Christmas in Mali

At Christmas time in Mali, the attendees of the CMA church make a special Christmas cloth and have clothes made for Christmas morning. We had the chance to have our own special Christmas clothes when we attended the 3 hour plus church service in which we only last about 2 hours with the kids.

Since we were going to Christmas morning service, we decided to postpone our Christmas day until the day after because we knew there was no way we could get all 9 of us to church in time and still celebrate Christmas. So that day was our "Christmas Eve" and thankfully none of our kids were old enough to pay attention to calendars yet :).

Sheri gave me the green light to buy matching pajamas for all the kids. They got to open them on Christmas Eve. Zachary and Dawson were not too excited for their first present to open to be clothes but they stayed positive. Shelby Grace and Silas really didn't know what was going on but Kenan knows how to make a gift giver feel wonderful. He was so excited about his pajamas. His excitement flowed into every present he opened the following day too not matter how big or small the present was.

I think they look pretty cute! What do you think?

After this point, our camera battery died so Sheri got all the Christmas morning pictures and I forgot to get them from her before we left. I guess you will get a Christmas post over the summer :).

You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man

My second project with the kids was to make a gingerbread house. I made the pieces one day and hot glued it together so it wouldn't fall down while the kids decorated it the following day.

The boys had a great decorating techniques.

Shelby Grace was the scavenger and picked up all the fallen candy and enjoyed eating it.

Didn't they do a beautiful job?

After they decorated the house, they each decorated a gingerbread man so they could eat it. Kenan kept telling me that he couldn't because it had salt in it but I assured him this one would taste much better.

Kenan really enjoyed the icing. He spent about 10 minutes just licking off the icing. We decided for his birthday that he really should just get a bowl of icing not a cake :).

With the left over icing, the girls got into a little icing fight. Shelby Grace wasn't really that thrilled but she had to be part of the family tradition.

Enjoying the Malian sun and dirt

O Christmas Tree!

One of the treats that I brought for my sister was a 6 ft artificial Christmas tree. It was a struggle getting it into a duffle bag but it made it here. We even brought lights for the tree since our plugs and voltage are the same (how weird). Once we set up the tree though, we had another task because she had no ornaments.

Aunt Jenny's first craft project was to make salt dough ornaments. Everyone got in on the fun.

Kenan helped me mix the dough and didn't believe me that we weren't making cookies. I kept telling him that it was salt and wouldn't taste good but he insisted on trying it. He finally agreed with me and for the next few days kept saying "can't eat it...it has sa-lt" (in his southern twang). When were started to cut out shapes with the cookie cutters, Silas was convinced he was supposed to eat it as well. Much to his surprise- it didn't taste that good.

Dawson decided that he wanted to spell Zachary's name so we ended up spelling all the kids names except for Shelby Grace- she just got an SG.

Our job the next day was to paint them. Sadly if you can see Dawson's name in the picture, his "W" is a 'v' because the nanny who didn't know what they were fed it to Silas thinking it was a cookie. Silas didn't enjoy it much then either.

Kenan liked to paint only with the color red.

After Aunt Jenny attached string to all of them, we got to decorate the tree. I think Silas still really wanted to eat them. :)

The finished project!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree!
How lovely are thy branches!

Mali or Bust!

After a 3 hour call van ride (which thanks to the new Incheon bridge is closer to 2 hours now), a 12 hour flight to Paris, 4 hour delay in Paris, 5 hour flight to Bamako, 1 hour through immigration, 1 hour at baggage claim with 1 lost bag, and then a 5 hour packed van ride to Koutiala, we finally made it to the MacLean house!

This is our last plane from the view of the bus that took us about 300 feet from the plane to the terminal building.

Do we look a little tired? Shelby Grace is not quite sure where we are.

Immigration and baggage claim in a third world country is quite and experience, ok so madness is more like it. It took us about an hour at each place but we made it though. We received 5 out of 6 bags which we were pretty excited about. Of course, it was the bag with all of Grandma's Christmas presents that were missing. Sheri and Brett met us outside and we got our first cultural experience of porters and street kids helping with bags. Sheri and Brett had switched cars and had no money and we hadn't changed our money into frans yet so one guy got paid $5.00 and one guy got paid 2,000 won.

We We arrived at the SIL guest house in Bamako at about 3:00 in the morning. We couldn't wait to see the boys but decided to try and sleep some.

Can you find Shelby Grace under the mosquito net?

Zachary has quickly become at home here in the perfect boy world- sticks, rocks, and lots of dirt.

We stopped half way through our 5 hour trip to Koutiala in a town on the Niger River called Segoo. This alligator was a resident of the restaurant where we ate.

Not the best picture but proof that we have all five kiddos together.
From left to right- Shelby Grace (1), Zachary (4), Dawson (4), Silas (1) and Kenan (almost 3).

Zachary and Dawson picked up right where they left off and have enjoyed every minute together. It was hard even trying to get them to sit still to get a picture together.

We finally arrived at the CMA Mission Protestante in Koutiala about 6:00 pm on Monday- about 46 hours after leaving our apartment in Korea. The kids quickly began playing with the dirt and rocks once again.

Shelby Grace has picked up soccer since we've been here.

The Malian sun has already changed me. 6 hours with my arm out the window gave me a nice farmer's sunburn.

Shelby Grace and Zachary have become friends very quickly with Jeremie and Mart, the MacLean's house help and nanny. It is great to feel at home here already and the culture shock hasn't been too bad. If you took away the dirt and added cement in it's place, things are pretty similar to Korea, it's kind of strange.

Stay tuned for more adventures of the MacLean and Pinho Christmas- we've only taken about 1,000 pictures in just a week. :)

Going to school with Dawson

The day after we arrived Dawson had a Christmas party at his school so Zachary and I thought we would join in on the fun and cultural experience. Dawson attends a Christian French school in town since he is not old enough to join the home schoolers at the mission yet.

All the kids at the school wear the same shirt. Zachary got to wear one too.

When we arrive, the to pre-K classes were outside getting ready for morning singing. Zachary was a little unsure as we arrived and didn't want to participate or even come in. It took him about 30 minutes or so but the he finally jumped in with a little guidance and direction from mommy. Here you can see him sitting way far away from everyone else.

After a lot of singing together, we headed inside to his classroom. There are about 24 kids in his 4 year old class. Dawson is the only white kid. The teacher was decorating the classroom for the party so the kids got to practice drawing circles and squares on their chalkboards.

It was soon time for a bathroom break and snack time. The bathrooms were far away in a another building- ok they were little rooms with a hole in the ground. For the little guys, peeing on the bushes next to the wall worked just as well. We came back and got to wash our hands. One bucket with soapy water and one for rinse water.

At snack/recess time, the kids could buy a little juice. It was unfiltered water in a plastic bag that had some flavoring in it and was frozen. You just sucked on the bag to drink the juice.

On a normal day, the kids would get to play in the play corners. From left to right- kitchen corner, doll corner, and reading corner.

Kitchen corner with mortar and pestal

Doll corner

The kids in Dawson's class enjoyed us being there. They loved getting their picture taken. The little girl in pink is Hannah- her mom is from England but her dad is from Mali. The closest kid to another foreigner at the school. Her dad works at the school.

It was finally time to party! We went back outside and we sang some more songs. The teachers then passed out candy, cake and juice and the party was over. Quite different from the expectations of an American party with games and crafts. The kids had fun though.

Zachary and I enjoyed going to see where Dawson goes to school each day. It is very different from what we are used to but serves the same purpose. It was fun to celebrate Christmas in another culture realizing that we are all celebrating the birth of the same Jesus Christ no matter what language.