Our New Place

We have now been in Kigali for just over two weeks. We moved into our new place on Wednesday. Anna Lee (I think I called her Anna Bell in a previous post-oops!) also moved upstairs the same night. Rachel, who will have the other upstairs room will be here around Oct. 1st, arriving from the U.K. There was some painting and switching of broken appliances that needed to take place before we could move in. They were done poorly and at the last minute, but we were still happy to be getting settled in our own place. We found out the little shower in our bathroom does not have hot water so we will all be sharing the shower in the bathroom upstairs for a while. We are just finishing unloading our bags and trying to cram everything into the bookshelf that will serve as our dresser. After the first night we discovered we had a really bad sugar ant problem. Christi walked to the store and picked up some bug spray and we cleaned out the kitchen and let 'em have it. The neighborhood was sprayed for mosquitoes today and that may help too. They sprayed all the rooms in our house. We hired two Rwandans to help at our place. Angel will be working inside and Task will be working outside. They have each worked a couple days and seem to be working out well. Neither of them speaks very much English so we picked up a Kinyarwanda/English dictionary to start practicing and to help with translation.
On Friday night we had an open house for parents. I got to meet almost all of them. It was a long day, but it went well. This weekend is a public holiday and there is no school on Monday. We are ready for the long weekend. A lot of the teachers went out of town, but we had too much going on to get away. We may try a day trip if it works out. I got to experience a motorcycle taxi today as I rode over to near my principal's house. He took me to buy a washing machine for our place. It isn't like the ones in the states. It is a top loader and then has a little spinning basket on the side that spins out the water. It will work well for us though. I tried it out tonight and it seemed to do the job. Although, since the upstairs bathroom is the only one with hot water we have to cart buckets from there the the room outside where it is. God has provided for us in amazing ways. We are feeling tired and out of sorts, but things are coming together. We are really missing our family and friends. Please pray that our hearts will be comforted being so far away from those we love. Things do not run as smoothly here as they do in the States and it can be hard at times. We feel like we have been going all day and night since we first started getting ready to come here. We are ready to be settled and begin adjusting to life here. There have been some sick kids at school so please pray that for our health as well.