Camping and things

First and foremost, for those of you that don't know, the puppy I showed on a previous blog entry, Buckner, is no longer with us. He got distemper a while back we suspect and had been sick for the 3 weeks that we had him, and over time it got worse. We didn't know he had it, and actially the no-kill shelter where we got him are very good about vaccinations. Unfortunately, we think Buckner got it before the vaccines and it just took over his little body. We had to put him down and out of his misery. It was very sad, but each day it gets easier to move on. Juno is getting back into things, but she was quite confused about where he was. I'm glad we got to give him a good, loving home in his last living days.
Grant and I will never have another Buckner.
On a more positive note, a few weekends back, I went camping with some friends in the Nyanga Mountains. It is about 3 hours from Harare. We got up there late afternoon and just hung out and then made some dinner and had drinks. The next day we took a nice long hike. The weather was perfect. Grant didn't get to come because he had a sports tournament. Here is the link for the pictures from Nyanga: Nyanga Camping Trip
Last weekend was another volleyball tournament for Grant so he was quite busy and I went to support his team who played pretty well. It was a nice relaxing weekend just like this weekend will be. Today we had Tarasai Day which means a celebration of Zimbabwe. We do all these fun activities to celebrate Zim and then everyone has a picnic and a band.  I will try and upload a small video clip of part of it. The main actor in my video is Siphesihle, one of my students. He is just so cute I had to video him dancing. I tried to upload it today but it was just too much for our broadband to handle.

Finally!!!

So we have been super busy trying to get back into our life here so sorry for the delay on catching everyone up. To make a long story short, we have been very busy with the following things:

1.  Getting our house back in order...when we left the school agreed to put in new cabinets in our kitchen because we couldn't use half of them for vaiour reasons. So they put them in and did a great job! They also took out some fencing we had around our yard because it was, to be honest, just an eye sore. Now we have a big open space from our outdoor sitting area to our grassy area in the front of our house. I am sure this is all difficult for you to visualize since you have not seen the house but once we rae finished with the details of our house, we will make a video and post it. This time we will actually do so because our school is trying to catch up with the times and has increased our bandwidth of internet and now we can actually do things within a reasonable amount of time. Our ceiling was also repainted and things done to our bathroom. Because of all this, we bascially had to pack our house up and put everything in closets. When we got back, we walked into an empty house that we had to put back together. So that's that!
2. Getting back to work...we got back Wednesday night and had to report to work Thursday morning. I was actually surprised at how well we handled the morning, but the afternoon...not so much. We didn't have much down time once we got back. But our classrooms are great, we are enjoying our kids. I have 19 students from my 12 last year so it has been an adjustment, but they are hilarious. Grant got a lot of new supplies for his classroom and I got carpeting in my class which is so much better. We have both been implementing this program called Responsive Classroom. Part of it is building community in the class by having these fun morning meetings filled with games and whatnot. We love it and our kids love it and first thing in the morning we laugh.
3. Juno....the week before we got back, Juno was poisoned by rat poisoning that was put down on our property without our consent for reasons I will not go into. Needless to say, if our friend Stephanie hd gotten to our house 15 minutes later, Juno would have died. This is her second near death experience (first being tick fever last November), and our friends John and Danielle had to spoon feed her for days after that. When we got back she was so skinny and still recovering. On top of that she was really not happy with me and Grant! She refused to play with us for almost 2 weeks because we left her for so long. I am convinced that ridgebacks hold grudges as part of their personality. Now she plays with us and we are back on track, except for Number 4.
4. Our new puppy...Grant and I got a new puppy last weekend. We did this to get a play friend for Juno since we are gone so much and she is quite an anxious dog. We got a German shepard mix (we think maybe part collie) male from a no-kill shelter here called Friends Foundation. Grant named him Buckner. Our friends thing he looks liek a gremlin, but I LOVE his ears! He has a great disposition and is so sweet. He is 11 weeks so a bit of a baby, but we are wokring on that. Juno loves to knock him over, take his whole neck in her mouth, fight for my attention with the puppy and bite at his legs while he yelps constantly. Fun. Once he gets bigger I think he will be more fun for her. Here are some fun pictures of Buckner and Juno.

5. We also had a wonderful day at a music festival this past weekend. Here is a link to the pictures. It was at these people's home about 30 minutes outside of Harare. They rent it out for festivals and weddings and it was so beautiful. Beautiful day with our closest friends here! Here is the link: Spring Strings Concert

So that is wht we have been up to. Grant's parents, Debra and Jesse, and his Aunt Sally will be here in a little over a month. We are very excited about them coming to visit and we have all kinds of fun things planned so once that gets put into place, we will make sure and post the pictures of our adventure. This weekend, Grant and I are going for one night to Nyanga, which is the mountainous part of Zimbabwe about 2 hours from us. We are going with many friends for Saturday night so I will take pictures of that as well so be on the lookout! We miss everyone so much, but very much enjoying our quiet, simple life here in Zim.