Wow! I Am Bad At Blogging!

Hello friends and family! If you are reading this, I am sure you are already aware that I have decided to extend my Peace Corps service a few months longer. Many of my good friends with whom I came to Swaziland have already gone home, and over the next few weeks, all but three will be gone. It has been rough saying goodbye to all of my friends - my core, my support, and my family from the past two years, but I am excited to see what everyone does now, which direction people take their lives after their experiences here.
I am going to stay here until mad/late November. I chose to stay to finish programming a couple preschools (I rewrote curricula and make new material to match different themes every week), and to get my little buddy, Jaden, the love of my life, through grade 1 in his new school where I send him. Of course, as it goes, everything has changed since I made the decision to stay. One of the preschools will be closed in December, and Jaden will no longer get to go to his new school after next week. The children's home is sending all of the children age 1-6 to another home we have at the bottom of the mountain and bringing all of our high school students back from that home to where I stay on top of the mountain. So, now, my extra months will be spent transitioning Jaden to home schooling (a guy is going to come and teach the few kids that were at the private school, including Jaden, at home so they don't have to travel to Piggs Peak every day) and setting up new programs for the high school kids who will be moving up next month. It will be tons of work, and now I am scrambling to get all of the programming done for one preschool before I have to stop going there (it is at the private school where Jaden goes, so I won't have a way to get there any more if the kids are not going to school in an orphanage vehicle every day).
On a day-to-day scale, things are going well. Yesterday Rachel, my roommate, and I took the grade 1, 2, and 4 kids (all of the other kids are still taking exams, so we just took the ones who were finished to allow the others a nice, quiet place to study) on a nice hike with a bag of books. We sat on a large rock (we call it "Coffee Rock") overlooking Maguga Dam while I read almost a dozen books to about 20 kids all cuddled and crowded around. It was a really nice afternoon.
Other events: This past weekend we had "Moo Poo Day" at Jaden's primary school. It was a fundraising event to raise money for a new printer/copier. We had a parade from town, and I got to be the "Grand Marshal". I lead our cheer all the way through Piggs Peak  ("We are Hlanganani School!" *We are Hlanganani School!*  "We are smart, and we are cool!" *We are smart, and we are cool!* "Sound off!" *1, 2* "Sound off!" *3, 4* "Sound off!" *1, 2, 3, 4! YEAH!*), and needless to say, my throat still kills from the hour of shouting. We ended the march at school where kids and parents had set up booths to sell food, crafts, etc in a little market. I set up some games for kids to play (ring toss, soda walk, etc) and actually made a couple hundred Emalangeni for the school off of the games! During all of this, of course, was the "Moo Poo" event. We had the sports field divided up into marked squares, and people bought raffle tickets which coordinated with each square. We let a cow loose on the field, and in whichever square the cow took its first poo was the number of the winning ticket holder. It was a fun day. Next week I will be going to Durban to purchase Jaden's home schooling materials with a couple women from the orphanage. I might go record a guy this weekend who performs at a backpackers a few miles from Maguga to make him a  promotional CD. GLOW Club has been going absolutely awesome! Simphiwe, a teacher at the primary school who grew up (and still lives in a room) at the orphanage, has been coming and slowly leading more and more GLOW lessons. The girls love learning from a native siSwati speaker. And finally, after almost a year of fearing the head teacher and his threats to kids who interact with me, girls from the community have started coming! It was just orphanage girls for the last 10 months, but now, we have almost a dozen other girls who come every week! It is pretty great.
Well, there is my random list of things in no particular order. Just little did-bits of this and that to give you a picture of what my life has been lately!
I hope everyone is well, and I hope I get my butt in gear and put a few more posts on here before I see you again!!!
Do Good! Be Happy!!!

My friend, Stevie, (college housemate) came to visit with her dad, Bob, and her friend, Sarah earlier this year..

Stevie was absolutely AMAZING and brought me to Zimbabwe where we had the time of our lives at Victoria Falls!

I spent New Years in Tofo, Mozambique with a big group of Peace Corps buddies. This is Janna, Piers and I living it up on the beaches of Tofo - SO beautiful!

This is me at Victoria Falls.
This picture is about 1% of the falls. Don't judge its size by what you see here.