New School...New Language

Last fall, Keira started school at a local school.  As time went on, we realized that she wasn’t getting what she needed to keep up with her age mates in America.  

After much prayer, we decided to transfer her to the French school. 

The instruction is completely in French, but after three and a half months, Keira came home excited that she had spoken in French to the librarian.  She is understanding a lot, and she is speaking more and more.  Her teacher is impressed at how quickly she is picking it up.

I use Google translate a lot to help with dictation homework and reading,

and thankfully, Kylie is taking French and can help where I fall short. 

I did; however, discover during one homework session, that my grandmother’s name is a French word for a flower. 

Many of the girls she takes ballet with go there.  

Last year on Halloween, I took this picture, and I'm posting it today because Keira is out of school for a short fall break, so she didn't get to dress up this year.

She wants you to know that she would have been Ariel, though.

Keira really wants me to learn French with her.  A year into it, and she's communicating pretty well, but I told her I have to learn the local language first. 

One language at a time!

People without a Home

 Last fall I visited one of the many refugee camps that are outside the city.  Some of my friends work with an NGO that services the disabled in camps around our city. 

We drove through a small village to get there that had been bombed by forces battling ISIS a few years ago.

Some of the people in the camp told us they can see their home from their tent, but they are not allowed to go there. 

They are not allowed out of the camp without special permission.

We were there on a cold, wet day, and all I could think about was the upcoming winter weather.  Tent walls are thin and the ground is cold.

Portable potties and washing areas are provided for each section of the camp. 

We visited on a day when food distribution was taking place.  Lines formed at the front of the camp and family by family had a wheelbarrow take their goods to their tent. 

We met an old couple who were not allowed to get anything from the distribution.  A tent had to have at least 5 people in it to get anything, so this couple had to borrow and share with other family tents around them.

The tents behind this man are the make-shift school at the camp.  But teaching only happens sometimes, and when it does, the quality is just how you would imagine it would be.

I went in one tent that was nice because the family had been able to bring some things with them.

But most of the ones I entered, weren't so nice.  

One lady was outside in the cold baking bread in an "oven."

She shared with us!

 One lady pointed us in the direction where other disabled people lived.

 This boy enjoyed the only playground he has access to.

 Two months after this, when I was in a freezing house with no power, one working toilet, and no working showers, I knew I STILL had it better than all of these people. 

Every time it rained, I thought of the cold, wet nights they would have in their tents with cracks and holes.  The camp had been around for so long, that funding for it had started to dry up.  Distribution wouldn't be coming as often and tents would not be repaired.  There were more to take care of in other places.

I know of one camp with 30,000 people and one with 60,000.  It is hard to imagine the size of these places and how many people are squeezed into such a small area unless you are seeing it with your own eyes.

As we left the camp, I looked across the road, and I saw another camp in the distance.  I don't know if you can see how big it is, but all I know is there are thousands of people there that they have nothing.

Be Thankful!!!

Fixer Upper...For Sure

Ready to pack?

Here we go...

When we agreed to rent this new place, the first thing we did was get some of the obvious broken things fixed. 

Funny enough, at the same time, the house we were living in had a little mishap.

With all the rain we had last fall, the ceiling could never really get dry and the layer of plaster over the cinderblock crashed down one day from the third story all the way down to the first floor.  It would have seriously injured someone if they had been below that destruction.

We filled up the trash
outside with all of the debris.

The roof where it fell from

In the new rental, Doug had a half-wall in the kitchen torn down, and the landlord agreed to re-tile Keira’s room where the tile was buckling.  We also hired a painter because there had been a lot of smoking in the house over the years and some of the rooms were interesting colors. 

Where the half-wall used to be

Because all the tile was buckling in Keira's
room, workers tore it out and re-tiled.

Of course, this new tile is different from
any other tile in the house,
but that's sort of normal here.

This is what some of the buckling tile looked like.  This is one of our balconies.
We won't be using it because the protection wall is so short, so we are just
letting the tile "be."

