Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Happenings in flat 17...

Here is a little bit of our life in the "Braeburn Slum", as one of my students sincerely called our lovely home last week.

This is our street from our living-room window.
This is a calm moment on Saturday afternoon. Sometimes our little muddy road turns into four lanes all going one way. Can you imagine four of those trucks across the road? Yep! It happens. Traffic jams are frequent around here, and there is no rhyme or reason to when they occur. Will actually admitted the other day that sometimes he likes watching the chaos outside our flat. When he has to drive in it, he's not so entertained, especially when we're watching out the window to see if we can even drive out the gate. Sometimes it is literally impossible, but when it's clear, you'll hear me yell, "It's all clear. Let's go!"

This is our back patio.
When we arrived at our little flat, there were four pots sitting in the living-room with dying twigs sticking through the soil. I moved them to the porch, cut all the dead leaves off, and watered them. Now we have this!...
You really don't need a green thumb to garden in Kenya. You stick some seeds in the ground, add a little water, and beautiful things just pop up. Our next attempt will be these...
We'll see how well the Kenyan soil does. (It definitely won't be successful because of my green thumb.)

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Head Above Water!

This week I've not been doing work at home. I've gotten more marking done at school. Worksheets created the day before instead of the day of. I'm no longer just surviving. Feels good. Thanks for all the good thoughts and prayers!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Workaholism

My British co-workers love to have fun. Going out for drinks or chatting away in the classroom are often more important to them than getting a maths assignment marked or staying late to finish lesson plans. Despite this pleasure-over-work attitude, they seem to get everything done anyway. Their lessons are still amazing. The kids still learn. And they are still good teachers. I say all of this because I have been very overwhelmed with work lately, expecting the busyness that always starts a school year to die down a bit. But it hasn't. It just seems to get busier. So I look at my co-workers and think, what can I learn from them? What can I let go of at work, so I don't go insane? My present goal: Let some things go at work, so I can be a better wife and friend to the people who matter most to me. Thank you my Brit friends for being a great example. Us Americans definitely struggle with workaholism.
Bottom line: Working too much is going to kill me, so I'm stopping now!