More veggies and EGGS!

 Tonight we enjoyed fresh lettuce from the garden on our tacos.

 And now we are getting two eggs a day.  It's very interesting to see how different the sizes are.  At first they were almost all small and I was wondering how I was going to use them in baking since recipes usually call for large eggs.  But over time our girls have started giving us a variety of sizes.  

Happenings at HIS

Here is Abigail on the first day with her new iPad.  It is part of a trial program at HIS and all of the middle school students received them!  The kids have had fun with them and I think they are getting the chance to use them quite a bit in their studies.  For example, their math text is now on their iPad!  For science they wrote a "book" on their iPads - Abigail's was on typhoid.

The other "exciting" news at the school was the lack of TEP's - temporary employment permits.  Apparently this was an issue last year as well.  It caused a bit of commotion at the school as some teachers had to leave the country (two of them were parents of 3 HS/MS kids and the whole family had to leave).  It is not totally resolved yet, but most of the critical HS teachers (for the IB program) were able to return after a week in South Africa when their TEP's were finally approved.

Thankful for our gardener

 John and Arianna are eating the first eggs from our hens.  I meant to take a picture of the eggs before we used them, but when I hadn't, Abigail got out her iPad and took this one at lunch.

These are the first few beans.  I posted this already on Facebook, so sorry if it's redundant.  We should have a large crop - hopefully enough in time for Thanksgiving Dinner!

UN day at HIS

Last month we had the pleasure of experiencing our first UN day at HIS.  This annual event celebrates the diversity of the school.  HIS is an International Baccalaureate school and the IB program has close ties to the UN.  At HIS, there was an assembly which concluded with the flag ceremony where the students walked in (two countries at a time) and then gave the typical greeting (or greetings) that you would hear in that country.  The assembly ended with the Zimbabwean national anthem.  This was then followed by a food festival with tables from the many countries that are represented at the school.  

Some of the orchestra students getting ready.  Arianna and Abigail are playing in the newly formed HIS orchestra.

One of the many food tables.  It looks like it's Europe.

This must be India or somewhere in that region.

Since there isn't much in the way of American "dress" many of the Americans painted their faces.

The kids from other parts of the world were much more interesting to see!

The flags lining up at the back.

The rest of the post is part of the flag parade.  I was going to do more photos, but had a hard time loading them.  Since the event was almost a month ago, I'm giving up and posting what I have.  I'm guessing it's more than enough anyway.  But I wanted you to see the diversity of the parade.  It was quite impressive and brought tears to my eyes.  It's kind of fun that Zimbabwe is at the end of the alphabet.  The cheers that came from that moment were great!  I may try to post a short video on another entry, but this will have to do for now - some photos in alphabetical order:

Arianna's Spanish teacher (Argentina) encouraging the girl from Angola who went first!

?  Something between Argentina and Denmark, presumably in Africa.  Any guesses?  

Denmark

Eritrea??

Big guy from Ethiopia

Small girl from France.

The Gambia

Pretty outfit from Ghana.

Light blue from Greece.

India??

Ireland.

Isreal.

Jamaica (her dad is Jamaican and her mom works at US-AID).

Japan

Mexico

Netherlands (though her mom is a Tica - from Costa Rica!)

Nigeria

Kind of looks like Norway, but the flag doesn't....

Peru

Senegal

South Africa - I think the boy has the Rugby shirt on, but I'm not sure.

Sweden with Switzerland in the background (her dad is Zim and she is taking violin lessons with me).

Bananas from one of our trees.

Our first crop of bananas.

Did you know that you cut the tree down after it produces the fruit?  And then another one springs up to produce another bunch.  John also told me last night that growing bananas here can be a fairly lucrative crop.  He is doing a lot of work in agriculture and through his work I have become much more interested in agriculture.

Besides banana trees we have a mango tree, a papaya (or paw paw as it is called here), several citrus trees (not sure exactly what yet) and some other fruit tree.  We have planted a Hass Avocado which will hopefully bear fruit while we are still here.  

Our vegetable garden is coming along nicely and we have a large crop of spinach and basil so far!  We will have quite a lot of other vegetables in the not too distant future.

Our chickens!

Soon after we arrived in Zimbabwe, we met a family that had chickens and a whole multitude of animals.  I decided that having fresh eggs and some animals on the property would be something that would probably only happen while living in Africa.  So my loving husband obliged my fancy and we found someone to build us a coop out of shipping crates.

Here's the side of the coop with a close-up of our name!!

We had to order the chickens and I went and picked them up about 10 days ago.  We ordered "point of lay" hens, which means that they should start laying eggs soon!

Abigail visiting the chickens.

 We took some photos so we could inspire those who want to contribute to naming the chickens.

And a short video in case you want to see them in action: