Patrick

Here we have a house boy who does all of our cleaning. His name is Patrick. Everyone has people who work for them. Most of my friend have lots of staff but we just have one. It's just kind of expected if you have the money. Patrick and his family live right next to us. There is just a wall dividing his house from our house. We also have a night guard that comes every night to watch our house. Patrick and his wife have 2 children and 2 other relatives that live with them. We pay him about $50 per month which isn't much considering all of the people he has to support. It's really nice though because Patrick comes at 7:00am and works until 5:00pm for us everyday except weekends. He does all of the chores so I don't have to do anything! YAY! :) This picture is in his house. We brought over a cake because it was Claire's birthday and he didn't have any presents for her. He is holding up 2 fingers because she is turning 2. I'm going to try and post a picture of him and his family. His wife's name is Theresa. He has two younger girls. The older one is 7 and her name is Patricia and the younger one's name is Claire. She's 2. It's really funny because Claire gets scared of us whenever she sees her and will start crying. Usually we have to lure her to us by having a banana or a piece of candy. There is so much to tell so I'm not sure what else to say about him but ya. If you have any questions though just ask and I'll email you back.

Clothes

Most of you know about Rachel's idea. She is collecting clothes and going to send them over to me sometime next week. I can't wait to get them and hand them out! It will make the people here so happy to have clothes that aren't torn or have holes in them! If you haven't donated clothes you should definitely do it! It's for a great cause. When I get it I'll definitely tell everyone how it went and everything. Rachel, where would you like us to hand them out? Village, orphanage, just around my house, etc. Does anyone else have any ideas? Thank you Rachel! You will be making a difference in a lot of people's lives!

My Birthday

Hello Everyone! I have officially made my own blog. I will try to post regularly but as most as you know I tend to fall behind on things. I'll mostly probably just be posting little stories about my time here in Africa. (If I keep blogging until I come back then I'll do it then too!) Well I guess I'll start with my birthday....hmmmmmmm. Well I started a new term on my birthday which kind of stank but it was good to see all my friends again. My dad drove me to school and then when I came home we had a big lunch. Jordan had her friend, Yalenga, over with her mom. After lunch Yalenga's mom went back to work and I opened my first gift. It was two African skirt wraps. One for me and one for Jordan. I got to pick which one I wanted though. Mine is green with blue and it has all different designs on it. I'll definitely bring it back to Allentown. Then we went to a pool at a hotel near where I live. Yalenga is a member of it so we got in for free! The pool is really cool because it's a circle so the shallow end is all around the edge and the deepest part is in the middle but the water was freezing and it took me a while to get in. We swam for a couple of hours and then went home. When I got home there were all balloons on the wall that my dad had put up! We had a little cake that Yalenga's mom had brought. I opened a couple of my presents. Jordan gave me a stuffed animal dog and my mom and dad gave me Chinese checkers. Then Yalenga went home and we had dinner. During dinner I opened the rest of my presents. I got a cool african book, a lamp that is a piece of pottery and has a giraffe painted on it, and a bag of candy. I think that's it but I can't really remember! :) I also got a package from my grandparents that had lots of good candy that we can't get here. So I didn't get very big stuff but that's just because there isn't really anything here that I wanted but it was still a lot of fun. Well this is getting really long! Until next time......:)