Yes, those are chickens in a dog crate. A neighbor's chickens keep roaming into my friends' yard, so they decided to hold them captive for a day to better communicate their displeasure.
Tim and I just finished teaching a 3-week stint of the high school Bible class (whose theme this year is relationships and marriage), talking about differences between men and women and then comparing values portrayed in the media with values found in the Bible. They're a good group of kids, and I'll be back in their classroom soon to teach Till We Have Faces for their literature class.
I'm enjoying teaching elementary Spanish so much! Part of it is that I only have 5 kiddos and plenty of time for planning and preparation. It's also super fun to teach a foreign language when the kids have so many opportunities to practice and are learning bits and pieces outside of class, too. Here they are labeling the parts of a face I drew on the board.
We're in the process of installing an air conditioner in our bedroom. It involves knocking a hole in the brick wall. I'll be interested to see how much that changes things around here. All the other missionaries we know have one air-conditioned room (the "cool room") in their house that they can retreat to as necessary. Looks like I won't be taking any more naps on the concrete floor at least!
Yesterday I didn't have lunch ready in time before we had to go teach our classes, so I threw together a mango-black bean salad to tide us over with some protein. It turned out to be, in Tim's words, one of the best salads we've ever had. Freshly cooked and slightly salted black beans, a perfectly ripe mango at the height of mango season, an olive oil/ lemon juice dressing, and pepper. Deeelish. Definitely going to repeat it before all the mangoes are gone for the season.
And last of all, I remember now that I forgot to iodine-wash the spinach I put in another salad I ate yesterday. I usually eat spinach cooked, so it's not a big deal, but clearly some developing-world bacteria made its way into my diet. My stomach has been in revolt all morning. Hopefully I'll be better by the end of the day.