After that, we had the house cleaned from top to bottom (there was a dead bird in this one, too – and a nest built into the wall of the kitchen).  The owners also left a lot of items in the house and pictures on the wall.

As we slowly started moving to the new house, we also had to go pick out material for a new kitchen sink to be built.  The legs were rotting off the kitchen sink that was left in the house. 

New counter-top material

Plastic laminate that will cover the outside of the sink cabinets.

Doug and I took several trips in the car, taking suitcases and boxes full of items, unpacking them against walls in the new house, and then returning to the house with empty suitcases and boxes to pack them again.

Sheets and towels sitting on top of plastic on the floor.

A load ready to be put in the car

No boxes.  Just lots of things laid on top of plastic.

After three weeks over Christmas, moving items when we could, we finally were ready for real movers to come and load our couches, beds, wardrobes, refrigerator, oven, washer, dryer, and water tanks.

Fridge and stove covered

Our bed and wardrobe dismantled to move.

Of course, it was a rainy, dreary day, but we had already booked a lot of people to help, so the show must go on.

A crane was used to remove our water tanks and swamp coolers off the roof.

Doug unhooking pipes and getting soaked and cold.

Then a truck drove all of it to the new rental, and the process started all over again to get it on top of that roof.

The movers' shoes at our new house

I think it's interesting they kept this one piece of furniture together when they had taken apart all the others.

The movers put all of our beds and wardrobes back together within a few hours, and we were able to spend our first night in the house.

THEN...we found out that only one toilet worked, but NO showers worked.  And the three heaters that the owner said worked, did NOT in fact work when the electricity was finally turned on.

It would be another week before we could take a shower in the house and a little bit longer before we got warm.

The problems continued to show themselves as the days went on, but I think we would all say that even though we were cold and dirty for that first week, we are all glad that we made the move.

In Search of a New Home

We spent 8 months last year looking for a new house to rent.  The "pickins" were slim, so we just had to wait for different ones to come available to see. 

One we looked at had formally been used as a school, and Keira was sure if we rented it, we could keep the paintings.

 

Also, all the houses in the city are not on one computer system.  A renter has to drive to a neighborhood they are interested in, find a realtor in that area, and then tell him what you are looking for.  He calls when he has something available (if he remembers).

We actually went to one realtor in an apartment building one day, and he drove us to some houses he knew of, but they were pretty far away from where we were originally looking.

Some were very modern looking, but their location made them a “no” for us.

I am sad to say that I did not photograph the “absolute NO’s,” because either I was so horrified or I never saw it in person.  Doug was so amazing to go and vet so many of them before I ever went. 

One had three dead birds on the front porch.  One had two dead birds on the inside.  Three of them had been vacant so long and birds had continually pooped on the porches, that when Doug walked inside, the dried excrement crunched under his shoes.  One house that all of us visited had an inch-thick blanket of excrement leading to the front door...and Kylie walked it in crutches. 

When you do find a house, the realtors give you about 24 hours to make a decision, mainly because the market is so slim, and someone else might want it.  It can be pretty high pressure.

There is no chance to do an inspection and figure out what works and what doesn’t, so you never know what you’re going to get.

We actually were given a week to think and to visit with our potentially new landlord, but of course, he was on the fence about whether his family would want to sell the house or rent it again.  It hadn’t been lived in for two years.

We finally came to an understanding at the end of November last year, he gave us the first month’s rent for free (December), and then the real work started.

 


These are two of the bathrooms in the house we chose.  Can you see that the shower head is not even over the bathtub, but over the floor?

Well, it least it has one Western toilet

Definitely a feature we would not have chosen :)

Many times the owner leaves things
that you just have to deal with

Well, we know the kitchen carpet will have to go, plus the small pink wall Kylie is leaning on,
but we have to make do with everything else.

You can't tell, but the sink stand is broken, so we will need to replace the counter and storage underneath,
and then figure out where to put his stove and some other cabinets he left behind.

We just thought FINDING a house was hard.  Now we had to make it LIVABLE.