The photo above shows a typical “cattle drive” that engulfed us for a while on a street near our house one day as we were going to school. Like being surrounded by a herd of cattle going the other direction, sometimes being in a new country with a new language can feel pretty overwhelming. However, we have about a zillion things to be thankful for, and I thought it was time to “take stock”. (Get it? cattle? stock?) Here’s a sampling from each of us:

• The Monkey: “Flowers.”
• The Engineer: “That I have such a nice school, and nice friends, and that it doesn’t get cold here.”
• The Dreamer: “For Bingham [Academy], because it is a really great environment, and for the other kids that I’ve met here. Oh, and the food – the food is really good. Except when it’s at school. But it’s better than the school food we had last year.”
• Mama Nomuula: “I’m thankful that we officially completed our first two terms of language school. I now know how to say ‘Sometimes my youngest child jumps around like a monkey,’ if I speak really slowly. I can’t yet say ‘Once in a while she makes me think I’m going to get turned into a monkey too,’ or at least not with all the right suffixes, but I’m sure it will come :-).“
• Mr. Rikshaw: “I’m thankful that I’ve been able to stay connected with our Sandbox colleagues and continue to help them with some of their computer issues, and for the development of Bloom, a ‘low-tech’ software program to help nationals create books in their mother tongues.“