The Dog

When we moved into our house we temporarily inherited a dog. His name is Salchi, which has some connection to the Spanish word for hotdog (also a clue to the breed of dog). He was only with us for a few days until his new owner could come and take him home. The kids loved having Salchi around, which shows on Hannah’s sad little face the day that Salchi left.

The funniest thing with the dog was the day we started our Sesotho language study. Our tutor spent about an hour teaching us basic greetings, goodbyes, hello my name is…, what is your name…, etc. Apparently Salchi already knows more Sesotho than we do, because when we learned the word for “Knock, knock” he went crazy! Every time we said “Koko” he would run to the window and bark, then run to the door and out his doggie door to see who was coming.

Hopefully soon, we will know as much Sesotho as Salchi.

On the Ground Lesotho

We arrived here at our new home just over a week ago. Where to start? Although getting on the plane in Washington was eventful (thankfully God lined up help when check-in complications delayed us to the point of almost not making the flight), the actual flights went ok. Levi slept a large portion of the 15 hour leg and that was a tremendous blessing! All our bags but one made it to South Africa (the missing bag has since been found and is now in our possession). Everyone slept well that first night (though Levi ended up with us) and our drive down to Lesotho was quite enjoyable. Kids played with their backpack activities and slept. Joey chatted almost nonstop with one of our new Basotho co-workers, Rethabile. I enjoyed the scenery…reminded me a lot of eastern Washington.

We spent our first 5 days in temporary housing (thanks to our teammates for letting us use their home!) Our first really strong impression of Lesotho…Winter is COLD!!! Blame jetlag, our lack of experience with heating here, and home construction differences, but our first night we spent all in one room, kids in their pjs and coats under piles of blankets! I don’t think we will ever forget our first night here!! (We are adjusting and managing much better now :).

 

The move over to our new home happened Wednesday. The previous family gave us a good housing orientation. We have successfully purchased phone and internet services as well as bought more electricity and water at the local gas station (more on that later). The heating stove is wonderful and has helped with our handling of the temperature adjustment, though we are still in the trial and error stage. Killed it three times, but always able to restart it! So over all, we like it!

 

Unpacking is going slowly. Amazingly we can’t just unpack from morning till night, the kids still want to be fed and taken care of! However, the kitchen is nearly up and running and yesterday we found all the matchbox cars and tracks (thanks Michael and Matthew!)

Although English is spoken here, the Basotho people’s first language is Sesotho. Joey will benefit from knowing it when flying and it will help me as speaking the heart language of your neighbors is always a good thing relationally. Language tutoring started Monday. My head is already full. Pray for us!

 

Domino's actually does exist here!

The girls have spent hours swinging and both now have become proficient at pumping!

 

We are all over jetlag now. Even Eleanor is sleeping a good 6-7 hour stretch at night.

We've come down with a cold. Levi gave me a scare yesterday when he threw up, till he explained by laughing, shoving his whole hand in his mouth, and laughing at the gagging sound. Is this what they meant when they said raising a boy will be different?