Lion Bait : Update on Life

Righty Ho, it’s been an embarrassingly long time since I updated you people on what we people are up to. So terribly sorry!

So last Tuesday we took our written final exam, and the next day conquered the oral portion. Needless to say there was some incredible studying going down in Ritchie HQ.

Thursday was my Birthday (Happy Birthday toooo me!). We loaded a moving truck with half of our stuff to send to Chogoria, and had an interesting lunch and very chill evening. On Friday we finished packing, and loaded the other half of our earthly goods into the back of our new car. Shout out to Daddy who managed to fit an absurd amount of stuff into a single trunk (and 4 people’s laps). We had a 4 hour drive to Tenwek Hospital ahead of us and were quite interested in getting started.

Side Note: Our final destination is Chogoria Hospital. We are visiting Tenwek for a month so Daddy can observe how a Kenyan education program works and get an idea of what kinds of things he’ll be treating. We’ll be at Tenwek until about October 20.

Our final weekend at Language School resulted in an addition to our party. Meredith found a bunny. Its name is Sven, and he is very soft, and calm, and nice. However, he has little to no bladder control. Not exactly an endearing flaw. Rabbits are usually contained in a cage of some sort. Meredith has a cage, but it had to be folded up in order to fit in the car. This left one option. Sven rode in her lap the whole way to Tenwek. She took his fatal flaw into consideration and armed herself with a sheet of plastic and several towels. Sven evaded them all and peed on the seat between James and Meredith, effectively killing to birds with one stone. Helen was amused. James and Meredith were not.

We made it to Tenwek otherwise unharmed. Wifi passwords were obtained, tours given, and then the meetings commenced. Missionaries have a lot of meetings. This one happened to be one specifically for the WGM missionaries. I was on child watching duty.

Side Note: Helen has made a discovery. She isn't really a kid person. See, Helen doesn’t really know what to do with them so she treats them like teenagers. It’s weird. And it doesn’t work for most children. Result: most children do not like Helen.

Right, so I was on child watching duty with several other adults (thank goodness). The children were a little cranky on Friday night, but I was too. Long drives with well hydrated rodents do that to me. We had a lively dinner with all the families complete with minute-to-win-it games. Surprising discovery of the evening: I am the master of that wiggle-a-cookie-from-your-forehead-to-your-mouth game.

Next day was entirely meetings (as in from 9am -7pm). Happily the children were split up that day and another girl and I had the Kindergarten group. Lesson of the day: Never trust two 6 year old girls with neon nail polish. My toes have yet to recover.

Sunday was uneventful.

Monday was an interesting day. Daddy started working at the hospital, Meredith: 8th grade, James : 3rd, Self: 12th