Africa- Day 8

WARNING: I will be referring to our trip as a trip to Epiphany. Just know that Epiphany is in northern Africa. I will not be using our friends full names, just J, R, K, and G or the Gs for the family. I will turn on comment moderation for several months just to make sure we don't accidentally say something that we shouldn't say! Please feel free to leave comments, but I will approve them before they show on the site. If you have any questions about our trip that I can't answer publicly just let me know. We are happy to share details, just not in a way that could jeopardize our friend's new life in Epiphany. Thanks for understanding!

Day 8 was packed FULL of stuff, including packing (no pun intended of course). We decided to take back 2 of the 6 crates, leaving 4 for J & R's move into a new house.

First thing in the morning, after breakfast, R and I went downtown to the shopping market. I LOVE shopping in markets. I love to barter and look at all kinds of random things that I can't see anywhere else. I loved shopping markets in Mexico and had a great time shopping with R. We found lots of fun things and R did a great job bargaining with the store owners. Of course the owners will do just about anything to get you to come into their shop and I noticed a lot them saying, "Everything for nothing." Which was funny to me because they obviously do not know what they are saying in English! Amelia loves to repeat that phrase when I talk about a good deal I got on something. "Everything for nothing," she says in her sweet sing-song voice.

We picked up some more olive wood, several gifts, and my favorite item- matching soccer jerseys for Ian, Amelia and Emery. I sort of took over R's bargaining on this one- oops- and started punching numbers on the guys calculator until we settled on a price- don't mess with me when I'm getting gifts for my family :)

After the market we went to a covered food market. It was totally awesome! We walked in and it was fresh produce for as far as the eye can see. Strawberries everywhere. I told R I had a feeling heaven might look a little like that market for me because it was truly beautiful. Yes, you can think I'm weird. And the produce there tasted amazing. You can tell it's not mass produced. Carrots were really sweet and reminded me of the ones my dad and I grew growing up in Nebraska- yummy. Eating a piece of fruit was honestly like dessert. I don't have pictures of any of this because I didn't want to stick out and look like a weird tourist when we were without the boys (HA- like I didn't stick out anyway!)

After that R and I hightailed it home in a cab so J and Ian could go to church. J serves in a local church there helping them do set-up and sound stuff. This was Ian's favorite part of the whole trip. He said it was amazing to hear them singing songs to Jesus knowing that they could get in trouble if someone wanted to give them a hard time. For sure NO cameras in this setting- big no-no.

Then a final dinner and lots of chatter about what we did and how much we enjoyed being with the G family. Early to bed to get ready for our early flight out. Amelia had to say good-bye to K and G that night because they would still be sleeping in the morning when we left. She had grown very attached and it was hard for her to say good-bye. She is still talking about things K would like here. Very frequently she spots a cloud that looks like a volcano and says, "K would like that cloud because he loves volcanoes and it looks like a volcano." Such a sweet girl.