Happy Thanksgiving!

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!! I hope we remember all that we are blessed with. Even though we are far from any family we are still thankful to be here in Congo and experience all that is here. And I'm thankful that my brother puts great songs on his blog so I can still have some kind of music and rock out on Thanksgiving day. :) Thanks Seth! We love you all!!

What do I hate most?

BUGS!!! I've killed about 100 today! Well...okay not that many, but there was a whole ant colony go up and down our wall, and I killed all of them....so maybe 100! :) Today is just full of bugs, ants, spiders, beetles, and I actually killed a cockroach yesterday! :) I'm so proud of myself. Spencer helped me kill a spider today too, he is so good at helping me out with that. But maybe I should teach him how to just smash it with a shoe instead of the big Swiffer. :) heehee. O-well. Hopefully there will be no bugs tomorrow...but they always seem to come back. It doesn't help that under each of our doors there is an inch opening that any ol' bug or animal could just come right in. Living in Congo is great, right?

Walks along the Congo River

So we went for a walk last night along the Congo River, we live just one street over. So we are starting on our walk on our street, and all of the sudden we hear some shouting, in French of course so I have no clue what is being said. Well we look behind us and there is someone on a motorcycle coming down the street with two black kinda SUVs behind him. Tyler then realizes oh we need to stop walking, so we stop, thinking it was some ambassador or government person.(just to show respect for anyone here, we stop if there is any motorcade) After they pass Tyler realizes that that was the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo!!! It was President Kabila!!! We knew that one of his palaces is right up the road from us, but we've never seen him out like this before! Turns out that he is a huge motorcycle buff, and was just taking a cruise around town I guess? Tyler told me that when he went to the States just a couple of weeks ago to talk to President Bush that Pres. Bush gave him a gift, it was a Harley-Davidson jacket!! Pres. Kabila didn't have it on. So we continue on our walk, and then we see a soldier walking up away from the River, and then all of the sudden he is running back to where he was at by the River. So we knew something was going on, oh and there are soldiers everywhere down our street since the President lives on this street too, so then we turn around and there is President Kabila again!!! This time I got a good look at him, and he was just having a nice slow stroll along the river too, with the guys in the cars carrying guns!!! Yeah, crazy!! :) Oh and we saw 5 parrots up in one of the trees!! They were gray with red bottoms, and red tails.

Things I miss or will miss....

Here is my list of things I miss from home (and of course Family and Friends would be number 1, but besides the obvious):

1. Pest Control
2. Bugs that are WAY smaller
3. Clear water for baths
4. Carpet
5. Wendy's and Olive Garden
6. No bugs in flour
7. Driving rules (there are not very many here)
8. Target (the store)
9. Parks for Spencer to play in
10.Cheaper internet
11.Being able to talk with everyone, even at church
12.Watching TV shows when they originally air
13.Going to movies, amusement places, or museums
14.Water I can drink from the tap
15.Using checks/ debt cards/ credit cards
16.Being able to eat the fruit when you get it (we have to have our fruits and vegetables soak in bleach and water for 20 mins before we can eat it)
17.Being able to go out with Spencer and walk around the neighborhood
18.Having things be reasonabled priced (a small bottle of toliet bowl cleaner $5)
19.Scrapbooking stores
20.Washing your clothes in your house (our washer and dryer are outside in a garage type thing)

Here is a list of things I will miss about Congo after we leave:
1. the Congo River and taking walks along it
2. The birds that sing here, they are beautiful!
3. Having fruit trees in our yard
4. Feeling safe with guards at your house
5. The flowers (cheap and beautiful!)
6. The simplicity
7. Everyone does everything so slow here. Sometimes I like that and sometimes I don't. But pretty much....what's the rush.
8. Our family togetherness we've had

Good News and Bad News

Alright, so I'll start off with the good news....we have the INTERNET!!!! :) So I will be able to post more on here, and stories that are still fresh in my head, since Sat. mornings when I was writing I could never think of something to write. Okay onto the bad news, we think someone took our digital camera when we moved here on Friday. So sad! So I have no pictures to show you. We are still trying to go through some things, maybe we missed it somewhere, but we are pretty sure someone has taken it, and probably sold it that night. O-well. We will recover and get a new camera and take more pictures, you guys will just have to wait longer for any pictures though. So sorry.

New stories for the week....Wed. night we were woken up at 2am by some beeping noise. We thought oh maybe it's from across the street, because in our bathroom we have a small circle window, and it doesn't have a glass window in it, just a screen. So we could hear it really well, but then I started wondering....what if that is coming from upstairs, no one lives up there, but there have been workers up there all week banging windows out of it and new ones in. So Tyler goes outside to the guards, and they go up to the apartment and it is the smoke alarm upstairs! Our poor neighbors! Anywho....Tyler and the guard take it down, but can't get the battery out because it's enclosed in this plastic covering. So the guard just rips the wires out of it, and it stops beeping. We were so tired after that, but it was funny to think of Tyler in his pajamas with a guard upstairs ripping out smoke detector wires!!! :)

Then yesterday, I was walking into Spencers room to check on him during his nap, and I went through the bathroom that connects to his room. Well right there in the bottom of the tub, bottom up was a HUGE cockroach!!! I mean at least 2 and a half inches long, and probably 4 with the antennas!!! So I thought, well I'll get my Swiffer and be done with it, but then I looked up on the tub and there was another one on the edge of it!!! So I just couldn't do it, so I went out and found the guard, and of course this guard doesn't speak English! (some of them do) Well, I got him and he came in and killed them for me. He pretty much just picked them up and slammed them on the floor then carried them outside in some toliet paper. I'm glad we have guards!!! :) I know I'm a wuss. O-well.

Today Tyler came by and picked up Spencer and I to go run some errands, and while we were sitting in traffic, we had a kid, probably around 9 or 10, come up to the car windows and start tapping on them. We just ignore them because we know they want money, and if we gave some to that one kid all the other kids on the side of the road would see and start coming at us for money. It's so sad to see this, and it was really hard today because we were sitting in traffic for at least 3 minutes, and they just kept tapping away. They also checked our doors to see if they were open, yes they will hop in your car. Spencer saw them and was like hey there's a kid out there. We tell him just to wave at them and be nice.

New House!

We have moved into our permanent housing yesterday! We are very excited to be actually in the place we will be for two years. No more moving until then!!! The house is very beautiful, almost looks too good for us. We are now living in the ritzy part of Kinshasa. By all the different Embassy's (British is across the street, and the Swiss are next door), and also Ambassadors resisdences. We are one street over from the Congo River, which is beautiful! We will be taking lots of walks down there every evening while the sun is setting on the River.

Halloween was different here. We didn't celebrate it on the 31st, it was on a Saturday when no one was working. Because only us Americans celebrate Halloween, we did just an Embassy thing with all of the kids. Spencer dressed up in his Care Bear outift, Bedtime Bear, and had a blast! He was so excited to go trick or treating. He got some candy and then we went to a party and Spencer and Tyler went through the Haunted House they had. Spencer was so brave, plus it wasn't too scary. Spencer tried to convince some girls who were around 6 or 7 to go through, but they thought it would be too scary. He played games while we were at the party and won just some fun little prizes.

I can't believe that Thanksgiving is only a week and a half away! We will be spending it with some of the people here that work at the Embassy so that will be fun. Other than that...not too much is going on. We miss everyone so much! And I am planning on getting the internet hooked up this next week, so then I'll have LOTS of pictures on here!