Weekend List!

Sarah's List:

This week Congo "welcomed" back the body of Mobutu. I say, "welcomed" because I heard exactly zero people mention this news.

"The Leopard's Last Monument." But does anyone really know of a monument to Mobutu?

  by  Julien Harneis 

In other news, Congo got its name ranked pretty high on the Global Slavery Index. (As you can imagine, a high ranking on this list a not a good thing.)

The New York Times had an article this week on A Reason for Hope in Congo's Perpetual War. Really. Can there be hope in a perpetual war? I guess you take what you can get.  

"Lac Vert." Another plus. It never stops being beautiful here.

  by  Julien Harneis 

Can't we just all get along in Congo?

If you've got a kid who can read and you live in the States (or even abroad) chances are at one point or another their reading level has been assessed. I was tipped off to Lexile.com during a little teacher PD this week and mind. blown. You can find out exactly which books are on their reading level and perfect for them.

I can't wait until Charlotte can read more than the letter "C." (Turns out it's really hard to assign a reading level to a kid who can only recognize one letter.)

Mademoiselle Nancy. (Or Fancy Nancy, for the less fancy.)

The Touch-Screen Generation. Sigh. And an interesting theory to just put the iPad in the toy basket with everything else and see what happens.

Want to see an exasperated American expat? Ask them what they do about their taxes. Some say it takes us 40 hours to do our taxes and then we still don't get them right.

    Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com 

Oh man. HonestSlogans.com. So, so true.

Still in a Halloween mood? Here's the recipe for movie blood. And I've always wondered what's wrong with people who like being scared. Turns out they are different.


Jill's List:

I loved this Cup of Jo list about the not-so-good things about living in NYC.  Though, I refuse to believe that the pizza tastes like cardboard.  I started thinking of a similar list for Kinshasa...and then stopped.  Better to focus on the positive.

I took these with the Hipstamatic IncrediBooth App against our NYC cityscape photo
after Elias declared that he "really wanted to move to New York City...because it's so close to New Jersey."

One of my favorite ways to practice my French literacy is by reading Garance Doré's blog.  I force myself to ignore Google's kind offer to "translate this blog" and hit "Nope."  Not only do we share the same frizz-prone hair, but Garance's French lessons involve makeup and beautiful photography. Magnifique.

Read in English here.

Did you see this article?  What do you think?  I was surprised to feel conflicted about it.  Even though it doesn't quite address the issue (artist friends, I know!) I thought Swiss Miss's quote for the day summed up some of my pensiveness:

“Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words. It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator. Always remember there is a human being on the other end of every exchange and behind every cultural artifact being critiqued. To understand and be understood, those are among life’s greatest gifts, and every interaction is an opportunity to exchange them.”- Maria Popova

I've been thinking about rugs.  We actually bought a huge sisal rug at Ikea after our first year, rolled it up, and brought it with us on the airplane as oversize luggage.  The airport people thought we were fools.  Rightfully so.  I like them that much.  I've been perusing this site with love.

Go!  Check out this gorgeous store here.

One of my favorite things about looking at Africa is the signs.  Advertisements, store names, and traffic directions are all painstakingly painted by artists all over the city surfaces.

Check out this video demonstrating a more Western-hipster hand-lettering technique:

My 7th graders are working on a mini-development lesson where they are researching, developing, and implementing a plan to get middle schoolers to wash their hands more often.  We're using Graham Wallas' 1926 theory of the Four Stages of Creativity as our guide.  I'm sold!

See.  Look how creative he was.

On Sunday November 3^rd, Christy Turlington Burns will run the ING New York City marathon to raise money and awareness for her non-profit organization, Every Mother Counts (EMC).  Those who have been reading for awhile know how much we appreciate the mission of EMC to make motherhood safer all over the world.  Watch this to understand a little more:

And. Our kiddos in all their costumed glory.  Spaceman Spiff thrilled with his pagne lightening bolt and the batik alien princess kept her wire crown on for 80% of the Trick-of-Treat trek.

We forgot the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

New fake smile.  Seems Loulou has been an alien princess before.  Look:

Circa Halloween 2010.

The girls.  2013.

Plus.  Had to tack this one on to the end.  (Thanks, Anne Callie!)  Favorite line:  

Twentysomething party: Food is a couple of bags of random tortilla chips.

Thirtysomething party: Someone brought something homemade and uber-fancy to show off how good they are at cooking.

