Today I was checking my mail before school started, when another teacher sidled into the lab and began hovering around me. If he had papers, he would have been shuffling them. After a minute or so of being ignored, he leaned in close and whispered to me, approximately, this: “I am busy. Can you do P.E. by yourself today?” After a long pause, during which I opened another e-mail, I said: “Ok. Do you have anything planned today?” No, shockingly, he did not. I said sure, and minimized my mail so that it could not be read. Ten minutes later I was outside sipping a cup of coffee, and watching the kids play an international version of capture the flag. About halfway through the game, one of the girls got her foot caught in netting of a soccer goal (the students use them as prisons), and stood hopping on one foot, struggling to get it out. A little fifth grade student saw the plight, and ran over to help, just as the caught girl fell over, pulling the back posts of the metal soccer goal out of the ground. The whole thing started to fall forward just as the little fifth grader arrived, and the top bar came down right on the bridge of her nose, pushing her little glasses sort of up into her face and knocking her down, and of course completely bowling the older student over, and trapping her in the net. I had to laugh, it was so comical to watch. My reaction time isn’t so quick in the morning either, and I was kind of hoping the fifth grader on her knees with her face in her hands was covering her embarrassingly loud peals of laughter. The other students swarmed over like concerned ants, righting the soccer goal and gathering around their downed comrades. “Ok, ok,” I said as I made my way over. I told them to get back to their game, and pulled the older girl’s leg (she was still struggling like a caught fish) out. Then I took the little fifth grader up to the office, put some ice on her face, and got her a drink of water. Twenty minutes later, I saw her gingerly making her way down the fire escape. Very funny. Other news, our apartment flooded for the third time this week, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal. We soaked it up with towels, shoveled it with dust pans, and poured it down our stairwell in big plastic buckets. It was because our water-heater had broke in the night, so we got a new one installed on Tuesday, courtesy of our landlord.
Here are the pictures- for once, I have delivered. The top photo is obviously Angela, with her multi-cultural classroom. They are in the process of show and tell.

This is Angela on her October 19th, celebrating her big 2-4, with a big Jean Philleas. (I think that's how it's spelled.) We were at Tivoli's, a place we really enjoy.

This is a photo from a time we were trying to drive to a beach that was suppose to be incredible, called Santa Clara. The roads outside of Libreville are awful, and if it wasn't for the giant four wheel drive Mercedes SUV we were in, we would have gotten stuck like everyone else we passed. You can see me in the side mirror, considering what road we should take. (We choose wrong, and never ended up making it to Santa Clara, although we did come upon some French Military running excercises in the Jungle.)

Me at a different beach we ended up at.


Angela and I at Vicki's, a CMA Missionary here.

Finally- would you want this guy making your pizza? I think not.