Lovely times at MIRACLE as old Electrical students continue to come back, specifically Isaac. Forgot how much that kid makes me smile! Had a great day just chatting with him in the library, hearing all about his past 6 months which, by the way, include an engagement so I’ll finally get to go to a Malawian wedding! Also had a fabulous time with Cobby which made me smile because he’s been a little snot lately. But that afternoon was just like the old days, full of laughing and giving each other a hard time. He even offered to be stick boy in my eventual wedding; or small bridegroom with Georgina as his small bride.

Laura and I celebrated our 3-week-iversary on Wednesday! It feels like we’ve been here so much longer than that. Clifford came over to visit which was a lovely way to spend the afternoon. Abraham also came by and brought his girlfriend which we’d been nagging him about for some time. I think we overwhelmed her with our excitement lol.

For our real celebration, we decided to walk to the airport for drinks. Banda and Raymond came along which made the walk all the more enjoyable, but alas the airport was closed. That always seems to happen to us. It was fun, nonetheless, and I think we’ve successfully forced Raymond to accept our friendship. To end the night, he told us it was his birthday. Oh Malawians! I wish they made a bigger deal out of birthdays here… apparently he had forgotten until his Mum called him to wish him Happy Birthday :)

Bu-bump-bu-bump… Beep beep beep…. Bu-bump-bu-bump. That’s the sound of Alyson getting (figuratively speaking) thrown under the bus. Then them backing up and doing it again. A.K.A. my day on Thursday. Awesome. The Director was away on a business trip so Madame Principal was supposed to cover his classes. But she is a very busy lady so she didn’t have time. And thus I was selected to spend allll day with one group of students in the computer lab. Even though I have plenty of work to keep me busy in the library. Oh well, it happens. What does one teach for 8 hours? Well not much apparently. Because they’ve already done typing and Word…. Which are the only two things I know how to do. The next task on their list was Excel. Haha. Right. Not. I know literally nothing about Excel. So I decided that if I knew nothing and if my planned day was going to be derailed, then I was going to enjoy myself and so were the students. So for the first part of the day they reviewed Word, typing business letters and working out the kinks in their knowledge. Break for a successful English/Communications class and then, after lunch, I made the executive decision to let them just explore the computers. I could make it sound good by saying that they will only learn completely if they discover for themselves and develop some sort of intuition about computer usage. Which is all true – their lack of curiosity and self-motivated discovery drove me absolutely bonkers last year. But really, I just didn’t have it in me to teach myself Excel over the lunch period and then teach them. Not gonna happen. So instead they got to have fun for a couple of hours and I enjoyed catching up with the Chaminade teachers in the summer hut.

“I told my father, ‘You may think my mother is dead, but when I’m with Madame, I feel like I still have a mother.’” – George. Well doesn’t that just make me want to bust out in tears?! One of my Electrical 1 students told me this yesterday. They’ve told me before that they think of me as their Mum, but for some reason this time just jerked my tear ducts more than usual. Love that class.

Laura, Banda and I decided to walk to Gondwe’s Shop after work in search of Cherry Plums and our adopted son, Vitu. No success on the Cherry Plums, had to make do with Coke. But after some calling, Vitu came trotting out of his house with a huge grin on his face, ready for some big hugs. Gondwe’s is always the place-to-be for children, but even so it seemed like there were more than usual around. Or maybe they were just braver. Because we were immediately swarmed upon arrival. Banda and I made our way to buy drinks and I looked back to find Laura lost in a sea of kiddos who were all fighting each other for high-five positions. It was rather adorable and I found myself wishing I had a camera because the joy on everyone’s faces (including Ms. Laura) was simply beautiful. They stuck around the whole time and we had a grand time figuring out each other’s names, making faces/noises, and writing ABCs and numbers and names in the dirt. And I was pretty thrilled to use some of my basic Chitumbuka knowledge to communicate. And you know what? Not a single one of them in the whole hour asked us for money or candy or anything. I wish all of our interactions went like that here! Just fun, no assumptions. Stopped to bring Raymond a birthday Coke on the way home.

Had a late dinner that night with the boys. Namely Banda, Raymond, and the two other student teachers – I love that they’ve become “the boys” in my mind. It’s nice to have a little go-to group. Anyways, Laura and I were supposed to prepare nsima for them, but they had a meeting that went really late so by the time we all gathered, Raymond (who skipped the meeting) had already prepared rice to go along with the beans that we brought. We even got to eat with spoons rather than with our hands like we do at MIRACLE. I tell ya, it was like being in America again. More music videos again and 5 horrifying minutes as Banda tried to teach me a line dance (Molly, the one that you and he – or Kaunda maybe? – did at Planet that one time). Lots of feet tapping and spinning, so of course I was a disaster. Took about 10 tries and lots of demonstrating before I got down the 5 steps. Sigh. But I did it! We also got to watch an awful (-ly fantastic) Nigerian movie. Normally I just think they’re tiresome, but this one was hysterically bad, so we had a fun time watching that together. Finally dragged ourselves home where Banda and I proceeded to accidentally fall asleep on the couch. Good old Raymond sat there for 20 minutes before Laura finally came in to check on us and woke us up. Poor kid.

We leave today to go to Nkhata Bay. Oddly enough, I’m not as excited about it as I used to be. Maybe I just enjoy Karonga too much. Maybe I’m not really looking forward to 11 hours crammed in a bus with my knees up to my ears and a hiking backpack on my lap. Maybe I’m not in the mood for drinking and meeting random travelers. Who knows. I’m sure it’ll be fun once we get there though. And it’ll be nice to catch up on sleep, since Nkhata Bay practically requires afternoon naps. And to have a real working shower for once, not to mention a warm one! And chicken and maybe even taquitos! See, I’ve talked myself into it. Then on Monday we’re going to Mzuzu so I can (hopefully) meet with some government officials to iron out all the details for shipping the books. I’m so ready for them to just be here and be all taken care of already!