The first week in March, the kids and I traveled to East Africa for a homeschool conference. I was a bit nervous flying with all of the kids and no husband. However, there was another mom who lives in my country traveling too and we decided that if we stuck together, we would likely be okay. As is typical with African travel, there were a few snags along the way. The first one came when we arrived at our local airport. Immediately, my friend was told that our plane had been downsized and we were being bumped off until the next day's flight. Refusing to take her word for it, I decided to be hard headed and I marched up to the counter determined to plead our case. I didn't get very far. I was told, "In the month when you bought your ticket, we were flying a bigger plane." Say what? I basically said something like, "Well, in the four months since we bought our tickets, someone should have contacted us with that information."
Anyway, we called our husbands and they came to pick us up. We all agreed that we weren't going to leave the airport until we had something in our hands that assured us a seat on the next night's flight. However, we got nowhere with getting that imaginary document. We waited and we waited and we waited. With 7 children, 2 husbands, and about 10 suitcases, we waited. Ryan followed one of the employees around like a puppy, certain that he had the power to do something for us. We were determined that we were getting to our conference ASAP. Finally, after about 2 hours of waiting, after we'd watched lots of people be accepted and lots of people go home with the promise of a seat the next night, Ryan called me up to the counter. Amazingly, they had decided to let us board the plane.
That's when the real fun began! With less than 30 minutes until take-off, we had boarding passes in hand. The problem was, we still had immigration and security to clear. Let's just say we pulled out our best African manners and went for it. The mom I was traveling with grew up in West Africa and she is so, so much better at pushing the rules than I am. She actually understands that rules here are very flexible. So, I stepped back and followed her lead. We marched past a gazillion people waiting in immigration and she began pleading our case to one of the immigration officers. I'm not sure if it would have worked if we hadn't had 2 six year old boys jumping up and down and saying, "Please, please sir, we really need to get on that plane." He tried hard to keep his stern face, but he finally couldn't resist and with a big laugh, he led us directly to an immigration window.
That dumped us into the longest security line we've ever seen at our airport. Again, my friend wiggled to the front and begged for mercy. Again we were waved through, this time with some really grumpy faces. We didn't care. We just put our shoes back on and took off running. We made it to the gate, but not a single passenger was left. We weren't sure they were going to let us on, but miraculously, they called a bus and drove us out to the plane. I think I literally heard the door shut behind us. You should have seen the smiles of some of the folks on the plane who were cheering us on and hoping we'd make it.
Our week away was good. I was exhausted when it was over. Keeping up with 5 kids at a conference center all week long is a bit tiresome. But, it was time well spent. I learned some things, I was reminded of some things, and I was challenged too. I'm glad we went.
Most of the kids did Iowa testing each morning and then they spent the afternoons with a variety of volunteers who taught them all sorts of enrichment type things. They did things like quilt square math and creative writing and insect investigations and such.
The week had a super hero theme and in preparation for our time there, the students were asked to choose a hero and do a project on them. They all had to have a costume and a prop to represent their hero. In addition, the four oldest wrote an essay about their person. Each night, kids of a certain age group shared about their hero to all of the other children and parents. The kids did a great job and it was nice that they had the challenge of preparing something to share. It's a healthy sort of stress that I am not able to provide them with very often in our current environment. I definitely have some who love the stage and others who would rather just write an essay.
Here are some pictures of our week.
Abe and his good friend, the two who won the hearts of the immigration officer. Abe chose to be Orville Wright.
Here we have Lottie Moon and Eric Liddel.
Here's Eric's medal
Lottie's sugar cookies (and no, they definitely were not edible!)
The two oldest chose Molly Pitcher and Irena Sendler
Here's a representation of Irena's jar of names, where she hid the names of all of the children she rescued out of the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII.
Finally, here's Molly's cannon. Made out of Sculpey clay that one of you likely mailed to us!
Here's Isaac on his 12th birthday, which happened while we were away. He made me promise not to tell everyone it was his birthday. However, the organizers had ordered a giant cake for all of those who had a birthday that week to share. The cake was brought out on Isaac's actual birthday, which was mid-week. At first, he thought I was behind it, but I pled innocence and he got cake, it worked out perfectly!
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