Happy St. Paddy's!

I'm back from Cultural Orientation now, and have spent the entirety of my monday morning trying to get online and then posting as much as I can. I will write one more blog very soon to wrap up the rest of my cultural orientation week and include some pictures (I have some short videos too, but I doubt I will be able to get them posted). I have also gone through every one of the 44 emails that were waiting for me, and intend to respond to you all, but please be patient as it will take me some time to do so.

In celebration of St. Paddy's JJR and I hosted a bbq yesterday for about 20 of our closest friends here in Lilongwe (read: everyone we know in Lilongwe). It was a lot of fun (especially since we could leave a lot of the dishes for Grant to do this morning!). I had Emmanuel, the gardener/security guard who works for us on the weekends climb up our lemon tree and throw me a whole bucket full of ripe lemons that we used to make lemonade and as take home gifts for all our friends.

As we were setting up, I took the opportunity to take some picutres of my house, since I have promised to post some but haven't yet. So here they are.

1) The Arntz-Grey-Quinn house


2) My room


3) The bathroom Regan and I share


4) Our super tiny kitchen


5) The back yard with our chicken coops


6) The back yard showing the service quarters were our staff do their cooking and use the toilet etc. Often the housekeeper would live there, but ours has somewhere else to stay (the chairs aren't ususally set up in the backyard, they were just there because we were preparing for the bbq)