off to school

First thing: right now we are hearing two very conflicting sounds. The first is the calls to prayer that happen around this time each day, the second is Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (sorry Mom, no Meredith in this version) coming from our neighbors house.

Back to the update. We have been here for about four days now and are starting to get the hang of living in our house. Quickly we have learned to not leave any food items out of Ziploc bags. The ants here are very alert to any changes in our cabinets. So far we have been able to prepare and clean up our own breakfasts. We are starting to learn our way around our neighborhood and a few nights ago went for our first walk. I consider it a success because we left our street and managed to find it again mostly on our own. At one point during this walk we had a small gang of seven year olds on bicycles following us around yelling all the English they knew and giggling. It's sort of fun to be the neighborhood freak show.

Yesterday was our first day of school and it felt a lot like the first day of kindergarten. We were picked up and driven to school, then walked in to meet our new teachers. After we met our teachers our supervisor told us to go with them and we were led off down the hall. During our three hours we learned the alphabet, our numbers (1-10) and how to point at classroom objects and name them. Like kindergarten our lesson involved singing, dancing and getting to take turns drawing on the board. Afterwards we had to wait outside the school for someone to come and show us how to get home. Overall it was a good experience and we are looking forward to going back tomorrow. Tonight we will be trying to learn our new vocabulary and maybe squeeze in a trip to the mall.

We have posted pictures of our new home. Go to www.rogerandcourtney.zenfolio.com and see!