Well, we're nearing the end of VBS and I'm glad for that. Today had its ups and downs -- lots of fighting but some moments of interest. Everyone loves working with the beads at craft time. After we had pizza on the lawn together with the adults today, they all wandered back over to keep working on their bead critters. We had to move over to our porch to plan tomorrow's lesson because the kids had overtaken George and Betsy's place.
Today we went next door to a craft market and had skirts and blouses made for both Betsy and myself. We both wanted/needed another skirt for Guinea and found out from Joyce how much we should bargain for them, so we went to give it a try. We both picked out fabric we liked and described what we wanted to the vendors and then we got hit with the price! It was twice what we expected to pay, so then we both walked away -- especially when the vendors refused to bargain. I was feeling kind of disappointed because I really had wanted a skirt, but then after several minutes, the lady I had worked with came back out and took my offer. So I went back and got measured by the tailor and then I told Betsy of my success. She tried to get the guy in her stall to go down on the price, but when he refused, she came over to my stall and got an outfit from the same woman. It ended up that we paid about $10-11 for a top and bottom made out of very light cotton batik fabric. Mine is deep navy blue and Betsy's is teal green. They should be ready by 2 p.m. tomorrow, so we'll see then how they turn out.
On our way out from the craft market, we saw a restaurant that we'd heard of from other people here, so Tony and I sat down there while Betsy and Mary went back to the hotel to get George. We had barely cracked open the menus, when they returned to say we were invited to go out with Dave and Joyce somewhere out on the town. So we jumped up and came back to change clothes and then we rode along to a Thai restaurant in nearby Kololi, another resort town. The food was excellent there! The rice was so much better than here in our restaurant. We also had enough to take home leftovers for tomorrow night. And best of all, George ended up paying for everyone using his VISA so we saved a little more cash. We're not running low like the others are, but we're trying to avoid changing any more into dalasis, which will be useless once we cross the border.
Now we're back, reading up on tomorrow's lesson. George and Betsy are writing up clues for a treasure hunt that we're doing tomorrow and I'm writing a skit for the talent show tomorrow night. We decided to have our entire cast made up of the team and not involve any of the kids, since we don't want some to feel left out. And I've tried to make the jokes fairly generic, so as not to offend any parents or make any kids feel like they're singled out. Hopefully it will all go over okay.
Clockwise from bottom: Jeshelle, Levi, Joel, Ben, Caleb, Micah making "bead critters."
Africa Journals 