I just love it when i forget to say something! before I left a lot of people asked if i would have a snail mail address.  The answer is yes (see the right of my blog).  I have received one package from home.  yay! It takes about a week to get here from Texas.  not long at all.  I would absolutely love to hear from any and all of you! It's always wonderful to get a letter or package.  Please note though that I have to pay for packages to be shipped from Texas to Africa.  so Please try to keep packages light or include a couple dollars for shipping. Looking forward to hearing from you guys!

The last couple days have been lovely ones spent in my room :)  I spent the entire weekend with a cold in my room trying to get better.  Matt, Ben G., Jenny and all my other friends (except Kelly) went on a really awesome overnight trip to the beach.  Awesome!  Kelly and I made cookies and watched movies on the ship.  Boring.
Here are some pictures of my day in the galley today.  It was a pretty long day honestly.  We made snickerdoodles for the crew and then had extra time so we made chedder Jalapeno dinner rolls.  They were so delicious!

In preparation of Africa night tomorrow (every tuesday) Josh is peeling plantains to make fried plantains.

Little Ben making crutons.

My ol buddy Matt

Iroro(left) and Oreta also known as mama (right)

me and Iroro

rolls for 450 people. wow!

After work i rushed through a shower (imagine rushing through a two minute shower) and went to...drum roll...French class! The ship is sailing to Togo in a short while where they speak French.  So one of the galley cooks is a french teacher and is offering classes to the crew.  So i'm learning french! yay!  The other news for the day is that i'm going to be teaching swim lessons for the long term crew's kids! i'm so excited!  Hopefully the first lessons will be starting the beginning of next week.  Prayers would be much appreciated for that and also for my health.  I had a cold all weekend and the cough remains. and it's awful.  I miss you all.

I realized today that i haven't posted in a couple of days! shame on me. So first some quirky things about living on a ship.  There are little metal ledges on the floor on all of the doorways.  I spent three whole weeks tripping over them every time i went through a doorway.  I've gotten better now though.  I guess it's something you just adjust to.
Yesterday i realized how very blessed i am to be here.  If it wasn't for all of the people who gave financially and emotionally i would not be here.  I am so very very thankful to everyone who helped me get here.  I can never say thank you enough!
I know this was short but...well...not much has happened...night!

Wow! So much has happened in the last two days and i didn't blog last night so be prepared for a long post tonight! Yesterday morning I went to the last eye screening.  Basically it's when they do an initial screen of the patients for eye related things to see if we can help them.  We only had 9 surgery spots open and over 150 people vying for the spots.  The way the screening works is that everyone lines up in a line and they get a prescreening to see if they qualify for the screening.  In order to qualify you have to have two cataracts.  if you qualify you go into the "yes" line and if you don't you go into the "no" line.  I was in charge of guiding the no line to the gate and saying goodbye.  It was a really depressing job. Most of them don't speak very good English and when they realize your leading them to the gate they are so sad.

This is Kissy Hospital where the eye screening was held.  This complex has a church, school and hospital in it.

The line of people waiting for the prescreening

On our way back from the screening we ran into this MASSIVE crowd of people who were waiting for the dental screening.

We went to the hope center last night and did a puppet show for the kids of Shakira's Waka Waka.  They loved it! It kind of turned the evening into a performance time and this volunteer got up and did a couple of magic tricks for the kids.

You can't really see it but this little girl has a cleft pallet

 Today I got to go to the Cheshire Home.  It's a Christian home for people with polio.  They also have a school for kids.  It was such a cool experience!  A lady named Tiffany Bergman takes a group of people there every week.  So the kids all know Tiffany.  She teaches a bible lesson and then brings games and crafts for the kids.  Today she taught on the breast plate of righteousness.  Jenny, Ashley and I did a puppet skit about the breast plate of righteousness and right in the middle of it it started pouring rain...welcome to Africa! lol.  So we moved inside to the kids classroom.

The classroom

The Belgium beauty queen(in the yellow head scarf) visited the ship today and also came with us to the Cheshire home.   The craft today was making breast plates of righteousness and writing/drawing pictures of what the plate protected you from.  This is Tatiana helping one of the kids.

proudly showing off her  isolation gown turned breast plate of righteousness

my favorite part of the day!!! There was this adorable baby named Isha (eye-sha) .  She's three months old and i pretty much just held her most of the time we were there.

Baby Isha!!!! Isn't she beautiful!

playing Janga with Samantha, Lucia and Thomas

Tiffany

Upon return to the ship we found out that someone ( a local) had driven a fork lift into the area between the ship and the dock.  We went up to deck 7 and spent the next hour and a half watching them try unsuccessfully to retrieve the fork lift.

