Sweaty and Happy :-)

So far we are loving Bissau. It's pretty much the hotest time of the year, so we're sweating, a LOT! But we're drinking a lot of water, so it's like our own sauna. I have a few more photos from the past few weeks that I thought my be interesting:

This is Jason picking out his sweet new running shoes right before we left for Africa. If you are asking yourself, "do those shoes have toes???" The answer is yes, yes they do. So far he LOVES them.
Here's Sydney chillin' with all of our carry-on luggage in Detroit.

A very pregnant goat eating some trash in Dakar

Eating lunch with friends in a little restaurant by the ocean in Dakar.

This is the boat we took from Dakar (in the north of Senegal) to Ziguinchor (in the south of Senegal). It was really nice, but the people we shared the cabin with were interesting... I don't really understand drunk people...

Some new friends we made on the 14 hour boat ride. We sat at the same table for dinner and the girls were just too cute! He's German and she's Senegalese. They have their hands full with two 17 month-olds!

Jason and I preparing breakfast for everyone (the three families that make up our team) on Saturday morning. We sent over dried blueberries and real maple syrup, so we had some amazing pancakes and Jason made some killer breakfast potatoes (his speciality).

Our new favorite place in the whole world! Right outside of the guest house where we live in Bissau they built this lovely little cabana. It is shady, breezy, and heavenly! You can see our little dog, Sydney running towards me as I'm taking this picture. She growing so fast!

Feelings

Right now I am sitting in the middle of a huge pile of stuff trying to organize it, but tears keep clouding my eyes – not in the way you think. I am so overwhelmed by how blessed we are! We arrived in Guinea-Bissau on Sunday afternoon and since then we’ve been eating, talking, reuniting, and gathering all of our stuff – from last time and from the container that our team sent over last May. My main goal today was to unpack all of those boxes and make a list of what we need to go buy downtown, but each time I open a box I’ve just been blown away! I found vitamins and nice conditioner for my hair, good pens and Ziploc bags, parmesan cheese and dried fruit, our plastic plates and some knives that actually cut things, an oven thermometer and some screens to get the bugs out of our flour, my very favorite books and a bag of potpourri to make our house smell nice, and the list goes on and on.

This trip to Guinea-Bissau feels different because it is different. We aren’t volunteers coming for 8 months, we’re full time staff moving here for four years. We really are making our home here and that’s good and hard and exciting and just different. Jason and I have been so blessed and we have always had everything that we need, and it’s just so fun to feel like we have some things that are ours as we settle in. So many of you have prayed for our stuff to make it safely over, have given generously to us and our work, and have been part of the whole journey with us and I want to say thank you. From the bottom of my truly grateful heart, thank you for letting God’s love for us spill out through you. Wow, ok I have to turn off the waterworks before I dehydrate myself - hehehehe

Last update before we leave for Bissau

The last two times we've been in Dakar were disasters, but this time has been really really nice. It's different than Guinea-Bissau - the Muslim calls to prayer are a lot louder, it's more crowded, and it's a lot dirtier (we are staying in the industrial district, so that could have something to do with it). Some things are the same - it's hot, the air is humid and salty, and for lunch we ate mangoes, fish, and rice.

I took a few more pictures so you can get a little feel for a small part of the capital of Senegal

Sucking on the pit of my first African Mango in a while :-)

Jason about to dig in to some African rice and fish. All that for $.80 - Amazing.

The kids at the guest house LOVE Sydney and they have been tiring her out!

Sydney chillin' with her belly on the cool tile.

We are in Dakar!

We are in Dakar!!!!! I'm a little tired, so here are the bullet points:

Flight to Atlanta was great. Sydney hardly even moved.

At the Atlanta airport Sydney ran around in the family bathroom, ate, and got generally worn out.

Flight to Dakar was perfect for Sydney. No crying from her and whenever we took her to the bathroom she peed on the diapers :-) However there were three babies in our same row as us and there wasn't more than 20 minutes of the 10 hours where one of them wasn't screaming, so we didn't sleep much.

When we arrived at the airport in Dakar we ran into an American pastor that we know who works in Senegal. He helped us with our bags and drove us to his hotel. We are here right now, chillin' by the pool and wrestling with Sydney on the grass to her heart's content. It's about 6:30 in the morning and in an hour or so we are going to get a taxi to the missionary guest house where we are staying and then do some serious sleeping.

Thank you so much for your prayers. We got all of our bags, no one said anything about Sydney at customs, and the flights were smooth. It smells like the Africa I know - ocean salt, fish, humid... It's nice. We can't wait to get to Bissau!

I took a few pictures:

Here's Jase playing with Sydney in the grass right now.

This is the view of the ocean from the hotel balcony. Beautiful!