More Fabric...

I know it seems like all I do is shop for fabric, but had to show off my new purchases, with the professional cat model, helpful as ever, in attendance. First, new water jug pagne. How lovely. Sigh.

Then, this star pagne. I know, it's deeply deeply elementary school, but I work in an elementary school and usually I act like an 8 year old, so it's appropriate. (Even the 5 year old I was shopping with has more sophisticated taste than I do...Oh Lisa Frank!) Notice how the professional cat model is continuing to sit on the under fabric as I layer over...

This is an interesting pagne that I got to put on the wall. I feel like the pink woman/tree/bow/circle is a bit odd, but I liked the idea overall. I think I will try to put it on the wall strategically so that it doesn't look like a woman or a tree or a pink bow woman circle tree... I really like the circles bit. 

These are the twin pagnes that were a gift for my birthday, I need to get a dress made! (Sometimes pagne comes in matching sets to make complimentary trim on dresses.)

Lastly, this blue pagne that I love love love love... It's also at least partitially for hanging on the wall. Need to have stretchers made to hang fabric. 

And this is what happens when you stack things in the cat's favorite chair.... he lays on all of it anyway. In protest. Now you can't clean out this chair even if you wanted to because I am sitting here. So there. The bird pagne was for a friend, but maybe I should have bought myself one?!?!

Congo River Boat Trip!

Today an intrepid group of 18 TASOK teachers and company got VERY cozy 

on our boat ride out to a sandy island for a day of relaxing at the beach. It was perfect weather and a gorgeous day. We took our school's bus to the 'Kinshasa Yacht Club' and boarded a small vessel that had to pass through a lot of varied traffic

to get to open water. We picked up speed (you can see the waves in the bottom of the picture) and passed this dude steering his traditional boat, a pirogue,

and these houses, (among other things) on the way to our destination.

We pulled up (notice the extra driving challenge of our chairs strapped to the front of the boat)

and saw this view. The sheer vastness of the sky is just insane. What a gorgeous gorgeous day.

We lounged like this for most of the day, with lots of eating and chatting

spectating beach soccer...

playing in the sand...

and occasional dips in the Congo river (this was as far in as I went).

Before we knew it, it was time to get back on the boat

and head back to port. Old meets new (our boat with a pirogue that has a motor!)

Lovely day, all in all! 

New Roof and Sports Fields

Hi there! As I remember, these were both requested topics. Thanks! First, the new roof (or lack thereof)

The tarp on the left is my living room and the tarp in the middle is my bedroom window. The jutted out portion over to the right is the porch of another apartment. They are extending the building up before they add the new roof (not sure why?!?!) but it looks like progress is being made in any case. 

Next, the covered basketball court: (Entrance to the pool is that building in the far right, volleyball in foreground)

And the soccer field, they say it is very level for Kinshasa and one of the nicest ones around. Everything is green now in the rainy season but when we arrived this was quite brown. There is another goal to make a long field and then other goals to the left and right to make shorter half fields.

Lastly, to the surprise of some of you I suppose, Davy has, for the first time in his life, become an outdoor cat. It just wasn't worth fighting with him: It seemed sad to spend the money to have him all the way over here and unhappy. There are only like 10 cars on campus and the roads are so bumpy they can't speed. He has been so happy outdoors. This morning he was lounging:

And I could not get over how green his eyes looked with all that green scenery! Life is tough for a cat in Congo! (NOT!)

Epic Wind Storm

Going through my camera and found these pictures: On the return from the Kinkole Hash walk (see earlier post) some weather blew in. I safely got home and into the house but the destruction afterward was quite striking. I was not the only person to think the craziness was photo worthy!

As usual our amazing workers have toiled tirelessly and cleaned up very well!!!!!!!!!

Miscellany

Sorry a million times over for the delays. I have been very sick for two weeks now. Trying to regain my strength for the last stretch of school. PLEASE let me know any requests for topics. (I may have forgotten some requests in my illness as well so please remind me!)

Have had requests to describe my internet situation, which has been pretty funky of late. I am not overly 'techy' by any means, but here's what I understand. On arrival, we were told that our school devices would have connection to the school's internet but not other devices could use it because of limited bandwidth. This internet that the school uses for all school devices comes from Israel. In order to have internet on my personal computer, I bought this plastic do-dad ($25) and paid $100/month to have personal internet with a Congo-based company.

Using both internets worked well for the first several months that I was here, until we had some unrest in Congo in mid-January that resulted in the government shutting down the Congo-based internet for several weeks. When re-instated, it was very slow so I refused to pay, and therefore was relying only on the school's wireless campus-wide internet on my school computer. (Unaffected because it is from Israel) If you have intrepidly attempted to skype with me in the last few months, you know this hasn't always been easy. Last Sunday, I broke down and decided to try the $100/month again and have had amazing success with it so far. I will probably pay again in April and May to have personal internet as a supplement to school internet until I leave.

No yogurt yet, don't want it to get soggy! 

Grapes: 5,700
Pineapple: 3,000
Oranges: 2,700
Marshmallows: 3,000
Vanilla Yogurt: 2,000
Happy Easter Ambrosia: (Sort of) Priceless! (16,400 Francs = $17.70)

Admittedly (1) because of the location of my haircut, I was doing my shopping at one of the most expensive stores in Kinshasa, so the Pineapple and Oranges I could have gotten a lot cheaper, but didn't have the fortitude to do multi-stop shopping and with the mileage that I pay in the car, multi stop shopping also has it's costs and (2) I didn't use all the marshmallows or yogurt so we had leftovers. The limiting factor was the grapes which are not common and always expensive in Kin, no matter where you go (that I know of anyway).

Easter greetings from Davy:

From his new favorite hang-out on the washing machine

And from his chair: Davy's idea of helping with Easter cooking.