Friday, February 22, 2013

Sports Day

Orion had a sports day at school, which is kinda like a field day minus the green grassy field. Eric volunteered to help out and said it was utter madness but still fun. I think the reason he said that is because everyone was talking in French (duh!) and it was kinda hard to figure out what he was supposed to be doing. I think that's the general idea with this school. Google translate the notes that are sent home and hope and pray that we have the gist of what the heck they are telling us. Anyways, from what I can understand, sports day consisted of a bunch of games and activities that the kids in the Moyen Section broke up into groups and did together. Eric was responsible for the BLACK group (isn't that a strange color to choose for a group of kids?) and there was something like 10 kids in his group. He lead them from one activity to another and said it was pretty amazing how different each childs athletic ability was (well, he didn't really say it nice like that but you know what I mean).

Is this practice for doing the worm at weddings in the future?


Friday, February 15, 2013

The Chili Champion!



New Neighbors!

Look what just moved into the tree in our front yard...a Weaver. We have seen two Weavers busy as ever building this nest. Then the next day they tore it down and now there is a new nest in its place. I don't know much about Weavers, so I don't know if this is typical Weaver behavior or not.


Monday, February 11, 2013

Orion's Report Card

Parlez-vous français? So you may or may not know how I feel about French but let me tell you getting a FOUR page report card all in French was enough to make my knees buckle. Do I really have to type all this junk into google translate?



And for your ease of translation..."Orion is a pupil interested in the activities of the school and already developed many skills. Mastery of the French language will improve with time and, thus, his results at school. I encourage you to continue its efforts."

Friday, February 1, 2013

Morning at the Beach

We ended up in Djibouti cause it was warm, by the water and my job would be in a new embassy building. Not a lot to base a big move on but whatever. So in our few months here our access to the water has been pretty minimal...we walked to our closest beach and the presidents guards shooed up away...we walked down farther looking for some sort of public access and found a path out to a rocky built up section that left much to be desired. With the arrival of Ramone we now have wheels and the freedom to get out and about so our search radius for the perfect beach has expanded.

A couple of weeks ago we took a quick morning drive to some place Eric had heard about. The directions to get there were a little unclear (you go to the "stripmall" with the t-shirts out front and then there will be a dirt road y'ing off from there, etc etc...you get the picture) but we managed to find it and explore this new piece of the sea. The weather was beautiful...cool and breezy, our Frenchie friends were out kite surfing, we walked and waded and decided this was a pretty cool beach. And then we got stuck...not just a little stuck but holy shit we are in deep deep mud that is as thick as oatmeal stuck...but fear not we got rescued by a Frenchie friend with a winch. I don't think I dazzled him with my command of the French lanuage, I think it was my frantic arm waving and screaming HHHHEEEEELLLLLPPPP that got his attention.

So now Ramone is in the shop and we are car-less wonder kids once again!