So folks, that is the news for the day.  Some people have asked how my stomach is doing.  It's great! thank you so much for all the prayers.  I think that i'm getting a cold or something but stomach wise i'm doing quite well.  I miss you all.  Thank you to Meaghan Ward, Ann Wolfe, Monica Willard and Drew Woolley for all your wonderful emails and comments.  I love hearing from you all!

So today the topic of conversation is food.  Before I came here I was asked what kind of food would be available to cook with.  I've been here over a month and i've got a pretty ok handle on what is available to us. Not much.  And what is available is very very very poor quality.  Stuff that would NEVER be sold in US markets.  Imagine cutting green peppers for 450 people but the peppers you have to cut are only 2 inchs big and half rotten. Or peeling carrots for people and the carrots are 2 inches long, half an inch in diameter and soft.  Or picking through hundreds of leaves of lettuce to find all the bugs, worms, and crickets hiding out. or opening up a 25# bag of onions, reaching inside and squishing into rotten onions.  Produce wise...our selection is very sad.
We drink a strange concoction they tell us is milk but it's called Milch and it's uh... definitely not milk.  An ok substitute in coffee but not the milk we drink in the states.  The sugar is a much coarser grain, so when i make cookies or something the dough feels really gritty.  But they bake up just fine.  Along the cookie line, i've become the cookie queen! We usually have time left over after we've finished all the prep for the day so lately Rachel has taken to asking me to make dessert for the crew.  My go to thing has always been cookies (because they're so freaking delicious!). We're talking 600 cookies though! It's no small process to make that many cookies.  Matt and I have a system down though.
Tonight we went out to dinner for Clinton's last dinner in Sierra Leone.  He goes home tomorrow :( very very sad.

first bite of african sushi...it was interesting

all dressed up for dinner

"ew clinton get your arm off of me"

sushi!

Goodnight all and Happy Birthday Mourad!

Nothing much to report today.  I worked...it was a ship holiday.  I think technically that means that the crew gets a day off of work.  But i'm not sure who actually got a day off cuz everyone i knew had to work (the hospital and galley crew had to work)
After work we had a puppet meeting.  We worked on some new scripts because we have two invitations to do puppet skits in this next week.
That was pretty much what i did today...not very exciting. sorry :(

Today was incredible.  The morning started, with an early wake up call (AGAIN!).  We went to the film screening and it was amazing!  It was at the British Council.  We dressed up in our African best and drove the 2ish miles that took over an hour.  We had one to many people to ride in the Ship vehicle so Matt took an ocotta (motorcycle).  Here's a picture of him from the back of our window

He's just about to enter the intersection on the left.

I promised to put up a picture of a poda poda and here it is! there are like hundreds of these vans all around.

The British Council building.

We got to the screening early (it's always hard to judge how the traffic is going to be) so we wandered around a little bit.  We saw these little goats.  So cute!

Here's a picture of the view from the building.  You can actually see the Africa Mercy in the harbor.  It's directly in the middle of the picture.

This was the "theater" the film was shown in.  It was daylight so the picture was slightly hard to see but there were enligsh subtitles so at least we could understand what they were saying.  The man standing up at the front of the room is John Calkins, the founder of Fambul Tok.

I don't remember what I told you about Fambul Tok yesterday but here's what I learned about them today.  They are an organization created to restore Sierra Leone to it's post war state.  Relationships are so important in this culture!  The entire village plays a part in raising every single child.  Your father is my father, your mother is my mother.  So when the conflict happened, villages and families were ripped apart.  Uncles were forced to rape neices, boys were forced to rape their mothers and sisters.  After the war ended only 9 people were convicted of war crimes.  The rest of the rebels were given a blanket amnesty and they moved back into the remains of villages and homes and never talked or reconciled relationships with the people they had hurt.  Imagine living in the same village with the man who beat you and killed your father? or the Uncle who raped you.(both of those are situations that happened to people who were interviewed int he documentary).  So Fambul Tok comes into the villages and sits everyone down and asks if they want to forgive each other.  I was amazed that for the most part they do! They are so willing to forgive if the offender will just confess.  They have a big bonfire with a time for the victims to tell what happened to them and basically call the offender out and ask for an apology.  Relationships are restored and friendships are mended.  Is everything perfect? No.  But it's a start. The amazing thing is that this is not a christian organization.  I don't really understand how someone can offer forgiveness and healing without also offering Jesus.  The key though is that they are using the traditions of the culture to bring healing...they're not offering them money or some magic cure.  They are restoring relationships which is the foundation of all communities. It was a truly amazing experience to be a part of.
In the last week God has really made me fall in love with Africa.  I don't know why but I LOVE it here.