Family Visit

We were finally feeling ready to have family come and visit for a day.  We've had neighbors stop by and say hello but we weren't sure how Louie was going to take having "strangers" around for a whole day.  Fortunatly there were no melt downs.  He loved having Tanner around and was very interactive with everyone.  A lot of times around other people he shuts down and just stands kind of staring off into space. 

It was great to be able to spend time with my family again and introduce them to Louie.

Lock up your donuts

How does it go?  "Lock up your donuts" or "Lock up your daughters."

Bus Stop

Holding hands on the way to the bus stops.

Bike riding

It is so much fun to introduce him to new things.  

Intervention

Boston's latest entry in his school journal:  I like Guns and Rosis(Roses)  He's drawn their guitarist Slash and the drum complete with cymbols has their name on it. 

Please somebody help me.

Welcome Home

This is the Welcome Home wall that Boston made and designed for us.

Egg Hunt

 

Easter egg hunting must be intuitive for all children because it did not take long for Louie to catch on to the idea.  He was right behind the bunny the whole time without even knowing what he was following or why.

First Jelly Beans!

This is one of Boston's best friends.  She loves to wrestle with him and chase him around.  They are a funny pair.

I reserved the right to sort through the candy and take out anything that I thought was delicious.  Boston did not like that idea.

Finally Home

Definitely one of the best moments of my life!

It took us 46 hours to travel from the hotel to home.  I was in desperate need of a shower and some sleep but so happy to see some of our family at the airport.  It was a quick hello before we hoped in the car for a long drive home.  The boys slept the whole way home so when we got home they wanted to play.  We let Boston show Louie around for a couple of minutes before putting them in bed and then finally sleeping.

Boston was an amazing big brother from the very begining.  They drive each other crazy but Boston always wants to hold Louie's hand on the way to the bus stop, hugs him good bye and runs to meet him as soon as he gets home.  He loves to show him new things and tries to teach him words.  He is mostly incredibly patient with him while Louie pokes him and tries his hardest to annoy him.  I am so proud of him!

Extra Time

While we waited for our exit letter we had a lot of time to relax in our room and play.  

He mostly played with this pretend remote control that makes noises and plays songs.  He was excited to hear London Bridges and sang it for us.  We found out what a good mimic he is when he quickly started repeating the Cuckoo sound like "Doe too!" and the train sound like "noo noo".

The first thing he did when we brought him to the hotel room was to take off his orphanage sandals and put the sandals we brought for him.  Then he found the socks and had a great time putting them on and off his arms and legs. 

We had lunch at a restaurant near the Congo River with our guide Francious, another adoptive mom Sara, and her adopted son Edward.  We walked down to the river to see the people cutting bricks from the rocks and get a better look at the fishing boats.

He found the pen and notebook and started drawing. Suprise!  He's left handed.

Of course, he loved playing on our phones.  Especially looking at pictures of Boston.

It's just like the movies.

Kinshasa is pretty much just like a typical third world country city that they show in the movies and everyone talks about.  They drive like madmen, people really do walk around with stuff on their heads, and the living conditions are so sad. 

We saw people carrying buckets of bread, eggs,  and pieces of cardboard with sunglasses hung from holes in them.  The pictures show people carrying plastics bags full of drinks.  Some times they were bottled drinks but mostly they were just individual bags of water.  They would rip the bags open with their teeth, drink the wter and throw the bag on the ground.

This is the art market.  On the right there were rows and rows of paintings and drawing.  The area on the left mostly had wooden carvings and jewelry. 

There were vans stuffed with people everywhere.  There were areas where the vans parked and waited until they were full of people.  Someone would stand out front to collect the money and they would call out things trying to get people on their van.  The women in this photo was headed toward a van, the man in red was trying to convince her to come to his van.  Finally he just grabbed her bag and started to walk to his van.  They had a tug of war and she started beating him on the head with her other bag.  There were so many interesting things to see while people watching.

Along all the roads there were little roadside shops.  You could buy almost anything.    There were places with mirrors hung on fences that you could get a hair cut.  Men doing tire repairs were set up in random places along the roads.  Even along the mostly deserted rural streets we saw little tiny markets along the roads as well as personal one like this that were selling homemade food, fruit, eggs, and lots of used items like these shoes.

The streets  are filled with trash.  You can tell it has been there a long time because most of it is smashed completely flat by all the traffic. In the downtown area we saw a lot of people out sweeping the dust up from the street in front of their stores but theydid not sweep up any of the garbage.  

This was the other common form of transportation.  The motorcycles would go right down the middle of the lanes or cross into empty oncoming traffic lanes for a second and then merge again when there were cars coming.  One time two motorcycles were coming towards us and it  seemed as if our driver kind of tried to squeeze them off the road.  Pretty soon the motorcycles chased us down and got in front of the van.  They started yelling at our driver, he was yelling back and soon there was a crowd gathering.  We thought they were mad we had almost run them off the road.  Our guide said that they claimed we splashed them with water.  We were a little nervous but our guide was laughing saying this happens all the time.  Apparently it does because we had a similar experience the next day.  

The suburbs are made out of home similar to these.  A lot of them are made up of whatever they can find to put together for some shelter.  All of them are very run down and in need of repair.  Once in a while you would come to a nice house in these areas that had a wall and barb wire around it with gaurds sitting out front.  

It was an amazing experience.  We are so grateful for our home and many blessings.

The hotel

The halls and common rooms were all open air.  I loved walking out from our room into the hot humid air.

Unfortunately our bathroom smelled like the sewer.  

The shower was cold and the water just trickled out of the head.  It was difficult to keep water from splashing all over the room without a shower curtain.

We only saw a few mosquitoes but always used the net at night.

This is where we had breakfast every day. They had toast, fresh fruit and some type of meat.  I loved eating the fresh fruit.  One day they had papaya and another day bananas.  Each day they had a different meat, hot dogs, what looked like baloney and eggs.  The meat I always skipped. 

Our view of the city.  There are a few tall buildings to the left but, most of the city is made up of buildings only a few stories tall. They only use bricks with no mortar for the buildings so it is dangerous for them to be very tall.  The city is full of half finished buildings. The wars have caused the economy to suffer so, the building money runs out before the they can be finished.

The only place that we could get wi-fi in the hotel.  Even here it only worked occasionally. I was desperately trying to post a photo on facebook.

We played ball in the grassy area behind the hotel.  It was so much fun to have Louie pick a ball at the store to buy.  He was very sad to leave it behind.

Orphanage

 We brought some suckers for Louie to share.

There are two "mannies" at the orphanage.  They each talked to Louie for a few minutes.  Then they talked to us.  Our guide translated for us.  They told us thank you for taking to have a better life, to keep them in our prayers, to teach him about where he came from, to send them updates and to not forget them and the children still there.

This nanny was doing the lunch dishes.

This is one of his best friends.  He is supposed to be coming home soon.  His other best friend went home with his adoptive family a couple of weeks ahead of Louie.

This is the "street" that the orphanage was on.  I hoped nobody wanted to get past while we were there.

Our ride back to the hotel.  We stopped at a store to buy water and the art market to look for some souvenirs.