I had the most beautiful ice cream cone the other day. The rain was just stopping, and the Kyoto street colors were accentuated by the wet. Red lanterns, dark wood, carefully arranged potted plants, flocks of bright umbrellas.

As I savored both the green tea color AND flavor, I remembered other brilliant and meaningful colors from our year. Each of these colors is packed with memories and emotion — of growth, joy, loss, wonder, hope, friendship — that Benjamin Moore would covet to create.

Here are just a few of my ColorFull encounters (clicking on any thumbnail will launch a larger gallery):

So thankful to have these ColorFull memories added to my palette for my NEXT year.

The tooth hangs by a thread, flicking back and forth almost as easily and mindlessly as breathing in and out. If you ask him why he doesn’t just pull it out, the answer is quick and firm: “NO. I DON’T WANT TO.”

H is on the verge of losing his second tooth of the trip. All three boys are hitting growth spurts, including their mouths, and at times it seems their teeth are exploding right out of their bodies.

In Virginia, the Tooth Fairy usually brings $1 for a tooth, but right now we are in Malaysia where one Malaysian Ringgit is equal to about 30 cents. We have lost teeth in at least six different countries this year, some in a more favorable market than others. What is the Tooth Fairy to do about international exchange rates?

Here’s how it has shaken down.

W lost the first tooth of the trip at a restaurant while camping in Iceland. It bled a lot. He received 100 Icelandic Krona, about $0.79.

W lost another one in London. The British Pound is strong! He got £1, which then was about $1.41.

H successfully yanked one in the Lake District, UK, so he scored £1 too.

Then the next day during Art of Language class, W popped out a molar that wasn’t even loose. We were/are a little suspect that perhaps he was just wanting to take advantage of the favorable exchange rate while still in the UK — or he wanted to get out of his writing assignment. Another £1 for him.

Croatia?? Our memory is fuzzy about whether W lost a tooth in Croatia. It sounds familiar, but it seems like he wouldn’t have enough teeth left if this were true. I think he did and got 5 Croatian Kuna, about $.86. But then I borrowed it from him to make change at the grocery….

E worked and worked and worked on a loose tooth for most of December, through Morocco, Greece, and Turkey. At the Bultemas’ New Years Eve party, he had no less than 20 offers to “help” with its removal. It finally came out (on its own) on New Years Day. He received 2 Turkish Lira, which is $1.11.

Only one tooth came out in Africa — W lost an enormous molar in Kenya (see, he is really is exploding). It’s a shame he never bothered to put it under his pillow, so he missed out on 100 Kenyan Shillings, or $1.16.

The bottom line is that it just won’t always be fair — a life lesson worth learning. I tried to tell them they are lucky to have teeth to be losing in the first place, but that didn’t go over so well.

So H’s canine has been loose for quite some time. Rwanda, Kenya, now Malaysia. Will he go for the 3 Malaysian Ringitt ($.97), or will he hold out for 30 Thai Baht ($1.01) next week?

Stay tuned — just don’t offer to pull it out for him.

Last night, Dad and I went to an awesome restaurant called Carnivore.  When you sit down, they tell you that there is no menu, the meal starts with soup and bread, then they hand you a metal plate that is burning hot, and then they start bringing the meats!!!  The waiters keep coming to you with different kinds of meat on spears and holding huge carving knives. When they put the first piece on our plates, it was sizzling because it was so hot!!  The meal only ends when you take down a small flag at the top of  the sauces as a sign of surrender!

The types of meat are; Rump steak, spicy cougette, pork spare ribs, lamb, plain pork, chicken yakitori, pork sauseges, chicken piripiri, turkey chicken wings, chicken livers and gizzards, ox balls, beef sauseges, lamb chops, lamb ribs, and exotic meats; crocodile and ostrich!

It was an AWESOME experience!!

Crocodile was my favorite!

My Wife Is Awesome …

… for lots of reasons, including this excerpt from today’s World School plan:

A familiar flower blooming in the yard. S wrangling boys at World School table. A car drives by house, blaring music and message of a candidate for Kenya’s election. Said goodbye to young men yesterday. They are new friends who are taking strong steps in hard places. Sting of goodbye remains. Reflecting ahead to next steps of journey, Malaysia … China … home.

