Happy Birthday Daniel and mini-update

Daniel was the first to have a birthday in Senegal!  He was a trooper with my very first homemade pizza and baked good in Africa...neither of which turned out great.  No cake, but I managed a peanut butter chocolate chip bread. 

Today we all went to the beach with our co-workers here and had a good time.  Not without challenges, but the beach and water were a nice getaway and the kids loved playing in the water.  The sand was nice and pretty clean too.  Liv decided the sand was going to kill her so she panicked every time she was out of the water "mommmmmmieeeeee...there is SAND on my FEET!"  was what we heard for most of the afternoon.  But all in all a nice time.  So if you come to visit...we'll take you there:).  You'll never find it without us though...mwa ha ha!  If you snake through some industriel buildings and kind of a garage holding area you will find a nice beach and hotel, not what you'd expect to be there for sure!  It was about $12 for all of us to get in, but worth it for a clean, safe beach.

None of us are sick, and we are thankful for that.  The kids are pretty eaten up by mosquitoes but we haven't been putting spray on (thinking their little bodies already had too much with the malaria meds) but we are going to start.  Lesser of two evils.  We've all had minor stomach aches and intestinal discomforts, so please keep us in mind for that issue. 

Tomorrow we will go to a french speaking international church wit some colleagues of ours.  We are looking forward to visiting the churches in town so we can decide where to go. 

I am getting used to wearing long skirts all the time and Daniel long pants.  And sweating all the time.  We are thankful that we have lots of fans here and a fridge for cold water!  Cold showers have become a blessing rather than a burden too:)

Marianna has started kindergarten and she loves it.  She has a tiny class right now...6 kids!  She is exhausted after each day though...the taxi ride home has her saying "I want to get out of here" a lot.  I think it's a little bit of culture shock for her too to ride in the hot taxis...smell all the new smells and sit in traffic and see the sights of Dakar.  It's a lot to take in for all of us. 

Overall we are doing well and learning more about life here every day.  We will be in "orientation" for the next 2 1/2 months and I feel like we need to be!  Thankful to be here.