Where to begin?

Where can I even begin to start the first blog in almost three months?
On this tiny little blog I will try my darndest to offer a few little vignettes of what I have been up to for the last 2 months that Gabriel and I spent in Tanzania. Hopefully over the course of a few scattered blog posts a patchwork of photos and words will sew themselves up into a small taste of what my life has been like during my months of silence.

For those that don't know, my husband and I just spent the months of June and July working with an NGO that is doing mainly medical work in the Lake Victoria region of Tanzania but is also involved in other community development projects. Gabriel, having just finished his first year of medical school, had his only free summer of this several year school experience and so we went big and high tailed it for the far reaches of the Earth. Gabriel spent his days assisting in the small community medical clinic that our program runs. My days really ran the gamut. I had expected to mostly use my talents as a teacher but soon after we arrived in Tanzania most of the schools closed for a month long vacation that lasted the rest of our time in country. This was disappointing at first but I still managed to do several craft projects with a few schools before they closed and I was able to work with a nearby orphanage. Ultimately I filled my the rest of my time with several other projects that I hadn't expected but those will have to wait for another blog posting.

I am off to make some dinner but I will leave you with some photos from a couple of the craft projects that I did with a nearby orphanage called Hands Of Mercy.

The bellow photos are of a day that I brought home made play dough to the orphanage, a day that I brought materials to do tissue paper stained glass pasta beads, and the children's toothbrushes hanging on a tree all labeled with their names (no running water inside).