monkey-ing around

The past two days have been full of fun at the Brown house! Yesterday, we went with our new friends Rob & Amy to Friday Market to look around. It reminded me of the craft shows that my mom used to take us to - only with an African twist (read: hot and outside). :)

Let me tell you, these vendors are good. Not only were their crafts - jewelry, bags, dolls, rugs, carvings, drums, etc - top notch, but they were great salesmen too. As soon as we walked in, a boy put a toy in Ibra's hand while a woman put a doll in Suma's arms. Ten minutes later, we walked away with both. Note to self: next time, don't bring empty-handed children along. Even though we got taken in, we had a great time, and Andrew really enjoyed negotiating with the vendors. The kids were so excited to play with their toys, and they scarcely ate breakfast today because they wanted to play.

After the market, we joined our Aid Sudan friends for a Rain Festival that was hosted by one of the international schools nearby. It was like a fall festival, and each grade had a different theme: North Pole, rainforest, ocean, forest, etc. There were some really creative costumes! We enjoyed watching the costume parade and eating dinner with our friends. Below are some pictures of the kids playing outside. You'll see Ibra with our friend Blake. Blake is homeschooling the kids for one of the Aid Sudan families here, and our kids have loved getting to play with him. (Thank you, Blake, for loving on them so much!)

The kids were zonked after such an action-packed day, but oh wait, there's more....

One of the things that has made me laugh is that no matter what animal we see, they'll call it a monkey. They know the names for goat, cow, lion, elephant, dog and cat - but "monkey" is always the first thing to come out of their mouths. So when they heard that they were going to see monkeys with Rob & Amy - well! - they were so excited they could hardly stand it!

The zoo was such a fun experience. It was amazing how close we got to stand to some of the animals! We could have petted an ostrich, and the lions & hyena were really about 30 feet away (eep - do you know how big a hyena is? I hope I never run into one outside of a zoo!). We got to watch the zookeeper feed the chimps - which kept all of entertained for a long time- and the BEST part is that the little spider monkeys were all over the park. Yep - no cages for those guys, they were free-range all the way. 

The kids fell asleep in the car on the way home from dinner with our friends, the Livingstons. You know they're tired when Suma, who is usually very particular about having a bath before she goes to bed, didn't even fuss when we skipped the bath/pj thing and put her in bed.