Easter

          We got to sleep in on Easter! It was such a nice feeling to be able to wake up whenever. We did have to be up by 10 though, which is definitely sleeping in to me! I have noticed that over the past few months, even when I was back at home, I just haven’t been able to sleep in. I woke up around 9:30, went online for a little while I was waiting for water for my shower to boil. I took a shower and got dressed around 10 so that Julia could braid my hair. I was planning on wearing a dress and looking nice, but it was pouring rain outside. I was going to just wear jeans and a sweatshirt so that I would be warm, but I just decided to go ahead and wear my dress. At around 11, we headed over to the Tree House for a volunteer Easter brunch. It was a potluck so everybody brought something to share. Since we haven’t really been able to cook ourselves and figure out how to use the wood stove and everything, we just made cookies since we already knew how to make those in the wood stove. Some other things that were there were French toast, bagels, coffee cake, eggs Benedict, pasta salad, and ham. Everything was so good. There was also wine, coffee with baileys, and mimosas to drink. It was really fun and nice to eat such amazing food. Even though we have been getting a little spoiled by our house mama, Upendo, at our volunteer house. She makes us some pretty good food. Its going to suck to go back to school and eat rice and beans again.

            At around 1 Renee, Julia, Brett, Amari, Molly, and I walked over to Fox Farms so that we could start hiding Easter eggs for the egg hunt and filling up water balloons. I started by filling water balloons with Renee. We didn’t have any special thing for the faucet like you normally would so it was a little difficult. Renee was really struggling at first. She was getting more water on me then in the balloons! We finished those and shortly after all the kids arrived. There were about 60 kids there from the children’s village and some from the neighboring village. At Fox Farm, the whole Fox family was there visiting for Easter. They’re a British family so there was all these little kids running around with British accents. It was cute, but when the kids arrived, they all starting yelling “The orphans are here!” It was really sad to hear that even though I know it’s important for those kids to know what orphans are and how they are lucky for having both their parents. All the kids looked so nice and were really excited to begin the Easter egg hunt. I have to admit I teared up a little. Its really sad how many kids are orphans here. It made me really happy though that the NGO puts this on every year for the kids. It was really cute to watch them all do the egg hunt. They were very excited and were running all over the place. Right after the egg hunt, we headed down to another area where we had a water balloon fight. It started a little unexpectedly and I got nailed in the face by one right when it started. After that, the kids lined up so that all the candy could be distributed equally. I think that by the time the people passing out the candy got back to the first person that they had already eaten the candy that they were just given! After getting all there candy, as if they didn’t already have enough sugar, the kids then got in line to receive a soda and a sugar cookie. The all drank the soda so fast including the young ones! One little boy Musa, maybe around 2 years old, threw up from all the candy! The funniest part was that once he threw up (all over himself I might say) the other kids just handed him a soda to wash it down with! Poor kid. He looked miserable. He came over and sat right next to me. He had a cookie in one hand, a piece of candy stuck to his sleeve on the other arm, and throw up all down the front of him. He then proceeded to fall asleep while sitting up. I’m sure he felt miserable, but it was sure cute to watch.

            After the festivities, we walked back home where we just relaxed. We were told that we would have brunch leftovers brought to our house in about 1 hour for dinner. 3 hours went by and we still had no food. We were all very hungry and Paulo was over so he made Brett go walk to see where our food was. Brett came back with the food and Amari and Molly. However, as we pulled the food out we were realizing that it was not going to be enough for the 6 of us to eat. So we headed into the kitchen where we started throwing some stuff together. We ended up making some really good sauce out of tomatoes, onions, eggplant, cabbage, pineapple, green pepper, and a bunch of spices. It turned out to be so good! We heated up some coconut rice that we already had to go with it, the ham from brunch, and we made some toast. I was so tired afterwards that I really just wanted to go to bed, but everyone else really wanted to watch a movie. So we decided to watch Monster’s University. I ended up falling asleep not long into it though. When it was over, I went straight to bed.