Day 2397. It was after 2 am before I went to bed last night. This morning, Sammy was up before 6 am and Emmy just after him. Then the alarm went off at 6:15 am as usual; I had forgotten to turn it off. I couldn't believe they had gotten up even before that time. Tammy was still asleep but the boys soon woke her up. And they all kept waking me up which was really annoying. I had my alarm set for 10:30 am but the kids were so loud that they kept waking me up every few minutes. All my shouting to them to be quiet made no difference whatsoever. At 10:30 am I got up and got ready to teach at 11 am. While I was preparing, Tammy came to me with a page in her maths book where she needed some help. They had both already completed many of the pages they needed to get done in their books.
Once I was done teaching at 11 am, I ordered a pizza for us to eat. I hadn't eaten anything so I was getting pretty hungry. By about noon it was arriving, and we sat down in the kitchen to eat. It was really good and just the right amount of food for us.
Just after 1:30 pm we left the apartment, got into the car and started our drive to our friends' house in the countryside. We see them every year when we come to this conference but they had moved and we had never seen their new house. It was great to see my friend again who has come to Mali more often than any other visitor. Now she has two sons. Her sons and our kids went to the trampolin right away, later Emmy spent a lot of time playing soccer with the older boy who is also passionate about soccer.
After a few minutes another friend arrived with her daughter, and Tammy started playing with her. They were inseparable. We adults sat down at the table to talk. Then we had cake and coffee and all the kids joined us briefly for that.
Our friend had to leave with her daughter at 4 pm because she had a choir performance, and she invited Tammy to come as well to watch her sing. She jumped at the opportunity and went with them. By 5:15 pm they were back.
They had a cat and went looking for it. Sammy was very excited to get to pet it. After a while it left, but Sammy kept asking for it. Later it came back, and Sammy was all excited to get to pet it again - so was Tammy as she returned when Sammy was petting it. And Sammy also had a great time jumping on the trampoline.
At 5:30 pm we all sat down at the table to have some bread with ham or cheese as this was the only dinner our kids would have. Then we had to say our good-byes and left just after 6 pm to drive to the conference.
It was a 22-minute drive through the countryside. Once again Tammy said she was nauseous, and she thought she was going to vomit. I gave her a little paper bag in case she'd really have to vomit and then she actually did. Unfortunately the paper bag was leaking so we stopped to throw it out. She then felt much better.
By 6:40 pm we arrived at the church and got a handicapped parking spot right up front which was nice. We unloaded, went inside, registered and went into the sanctuary to find our table to set up on. I think we were the last ones to arrive, all the other tables were already set up. Randy then brought in the stuff we needed, and together we started stetting up. Time was going by fast, and once we were done, it was already time to take them to the kids' program. The first meeting was starting at 7:30 pm.
They were the first ones in the kids' room, and I registered them. Sammy was holding Daddy's hand and wanted him to stay with him so he did. I returned to the sanctuary and had a good conversation with a lady by our table. Then the meeting started, and I sat down by our table and closed my eyes. The tiredness soon hit me pretty hard. After worship and some other stuff, the speaker came up, and it was very interesting to listen to him.
By 9:30 pm I thought it was time for us to leave as it was already very late for the kids. I went to the children's room to get Randy and the kids, and we went to the car to drive the 5 minutes back to our Airbnb. Back there they put their pj's on and went straight to bed. It was already after 10 pm so they fell asleep quickly. And now it's after 1 am, and I'm the last one up and also need to go to bed soon.
