was sort of far away. By then the taxi had already left. So she hailed another cab and before getting in asked them driver if he knew where the front entrance was. He said yes, so she got in. Apparently he didn't actually know where it was, because he drove out of the city, and when she asked him again, he said he had no idea where it was. Ilga was late and getting upset, so she made an angry sighing sound, and the driver started laughing. Apparently when she finally got there, he wanted way more money than what was actually owed, and Ilga started getting raising her voice, after he wouldn't stop trying to get her to pay more. Apparently he just kept laughing. Finally he let her go. Drivers around here are crazy. Yesterday when the four of us were going to the center, we got into a fairly nice cab and drove into Katutura. Once at the BNC, I gave him $26, which covered the fare for the four of us. Then he tried telling us that it was $13 a person, not $6.50. We told him no, that it is always $6.50 from Windhoek to Katutura, but he persisted, to the point that we started getting scared. Suzanne was in the front seat, and after she told him we had no extra money, he reached over and touched her pocket, pinched her leg, and tried to get money out of her pocket. After that we gave him $5 more and walked straight to the center. MB would have called the police, but we all wanted to just get away from the taxi so badly that we forgot to write down the license plate number. Oh well. Now we know for next time.

I don't remember how we got in to the conversation, but I was trying to explain what wedgies are to Ilga and Kiersten, and to help describe them, MB let me give her a wedgie. HILARIOUS. Really, highlight of the day. We started talking about how every American kid has had one and given them, and that it's as American as peanut butter. We started talking about thongs, and then I told MB that they are like butt floss, and she made this hysterical joke about the dentist saying something like "you really should floss, so you don't have these chunks here". Oh god, we couldn't stop laughing. And then we had chocolate ice cream! We were so excited, we were literally jumping up and down in the kitchen, acting like four year old kids. MB went out for dinner with a friend. Ajay was int he living room on his computer, and Mark out on a photo shoot. Actually, we were so hyper that right before Mark left he asked us for three Namibian dollars, and we each gave him $1.50 in coins, just to be funny. We just had a bad case of the sillies. Then we sat down for the ice cream and talked about the kids, which ones we thought were being sexually abused and the different ways they were dealing with it. Some really pull themselves away from others, and avoid social contact, while others are totally out their with sexuality and sex in general. Even the younger kids. Ilga thinks it's their way of trying to make it more normal.

After that, Ilga and I started reading the Cosmo, Glamor, and Seventeen magazines that I have here with me. We were totally cracking up about the silliest stuff. It was really fun. We looked at the prom dresses and Ilga told me about senior proms in Germany. Apparently the whole family goes along with the kid. Weird. Then we started talking about how Germans pronounce their "v"s as "w" and vice versa. This came up when we smelled a horrible magazine page perfume, and Ilga said she was going to "womit". I couldn't stop laughing. The Kiersten said "elewater". God, maybe it was the grapes gain. We were snacking on those frozen grapes. This was going on simultaneously with the movie Ajay put on on his laptop, Mission Impossible. Terrible graphics. Too confusing. But there was a huge butterfly on the curtains, and a got a good picture of it :)

I wrote a bunch of postcards today. I will mail them out Monday. Hopefully they will be delivered before I return to NY.

Anyway, today was a very funny day. Pool tomorrow! And I am going to make French toast for breakfast!