This might be a photo of a party in which I participated a few years ago.
Dead give away for thirtysomethings party?  The LAMP on an outdoor table.
No twentysomething would ever be caught dead with such a set up.

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Friday List!

Jill's List:

First off, the only flight attendants banned from decking themselves out in pink lipstick, fancy nails, and platinum blond hair.  Well, at least we won't risk suffering from "impaired visual integrity" on our flight to Istanbul next month.

Image from Into the Gloss.

Ugh.  In other airport news this week: decapitation while strolling along the tarmac  at N'Djili.

Image from here.

A visit with a midwife in Uganda.  (By Jennifer from World Mom's Blog.)

That set up looks familiar!  Image from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Such incredible, eerie photos.  There are so many abandoned houses, boarded up in Virginia.  I always wondered what was inside...

Image by photographer Niki Feijen, as seen in the Daily Mail.

Damn it.  Congo makes the top (bottom?) of the "toughest place to be a mother" list.  Again.

In DR Congo, one in 30 women die from pregnancy-related causes, whereas in Finland it is one in 12,200

Image by J. Humphrey.  From this post.

And, in a completely different universe: a new-to-me-known-forever-to-everyone-else beauty/style blog.  I've known and adored her boyfriend's street style for ages, but Garance Doré's collection of illustrations, flashed-out photography, and product reviews is superb.  Even better, if I'm feeling particularly classy and/or motivated, I can switch to the French version for a little practice (ha.)  However, after reading this post, I may have asked Johan, "So, what would you think if I ordered a $150 face oil?"  Hmmm.

Image from  Garance Doré.

Best juice ever.  Fresh squeezed + local ingredients = a super rare find around here despite the crazy fruit selection.  I've only found it at La Patisserie Nouvelle and Eric Kayser.  Can you buy it elsewhere, Kin folk?

Image from here.

Sarah's List:

When I saw this article, I gasped. Here is my ridiculously awesome extended family in the New York Times(!) Caught in Methodism's Split Over Same Sex Marriage. I could not be prouder/angrier. The last time I saw Tommy Ogletree he was dancing his head off at one of his children's same-sex weddings mentioned here. Just as any father/theologian should do. Best quote of the week:

 “Sometimes, when what is officially the law is wrong, you try to get the law changed,” 

Dr. Ogletree, a native of Birmingham, Ala., said in a courtly Southern drawl over a recent lunch at Yale, where he remains an emeritus professor of theological ethics. 

“But if you can’t, you break it.” 

Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

“I actually wasn’t thinking of this as an act of civil disobedience or church disobedience. I was thinking of it as a response to my son,” said the Rev. Dr. Thomas W. Ogletree of officiating his son’s marriage to another man.

Here's a list of 12 Countries Where the Government Regulates What You Can Name Your Child. Okay, before we all freak out about China restricting names to ones with characters computer scanners can read, the USA told us Annaïs was not allowed her special character on her passport or birth certificate because, "We don't have that button." Fair enough. Even I still don't know how to make a trema on a PC. I usually go into Word, add the special character, and then paste it in. Seriously. Ah, a mother's love is never-ending. (Wait, just looked it up. Alt+139, really?)

Did you see this study that says having three children is the most stressful number? Maybe makes you want to reconsider this post. Note in the photo below how excluded that poor "third child" is. (Also of note, look at those babies! My, how they've grown.)

Photo from Jill's post, The Third Kid.

I've often wondered about this. How on earth are babies supposed to learn to walk while wearing those bulky diapers? Especially cloth diapers. I've always thought that the hindrance of the bulk of cloth diapers, also worked the other way to cushion the fall when learning to walk. But it turns out it's true that "once freed from the albatross of that bag of pee, babies walk less like babies." Go figure. I wonder if diaperless Congolese babies walk sooner? For sure they do! But maybe it's just because they've been expected to help fetch water and balance things on their heads at the same age my kids are just learning to crawl.

You'd have trouble walking in one of those, too.
Photo by iStockphoto/Thinkstock

And finally we're making this dessert for a dinner party this weekend. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to secure graham crackers, cream cheese and a can of cherry pie filling in Congo. All at the same time. Here's how: 

1- Fight for the graham crackers brought by the embassy worker at the Christmas gift exchange.
2- Bring the cream cheese back frozen from the States. 
3- Happen upon a random can of imported cherry pie filling in the bowels of the Indian grocery store. 

A dessert one year in the making.

Paula Deen's Cherry Cream Cheese Pie

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