New house, new "job"

Well, we moved over the weekend and are fairly settled into the house except I haven’t organized the kitchen yet. It is a big job and I haven’t had a chance to tackle it yet. It’s a functioning kitchen just has too much stuff in it and I want to clear some stuff out and put in some of my stuff.

The new house is at least twice as big as the house we were just in and probably the biggest house we’ve ever lived in. It is way too big for the two of us but we will probably be hosting a few guests over the next couple of months. It is a very nice house as well – tile floors, large spacious rooms, decent furniture, nice front porch. But it has a few downsides: the kitchen is too small, the fridge is way too small, the house is situated sideways on the property so the “front of the house” and the porch faces the wall dividing the house from the neighbors. The kitchen is in the “back” and it looks out at the “Annex” – another building in the back with 3 more rooms plus a kitchen/laundry room; not a nice yard view like the other house. The living room and the bedroom we are using as an office face the yard and overlook the city but it’s not quite as good a view as the other house. We have a better view of the airport though. Can definitely watch the planes coming and going. We also have 3 pets now: a dog (no idea the breed but yellowish, short haired, medium sized and friendly), a cat (small gray tabby – reminds me of “Cindy” but much smaller), and an African gray parrot that talks all day long – mostly says “Hi mom”, “Gasuku” (it’s name which means parrot in Kinyarwanda) and lots of squeaks and whistles. It also sometimes says “No!” and something else I can’t remember but it is a very distinct Irish accent! The dad of the family we are house sitting for is Irish. They are all outside animals although all three have ventured inside at least once. The workers feed them and take care of them.

We have also started a new temporary job – we are the “transition team” at a school here in town. The school, Kigali International Community School (KICS), is a Christian school that several of the missionary kids go to. The short story is that they have had a very major upheaval and all the administrative staff and most of the teachers are leaving! They are interviewing a candidate for principal who is coming out next week to talk directly with the board before making his decision. But in the mean time, they asked Mark and I to spend time with the current principal to find out about the ins and outs of the school and then later we will pass the info on the to new guy, whoever he is. We were asked because: 1) the construction project is on hold for now and we didn’t have much to do 2) we have worked at schools in various capacities for many years 3) we are neutral and almost completely unknown to the school. So, starting Tuesday, we have been leaving by 7:30 am and learning about how to run a school! Up until now, we sometimes were still in bed at 7:00 and often didn’t get around to breakfast until 8:00. This has definitely changed our lives for a bit but we were probably getting a bit lazy.

We are still trying to have language lessons. Oh, and the new house comes with new workers. The inside worker, Musengimana, only speaks Kinyarwanda so that forces us to use what we are learning. She is extremely nice and patient with us. She helped the Finnerty’s learn the language so she knows what we are trying to do.

Because of all this, I need to close and go to bed. It is almost 11.

Good night!!