Ben's!!

Mandatory and much-anticipated stop!!

The Little Princess

One of Jaffa's Hannukah presents was a trip to the Shakespeare theatre (with all of us!) to see the musical The Little Princess. We had great seats, and it was a terrific show!

And then, there was 

the photo booth..

oh my!

Blu almost froze

Blu is a tropical dog, and his favorite thing to do is to lie in the sun and cook his body. He was quite surprised when he got to the US and it was soooo cold. He'd never felt anything like that, and kept trying to shake it off. We bought him a coat (thanks Mem!) and a parka and some pjs.. and boots. Still, I think he lost a few pounds just from shivering. He spent most of the time trying to find warm places and people to snuggle with.. 

Made it to Memere's house!

After 6 hours to Addis and 12 more to Dulles, we finally arrived at Memere's house!

We all got comfy, and Blu found a snuggle partner..

...and of course, there was the basement full of toys!

Some jetlag...

...and chilly weather and holiday decorations!

Getting ready for the holidays

It still seems funny to be getting ready for the winter holidays in the tropics--and we still have that weird thing about figuring out what to do about a Christmas tree/Hanukkah bush.. but we decorate anyway, and Blu kinda got in the way.

And we had the Holiday show at school which went through holidays all over the world. It was cute, and now we know that Eben can sing in Japanese and Jaffa knows the story of Holi (Hindi festival of lights)!

Headed to the US

Our first evacuation in October was a strange experience, and then came the anticipation in the months before the last day of Kabila's last term (December 19).. but the Governor of Kinshasa had banned demonstrations so things stayed relatively quiet. A good thing, and a bad thing. Nevertheless, we were told that we had to be out of Kin by December 14th, and so we packed up the house and put Blu in his crate and headed back to the US for the holidays. In booking Blu's ticket, I made friends with Mr Asnake at Ethiopian Airlines, who helped us once we got to the airport with Blu AND put us on the fancy bus from the terminal to the plane. It was a super fancy 3 minutes and a great start to our trip!

Flowers in Zeric's garden

One of the fantastic things about DRC is how fast things grow, and how many different kinds of plants there are! Zeric and Maker have so many beautiful flowers in our garden (and banana trees and papaya trees, and all kinds of other things too!).

This one is the one from the tree that we planted for Mercy on top of her grave. It's beautiful just like her, and it smells very sweet <3