long time gone...

Greetings from an internet cafe, finally. We haven't had internet access for a couple of weeks here at Lily, so I haven't been able to email anyone or blog for a while. That has been minor though, compared to our lack of running water this week. Off and on for several days, we haven't had running water and we also ran out of our reserve supply that we keep here. On Tuesday, the water company was supposed to send a water truck to refill our containers but that didn't happen. It's amazing how much our lives revolve around water and how much it stinks (literally) when you can't get it! It's been really nice that we haven't had any power outages lately though.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Between working towards getting the community clinic open, doing homework club (which I taught my first session of this week and I must say that elementary school teachers deserve medals of honor. or straitjackets. maybe both.), Bible studies, devotions, food distribution, hospital trips, and random injuries around here there's been a lot going on. We had an emergency trip to the hospital on Thursday morning around 3 am with our diabetic child, who got admitted to the pediatric ICU. We had an emergency trip for stitches for a cracked wide open head. It's been really interesting to see the health care system here; how it works and the differences between here and home. I'll say this much: it's good to be a nurse at Vanderbilt.

I started getting mail last week and it's been so fun! I got letters from my Aunt Gayle, my mom, and my grandfather and packages from Mom, James, and Lauren with candy, candy and more candy plus RANCH DRESSING! Packets, at least. It was pretty awesome. Lauren made me a belated Easter basket and it had a little stuffed rabbit. I asked a couple of the kids for suggestions about what to name it (I'm not really good at naming things) and the two suggestions I got were "Rabbit" and "Thandeka" (the latter was made by Thandeka, surprisingly enough). I think I may have to come up with something on my own.

On the Animal Kingdom side of things, the past couple weeks I saw rhinos again, more warthogs, giraffes (cool), owls (also cool), monkeys (very cool), more bats (very uncool), and a spitting cobra (very VERY uncool). All of these things I saw either at Lily or within a couple miles of Lily. I don't think I've ever coexisted this closely with this much wildlife. Not really sure how I feel about it.

I posted more pictures today: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050493&l=a763c&id=34104123