Just read an email from not-so-faraway place: “We are now high up in the mountains and … families here live in cold, brutal squalor with little sanitation. I feel sad and angry when I see this. People are not to live this way.”

There’s a thesaurus nearby in the bookshelf. I want to dive in.

Morning. Nairobi, Kenya. February 26, 2013.

On the homefront, we have been digging in hard to school these two weeks, trying to make extra progress in math and also putting many of our experiences here into the context of geopolitical East African life.  We are so thankful to Sam and Lynn for loaning us their home while they are away, where we can study, play, pray, and process.

H has discovered the joy of cucumbers and Ranch; W was the first awake this morning and made pancakes and homemade syrup for the whole family; E finished reading the second book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy this afternoon — more pages than I think I’ve read in my life; and in the background, there is always a soccer shootout going on in the backyard.

We’ve had two dinner guests — a friend from home here on business, and our safari guide from Tanzania who lives in Nairobi.

And Friday we celebrated a week of studies and volunteering with a fun morning meeting a new friend at a local waterslide.  Good times.

The woman in this photo was once on the verge of closing a profitable real estate deal in Nairobi’s Kangemi slum neighborhood. Her mind was changed, however … and the deal never happened.

Instead, the property became the home for — and she became the Founder of — Akiba School. It’s a private, Christian elementary school and high school. Many students there are sponsored and loved by folks at our church in Virginia.

We have three bits of sound from Akiba to share with you.

* A student introduced himself to us today after S. led elementary and high school students in music club. Turns out, Augustine wanted to share his thanks with some Virginia friends who have helped him over the years with school fees. His audio greeting is the first bit of sound below.

* Second, a clip from S’s music club class. Elementary school students sang a round for the first time.

* And third — another elementary class is memorizing a poem written in Kenya’s national language, Kiswahili. Their teacher wrote the poem … and the class plans to recite it in unison at a national contest in the next few days.

Alex, Chi Chi, Christine, Pascaline, Fabian, Kizito, Queen, Mohiedin, George, Festo, Wadhaika, Jackson, Rebecca, Ezekiel, Purity, Dave, and I have been talking about STORYTELLING. Each of these mostly twenty-somethings are drawn in powerful ways to telling stories with words, in sound, or in pictures … and we’ve offered a workshop this week to help them gather and create stories that are, in one student’s words, “sweet to the ear.”

They’re working in the field all day today … conducting interviews, shooting pictures, gathering tape. Many of them are doing this sort of craft for the first time. Some were quite nervous.

I sit now at the church where we’re holding the workshop, waiting for questions or calls that could come in from the field. The room, once full of conversation and ideas and anxiety and questions, is now still and silent. That means that these young people, pulled so powerfully to story, are out there … FINDING stories.

And that is sweet to my ears.

The US Embassy has gathered US citizens this morning at the Ambassador’s residence in Nairobi to talk through possible violence in Kenya’s upcoming election. It’s an information session to answer questions and talk through rumors, expectations, and plans.

We’ve had information sessions of our own over the last week, with new friends who lived through violence after the last elections. Six years ago, massive election fraud sparked divisions between Kenya’s largest tribes. Thousands were killed. Many more thousands fled their homes to escape the bloodshed.

I’ve asked many questions about that bloodshed, mainly: How is your tribal identity known to the mob?

Apparently, there are slight physical differences … and personal information like last names or home address on identity cards might reveal tribal roots … but it was LANGUAGE that proved to be the biggest marker, because most tribes have their own.

The mob would stop a bus full of refugees. They would ask: What is our word for “armpit” or “elbow”?

As we’ve learned on this global journey, there is no way you can fake answers in an unknown tongue.

–

(We leave Kenya six days before election day.)

E started learning about TESSELLATION today in World School. I’m not sure how that fits in to 3rd grade mathematics … but, for you English majors like me, tessellation is the process of repeating geometric shapes seamlessly across a page.

S dreamed up a family project this evening for all of us to create tessellate-able shapes and patterns before dinner. The result was super cool — family time around a table, drawing, cutting, and coloring. The collage above shows portions of the repeatable designs that were created.

Earlier in the day, I was settling in to do some writing … when a son asked over my shoulder: Want to go play some soccer outside, Dad?

Pulled in two different, good and right directions. Not so seamless.