The wheels on the bus go LOUND and LOUND…

At least according to Bukho they do, he refuses to accept my interpretation of ‘round and round’. Wednesday was a holiday here (Heritage Day, I think it was) so the kids were off of school. Rita and I decided to take the 14 oldest kids to the Sea, which is only about 45 minutes from here. We sang lots of songs on the way there and just had fun hanging out with the kids. It is way too cold to do anything but play on the beach/sand dunes and look for shells along the shore, so that is what we did. Besides some kids throwing sand in the eyes of other kids, we didn’t have any major problems…until we were about to leave. One of the boys got in trouble and when Rita went to talk to/discipline him he decided to run. He didn’t go too far, but one of the younger kids followed him and they both got in pretty big trouble. Then one of the younger kids decided to pick up trash from the ground and stick it in his mouth, when I asked him to put it back on the ground he decided to lick it. We have a sand thrower, a runner, a follower and a trash licker who will not be going back to the beach with us. On the way home I had a few kids sleeping on me and I eventually shut my eyes for about 5 minutes. I was awakened by a fire extinguisher going off in the van. I would like to say this surprises me, but living with 28 kids in South Africa for a month has already taught me to constantly expect the unexpected. One of the kids was touching it earlier in the drive, so we think it was probably him (we couldn’t get an honest answer out of anyone) we wiped off the nasty stuff the best we could and continued home. We made it home for lunch and then took the 10 kids who were behaving to Iona (the preschool teacher)’s farm! They have lots of lambs right now and the kids got to hold them and feed them, or just talk to/shout at them if they were too afraid to get too close. They also have tons of chickens and they let the kids go around and collect any eggs they found. While they were busy looking for eggs, Iona showed me an empty cage, where apparently a chicken used to sleep with its head out of the cage. The night before a Wildcat got in and bit its head off. She also told me lots of stories about people stealing chickens and other wildlife that has snuck in. I loved visiting their farm! Everything about it was interesting and the kids loved being so close to the animals (and talking to them, my favorite part) and getting out of the house for the day. Always an adventure.

On a side note one of the little girls who is around 4 and named Asanda picked up the phrase ‘oh my goodness’ from me (also it sounds more like ‘oh my gooness’ when she says it). In the little baby room in the house their light goes out if someone turns on the hall light and it happened when I was in there and I said ‘Oh my goodness’. Now she says it every time the light goes out and most times when I walk into the room. The other day one of the mamas asked her if she knows what ‘goodness’ means, to which she responded ‘Oh my goodness’

Love!
kb

ps. two posts! big day. I think it makes sense to post them two at a time so I use less internet time, or some sort of similar logic...