Four Months Later...

Well I didn't think anyone was reading the family blog, much less my little spin-off where Mom isn't there to edit over my shoulder so I, and I think all of us, stopped posting. Mom didn't even get the title when she first saw it! (Seriously? It's 'the truth according to Ruth' as in the Ruth part of truth is the most important part, thus the mid-word capitalization) But recently my Aunt Linda mentioned our lack of recent posts on a Skype call so apparently someone did read this. So I'm sending out an update.

We've gotten into a groove here, Miriam and I have a schedule of stuff we do each day and now that Christmas is coming up we're baking cookies too. So far we've made Candy Cane Cookies, Ginger Snaps, and Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars (Miriam found this recipe in her Teens Cook Book so it was new and turned out great, super easy too). We've got the ingredients for Turtles and, at John's request, Pecan Pie. Also I'm going to make Chris's birthday cake in a few days, we're going to celebrate when Grandma Alice and Grandpa Norman (Mom's parents) get here, on the fifteenth instead of the fourteenth.

Mondays we, Miriam and I, spend the day at Chikumbuso and help with the school or the widows. Recently Linda, the woman in charge, saw the tassels on the bag that I got for Christmas last year and decided they needed some on the purses. So I fiddled around and figured out how to make so decently easy to make handmade tassels and have been making them and teaching some of the widows how to make them to decorate their bags. Last time we were there, before the Christmas party, I made over 15 tassels for the women to use to decorate their bags, and showed another lady how to do it on her own.

Most Tuesdays Miriam and I go to the Tuesday Market with Ms. Ellington. The Ellingtons are missionaries here who have a son Chris's age and another one named Chris. At the Market we get fresh vegetables and fruits. The variety is pretty remarkable, the only thing we've ever not been able to find was asparagus and there's even fruits, or vegetables, I've never seen or heard of before. We could also get live crayfish, beans of almost any kind (dried beans like you put in soup or beans and rice), sugar, flour, eggs, dried fish, and tons of other food things. It's an open market in a large 'room' with a floor, a roof and two walls where vendors sit on a blanket with their wares all along the floor and customers make their way along narrow isles to where they need to go.

We don't really have any set Wednesday or Friday activities but on Thursdays we sometimes go to the Mother Theresa Orphanage and read books and sing songs with the kids there. Mom's class ended so now she's been spending a lot of her time working in the garden. We've got some really pretty roses along the driveway now. I picked out an orange one when I went with her to the nursery; it's a very deep orange and looks less domesticated than most rose bushes so Mom called it a wild rose ('...and Ruth picked out a wild rose'), but she might have been referring to the color. The variety of roses was really impressive they had all shades of red, yellow, pink, orange, purple, white, and in between.

Today Mom an I went to the Mercy Ministries school and helped scoop ice cream for their Christmas party treat. They were using our freezer to store the ice cream and keep it cold so we brought it over in our giant cooler and another borrowed cooler, there were 36 tubs, and ended up staying to help serve. It's fun to see kids so excited and grateful for something we'd think so little of. Back in Evanston kids might like ice cream and be happy about an ice cream social at the church but the kids here get this once a year. This is the only time they get the chance to have ice cream, when we bring it to them for Christmas, it just makes things more special.

On that note I've noticed that Zambians are so much more polite and respectful than Americans. Not just to me or something but to each other. When someone comes in the room they walk around and greet everyone, shaking their hand, maybe kissing their cheeks, and say something like good morning (or afternoon or whatever) to each person, often by name. In America it's like wave at the room in general and say 'hi' to everyone at once, if you're really nice (or maybe not, but people here are so polite and respectful to each other that you notice the lack in your own culture).

SO, in all, I'm pretty happy right now. I've got some new crafts from the shipment, baking and decorating is always fun, we've got a few activities and breaks worked into the week, and I've lost a lot of weight.