David And Michelle

Well, our first official week of work is over! All in all it went very well, with no major catastrophes. We did have one rather stressful morning though. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to make pancakes for one dorm which has 15 boys in it. We got there pretty early and started up the griddle right away because we were told it takes a while to heat up. When we went to start making the pancakes the griddle was so hot that it started smoking and the kitchen and dining room became filled with smoke! We tried making a few more but time was running out so we had to make a change of plans so David ran down to the Boulangerie to get some bagguettes and Michelle cracked about 30 eggs into a bowl to make scrambled eggs. It was quite a morning! But the boys got fed and I don't think they even knew the difference (except for the lingering smoke smell). We did have a good week though and we know it will only get better as we get more experience.

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We had our first day of "relieving" Dorm Parents yesterday and today we are at it again. We have the two girls dorms on Monday and Tuesday and then the two boys dorms on Wednesday and Thursday. One fun little note... this morning one of our Middle School girls asked us to pass the juice; she then proceeded to pour peach juice into her milk! I had never seen such a thing and I thought I should pass that on to all of you. The girls are all pretty good and I believe this is going to be a great job and we will have many opportunities to minister.

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We woke up for church this morning and discovered that we had no water. Both of us had been through this before so we knew just what to do. We bathed in about 5 or 6 cups of water each. If you have never done this before you really must try it out. :) It actually worked out fine since the water came on by the time we got home from church. We just took real showers then. I think we will have to start storing some water somehow since this happens often here.

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We Woke Up One Morning And Found This Beauty Out On Our Back Patio. It Was Just Begining To Die From The Bug Spray I Sprayed On It. Notice The Quarter Sitting Next To It For Perspective.

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The School Is Fairly Small By American Standards But For Here It Is A Very Large And Well Equipped School. 

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We Really Like Out New Apartment Even With The Bugs And The Heat. 

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The past few nights we have been eating at the various dorms we will be working in. This gives us a chance to get to know the Dorm Parents and the kids at each of the dorms. It has been very nice and the food has been fantastic. The kids are all pretty good kids from what we can tell. I think we will really enjoy this once we get a hang of things. The biggest challenge right now is going to be doing breakfast. We are not used to making big breakfast even for ourselves but now it will be for lots of people.

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On Thursday we had an interesting cultural experience. A lady came to the door wanting to sell us some table cloths and wall hangings. When I answered the door she immediately invited herself with her daughter. I didn’t know what to do so I said “yes” and in they came. They sat down on the floor and began pulling all sorts of cloths out their bags and told us how everyone in the building has been buying these. We didn’t want to offend her but we just did not want any of the items and we knew that we could buy them cheaper somewhere else. So now we had two Senegalese women sitting on our floor in the living room and we didn’t know what to do with them. Eventually after a few minutes they realized that would not be buying today. In broken French we said “not today, possibly some other time.” This was not the best thing to say because after asking for a glass of water she asked what day we would like for her to come back. I don’t think she got the point but then neither did we. So we said she could back next week. I have a feeling we will be buying something from her at some point.

Posted by David & Michelle Walker at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments

We have been doing better than we expected with our French. The words are coming back to us but we still have a hard time with how exactly to use the words. So we can communicate but we still sound a little silly when we speak in French.

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It is Saturday morning and after a week of orientation we now have a day with nothing to do. It will be nice to relax a little today and possibly go do a little shopping or touring around. Things have been going well here although the heat is really starting to get a little uncomfortable at times. I think that at first we were so excited to be here that we just didn’t worry about the heat. I now take 3 cold showers a day just to get the sweat off and to cool off a little.

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David At Schipol Airport In Amsterdam 

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This is Michelle in the our new apartment 

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It's 6:00 a.m. on August 10th and I have been awake since about 4:30 a.m.. It is going to take some time to get through this jet lag. Today we will join the other new staff at orientation. We missed the first day because we were sleeping so we will probably be a little behind on some stuff. We do however have the advantage of being former students at D.A..
Yesterday we walked over to the school and just happened to run into a missionary we knew. She immediately offered us lunch and we accepted. Michelle and I shared a bowl of Poulet Yassa which a typical Senegalese dish made with rice, onions, and chicken. It was absolutely delicious. We then toured the school for a while and got caught up on a few things we missed at the first day of new staff orientation. The school grounds have changed quite a bit. There a few new buildings and some additions to old buildings. It is really strange being here as part of the staff after having been students.
One great thing that happened yesterday as we were walking around the grounds of the school was that we ran into several Senegalese workers who were here when we students. They all remembered us there was much hugging and shaking of hands. I am excited to get to know them all again continue to grow our friendship.

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We woke up at around noon and started looking around our new home. We have a very nice little 2 bedroom apartment which is furnished with nice furniture and even had a little bit of food and filtered water waiting for us. There are 2 bathrooms which is convenient and both have showers. There is a guard who sleeps by the front gate all night (not sure if he is supposed to be sleeping) which gives us some security. We also have a nice little patio which at the moment is empty (except for a huge dead grasshopper). But we would like to put some chairs out there eventually. We have access to the roof of the building and that will be a great place to sit and drink tea. We are just off-campus so we will not have to drive to work. We did not expect such nice accommodations. God has been gracious to us in yet another way!

