"Eggs come from CHICKENS??"

I've realized that in the busy-ness of work and studies, I'm losing some of the really adorable things my kids do and say by not writing them down. At lunch after church, a friend reminded me of this, though...

Last week, I took my kids to a local market. We have been talking about vegetables. Where do which veges grow? And so on and so forth. So during our visit to the market, we saw much more than fruit and vegetables, of course. We also saw slaughtered ducks and chickens, fresh fish, and a cornucopia of Chinese treats.

Passing the egg stand, I asked something about whether eggs were vegetables. Which led to a simple explanation that eggs come from chickens.

One of my girls had this total valley-girl expression on her face, and blurted out, "EGGS COME FROM CHICKENS???" In her world, they've always, always just come from roughly the same spot as the fruit and vegetables at the local supermarket.

Then, on Thursday, when we were celebrating my birthday by baking brownies in class, I asked again where eggs came from. This time, my most expressive boy jumped up from his spot on the carpet declaring, "I know!" and started doing a chicken dance in the center of the group, making clucking sounds to boot.

I really am enjoying working with 4-year-olds! They keep me on my toes, and they keep me on my knees in more ways than one. Some days, they drive me nuts. But most days, they make me laugh. A lot.

I love that. I really do love them. And most of the time, I like 'em, too.

I suspect the feeling is mutual.

Her Majesty, the Queen

I was working on my book reviews this morning when two members of staff headed my way. “Have you seen the queen termite before?” they asked with a smile. And they produced this thing.
Yikes, indeed.

Want to take a closer look?

It’s as big as it looks. And as gross. Not sure if it’s eggs inside or live larvae, but her whole body was moving. I was afraid she might give birth to thousands of termites in front of my eyes.

Actually, it would be millions. According to this page on Wikipedia, "one queen rules over five million of her offspring. And she's 20,000 times bigger than her subjects."

Rather than do what my gut told me to do ("RUN!") I did what I knew I should do ("Shoot it!" As in, with the camera.) I wanted to share the moment with you all, so I photographed her. When I showed the picture to another Kenyan colleague later, he commented dead seriously, “That one, she must be soooo sweet!”

Crunch… Or perhaps she'd be chewy. Or mushy. But not a chance under the sun is she tasty!

By now, you may think I have a fascination with bugs—termites in particular. I don’t. There are just a number of them around these days. Hence my third post on this topic for this week.

Earlier this morning, I did a photo shoot at the school. I like this picture. It's all of our teaching staff at "Brook of Faith Academy."