MONKEEEEEEYS!!!1!!111!! :O

I was sitting there, in Sabbath School, staring out the window and not paying as much attention as I should have been, when suddenly I saw a monkey scurry accross the grass between the fence and a garden and start getting some of the fruit from the garden! I couldn't believe it. I even pointed it out to the guy sitting beside me who half-smiled at me and then showed very clearly that he was completely disinterested by turning back to the Sabbath School leader (who happened to be Dr. Christo). I continued to watch the monkey eat the fruit, fighting the urge to pull my camera out of my backpack, walk over to the window and start snapping pictures in the middle of Sabbath School. As I continued to watch, several other monkeys climbed over the wall (which actually has some nasty looking barbed wire at the top). There were probably 4 or 5 adult monkeys and 1 or 2 baby monkeys. One of the baby monkeys rode on its mothers back while she climbed down the wall (which looked rather difficult considering it was a stone wall). Then I watched as the other baby monkey leaped from the top of the wall and plummeted downwards. I thought at the time that it leaped all the way to the ground, but I lost sight of it behind some plants. I think now that it must have grabbed hold of one of the branches of the palm tree by the garden before it reached the ground. Whatever it did, it certainly looked quite comical. I couldn't believe that I got to see the monkeys so soon - I had been told that there were monkeys around, but I thought that they came by rarely. Hopefully I will get to take some pictures of them sometime. Apparently there is also some other interesting animal life in the area, including cobras. I kind of hope I get to see one, but at a safe distance of course. Another interesting note is that there are many bird calls that I have never heard before, but yet I have not seen any particularly interesting-looking birds. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

Before the adult Sabbath School where I saw the monkeys I told a story for kindergarten Sabbath School. It was pretty fun. I'll get a "manuscript" of the story up when I get a chance (I though it was pretty creative). The interesting thing about telling the story was that, before I actually got up to do it, the girl who had asked me to tell the story said, "When you get up there, make sure you talk nice and loud because you have a really heavy accent and they might have trouble understanding you otherwise." I guess I've just never thought about me having an accent before. When I thought about it a little more, though, I realized she had a very valid point. I am most definitely a minority here. I am one of three white people in a church whose membership is probably at least 300 (I've never been very good with crowd size estimations). Looking around and seeing that everyone looks very much different than me is a very good way to remind myself that I am not at home anymore :P It's actually kind of cool, I guess.

One thing that I don't think I have related in my blog yet is that there are scheduled power cuts here. Every day at noon, 8 p.m. and some other times that I don't remember, the power is shut down from the electricity provider. Fortunately, the school has generators which they fire up every time the power is cut (well, when it's scheduled to be cut anyway), but they usually take a couple of minutes before the electricity comes back on line so everyone will be without electricity for a couple of minutes. Last night at vespers, a group of ladies was right in the middle of one of the special musics when suddenly the lights went out and the power to the mics was cut. I found this quite comical and I'm glad it was pitch black because I was sitting there in the dark stifling laughter. Apparently the keyboard had battery power because the keyboardist kept on playing. Which brings me to another point which I find quite comical. You know those cheesy, synthesized drum beat/bass tracks that come on most keyboards? Well, they use those here - A LOT - for every special music I've heard, in fact (except for when our choir sang - we had the piano for accompaniment).

Well, that's all I can think that I wanted to relate in this post (except for the "manuscript" - I think I'll get that out tomorrow). I'm getting involved in some stuff which makes things more fun and everyone is still extremely friendly. I feel kind of bad because everyone knows my name and I don't know most people's names, but I guess that should change down the road.