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We arrived in Dakar at around 4:00 a.m. on August 9th. We had no problems getting our luggage or getting through customs and immigration. We were absolutely exhausted and yet very excited to be here. The Assistant Director of Dakar Academy picked us up from airport. He had been waiting for us since around 2:00 a.m. because he was not aware of the delay on our flight. We were happy to see a familiar face as we got out of customs. The heat was not quite as bad as we had remembered but still left us wishing for air conditioning.
We arrived at our new apartment by 5:00 a.m. and we were much too excited to sleep by this point but we knew that we needed to at least try to sleep. After a nice cold shower we started heading for bed at about 6:00 a.m.. We were able to sleep about 6 hours which felt incredible after so much time with no solid sleep in a bed. Even with the heat we slept right through.

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We are now on the plane headed to Dakar and Business Class is amazing. The seats are power seats and they recline to a completely horizontal position with a nice leg rest. I also have much needed power for the laptop. We are riding in luxury and quite honestly we are enjoying the comfort. Thank God for taking such good care of His children. We met a young lady on our flight who is also going to be working at Dakar Academy this year. We also met a missionary couple with New Tribes Missions so we are a little comforted to be arriving with other Americans who might actually know what they are doing. Again, God is always looking out for us. I think the time may have come now for me to get a little rest. My eyes are starting to hurt and I still have only slept about 2 hours of the last 30.

Posted by David & Michelle Walker at 2:50 AM | Permalink | Comments

We arrived in Lisbon at 12:30 p.m. on August 8th and just by chance we decided to check to make sure we didn't’t see our luggage coming around on the Baggage Claim since we checked it all the way to Dakar. Well sure enough we saw 2 pieces of our luggage. We had to take it and eventually check it again. We are still unsure about the whereabouts of the third piece of luggage but we are praying the we will see it upon arriving in Dakar.
What an adventure Lisbon was for us. We spent over 12 hours waiting for our flight to Dakar. We expected a 9 hour delay which we thought we would use to our advantage so that we could do some touring of Lisbon. We eventually were able to get ourselves out of the airport on a city bus which cost us 2.35 (Euro) each for a round trip. We saw some of the nice old buildings in Lisbon and saw a castle from afar but we really didn’t have the energy to climb the large hill up to the castle. After a little walking around we found ourselves drenched by a sudden rain shower. One interesting note; as soon as it started raining (I mean within about 1 minute) there were these people running around selling umbrellas on the street. How did they know? We did what any good westerner would do when faced with rain in a beautiful European city: we went to McDonald’s for lunch. It was actually enjoyable and it could be our last McDonald’s for a while.
When we returned from touring the town we were absolutely exhausted so we started looking for a nice place to rest. Unfortunately the Lisbon airport is not very accommodating for those who wish to sleep. There are lots of metal and wood benches and absolutely no carpeting. We slept miserably for a little while then went for another walk. At one of our stops on our walk (we thought we found a good place to sleep) we saw that our flight status had changed. The 9:55 p.m. flight was now delayed and would not be departing until 12:55 a.m.. That was quite a blow to us since we were already quite miserable. We attempted to sleep some more but didn’t get very far. At around 7:00 p.m. we started working our way towards checking in. We now had two bags (plus one which was hopefully already in transit to go to our final destination) which put us way over our weight allowance for the flight. When we eventually got to the desk to check in the lady took our bags and didn’t say anything about the weight. She then said with a smile the magic words we all hope to hear when traveling: “you are going Business Class.” She told me she was sorry about the delay of the flight and then just handed me our boarding passes. Business Class we found out meant not only incredibly comfortable seating on the plane (including power for the Laptop) but also we had access to the Air Portugal Lounge as well as an increased baggage allowance (2 x 35 kilograms each). The lounge had every amenity you could ask for including a sleeping room which we quickly took advantage of. Finally we were able to sleep and even eat in comfort. God really does take better care of us than we would even do ourselves. By this point we had been going solid for about 27 hours and had only had about 20 minutes of total sleep and that had been in short spurts.

Posted by David & Michelle Walker at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments

We got checked in and eventually got situated over by our gate. I realized that I had a nearly dead battery and since I discovered that we did not have access to power at our seats I decided to charge my battery. In the huff I completely forgot to call my brother and sister until we were already getting on the plane and it was much too late. I will do my best to call them as soon as I get a chance.
We are now flying somewhere over the ocean on our way to Amsterdam where we will catch another plane Lisbon then on to Dakar. My battery is almost dead again so I will have to charge it when I get a chance. The movie was Shrek 2 and the dinner was good. Michelle and I have had no luck getting sleep but I think she may be sleeping a little right now. I still have not slept and I doubt I will for a while.

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We left the house in Orillia this morning and headed over to Barrie to pick up Michelle’s sister then on to about half way to Toronto to meet with family we had not yet seen . We had a nice lunch and then after saying goodbye to Michelle’s brother, and the rest of the family we headed for the Airport.
When we arrived we found the line to get into parking was outrageous so we opted for the curbside drop-off. I never like good byes but this one particularly tough because Mum and Dad Langman have been so wonderful to us. We were just getting used to being around family again and now we had to leave. But we all held it together fairly well and off we went.

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Sunday was spent with family at the annual Langman Picnic. It turned put to be a really enjoyable day with much food and fun.
The next few days were somewhat laid back but not necessarily by design. We had great plans of accomplishing some tasks left undone in the States. The first was to get our vaccinations. As it turned out the only doctor in the area who could give us the vaccinations was out of town for 10 days. So now we are a little nervous because we are just hoping that we will be able to get them done there. The other thing we were going to do in Canada was get our International Driving Licenses. So we went over the CAA (that’s the same as AAA for all you non-Canadians) and were promptly told that we could get our International license no problem as long as we had our Canadian Driver’s License with us. Well guess which two people didn’t have Canadian Driver’s License. So we are hoping we can do that there as well.

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