Catching Up

It's hard to know where to go from here in catching you all up. Mostly it's all a hot, sweaty, dusty, dirty blur. We were busy visiting, spending time with people, listening to all the new sounds, drinking in all the new sights and experiences, fighting off the bugs and pests, working working working on the house and every day things, watching the kids play every day all day outside until they're filthy (wonderfully, gloriously filthy!!!) tired and hungry. We would often lose track of which day it was. Jungle time has a way of blending itself all up into one big ball. But i'll try to keep it straight here for you.

Neighbor kids climbing our fruit trees to gather as much as their basket can hold (then sharing some with us - so sweet!).

 Huge spider that Phil walked into one day on the way to the well. Gave him a small heart attack.

 Phil opening a local fruit for T3YO. This one was soft and yucky inside. She was disappointed.

 Little naughty peeping neighbor girl, peeks into our bathroom. Thankfully for everyone (including her) it was empty.

This is the scorpion that was crawling on my mosquito net one evening.

 A traditional stove/oven at a friend's house.

 After tramping through the jungle with me, looking for bamboo shoots, my friend shows me how to peel and prepare them.

 Sitting still in the midday heat, an old grandma friend waits for me to take her picture.

One hot, dry day Phil decided to clean our water tank. Not a pretty job.

He climbed inside and cleaned it up all pretty! He was one sweaty and mosquito-bitten boy once he was done.

Mr. Blue Eyes has what I'm calling a Village Grandma. This friend of ours has fallen head over heels for my little boy. She loves to joke that she'll adopt him from me. Since i refuse to agree to that, we've settled on just betrothing him to her granddaughter. She just loves him to death... which has worked greatly in our favor in getting to know her and her rather large family.

Another friend of mine, showing me how to make coconut milk to cook with.

A dear lady (with yet another very large family) telling me (or trying to) how she makes floor mats.

And yet another fan of my baby boy.