Coke heads and Pokey McKenzie...

We have had a number of adventures lately, and we wanted to share two of the most comical ones with you here. This will be a joint venture with me (Katie) writing the first half and Scott writing the second.

The first one has to do with Zeke. He has reached the fun age where he is very adventurous, curious and resourceful. As those of you who have gone through the toddler stages know, these traits are a recipe for trouble! A few days ago Zeke made two new discoveries: the first discovery was that he can take off his own diaper! I have been dreading this moment, knowing that it would inevitable come. After his nap on this infamous day I had gone into his room to take him out of his crib. As I entered his room I could see that he had taken his pants off. Now, this act alone is nothing new. He has been able to take off his own pants for some time now and does it whenever the whim to do so comes over him. As I approached his crib I saw something more curious: his opened diaper sitting off to the left of where he was standing. I also noticed that it contained a nice little deposit. Fearing the worst, I slowed my approach, hoping somehow to not see what I expected to be the first expression of his own, personal art form. However, I lucked out! He had pulled one side of his diaper off and then simply stepped out of it. His bottom happened to be clean and he had decided to play on the other side of his crib! I didn't even have to change his sheets! I know that I am about the luckiest mom out there and I am thankful for that, although I don't expect that this will be a one time incident!

The other discovery that Zeke made this same day was that he can now reach the center of our dining room table, an area that I had thought was still beyond him. However, after we had finished having dinner with a friend I had begun clearing all of the dishes off the table as Zeke ran around playing. I had gotten everything cleared except for one tumbler which had about an inch of coca cola remaining in it. As I was coming towards the table I saw a little flash of blond running in the opposite direction. I could see that he had the glass in his hand and was toddling full-speed into the living room. I sprinted after him, but only in time to see that he had already spilled down the front of his shirt. However, upon closer inspection, along with a look of shock on his face, I saw that he had also dumped most of it on his head! He had already gotten a bath earlier that day, but it looked as though a second one was in order. I wish I could have gotten a picture because I am sure it was only 2 or so ounces of liquid which he made look as if he had dumped an entire can of soda all over himself, but we had to clean him quickly so as not to leave our guest all alone. Needless to say, it was a sticky mess, but one of those things to log away as a parenting lesson learned: never underestimate the reach of a motivated toddler!

The second adventure we had recently involved a new friend of ours who needed a little advice for his brother. (Scott here now). My tutor explained his brother had an offer for thousands of dollars from a man who emailed him out of the blue from Africa--typical internet scam, right? What a great time this would have been to explain, "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" but this was my language lesson, not his. So I agreed to go and take a look at the corroborating documents the guy had sent him. When I got to my tutor's brother's store, I was ushered into the office and found that his brother had actually believed the scam up to this point and had an internet chat set up with the guy, who promptly disappeared when he saw a native English speaker. Turns out the man said a Ray Wyborn, an Australian, and his family had died in a car crash, but had deposited $12 million in bank in Ghana before then. All my tutor's brother had to do was call the bank and tell them he is Ray's foreign business partner and the bank (of course phones run by the email scammer) would get the cash to him. But he would have to split the money with the scammer who was privy to the knowledge of the car crash. What the scammer didn't know was that here no one has a bank account, so his whole plan to steal my tutor's brother's identity was never going to work! But in order to convince my tutor's brother that the plan was real, the scammer sent a scan of an obviously photoshopped passport. When I zoomed in on the scan most of the image was pilexlated, but the font he used to re-enter his own name was clear as a bell. Funny this was, the governement must have issued his passport a year after it was set to expire. Hmm... I knew this was fishy so I went on to the other papers, "scans" (obviously created in photoshop) of poor Mr. Wyborn's contract with the bank in Ghana. The bank was no where to be found on the internet. Then the official stamp at the bottom was perfect--no seams, cracks, full-bodied ink, etc.! Quite reminiscent of the "circle tool" in photoshop, it was. If any stamp maker could do that, he'd make millions in our city! What I thought most suspicious, however, was that upon examining Mr. Wyborn's signature I noted that a certain "Pokey McKenzie" had indeed signed the document in lieu of Mr. Wyborn. Upon evaluating the evidence, my tutor's brother finally decided this was a scam. My advice to him was to email the scammer back saying only, "learn photoshop." My brother's tutor had a friend there too who knew some English. He said, "The American had decided, it is baloney." There you have it. If you ever find yourself wondering whether or not to illegally collect millions, make sure you look for ol' Pokey McKenzie's signature.

Okay, and one more thing to add before we let you go. Tonight we had one of the most exhausting and useful language times. You know we've made lots of good friends here, and tonight we went to my other tutor's house. His mom is a FANTASTIC cook! My tutor knows about as much English as I know of his language, so we got along fine without much of a lanuage barrier until we hit deeper topics like politics and religion (off limits in the States, right? but here everyday talk). We realized something motivating again; while actions of love go a long way, until we can function deeply in this language we'll never be able to fully communicate heart to heart. Like yesterday at our neighbor's house they told us a relative died, and the word for "husband" and the word for "has died" are really close (coincidently!!) and I said "that's good" thinking our neighbor's had seen there aunt's husband. Ugh. Fortunately that was fixed quickly. We're grateful for the time we have to put into it these first two years here. Days like today are encouraging to see how far we've come and how many topics we can understand, but discouraging when you encounter a new accent or things too hard to communicate concrete words of motion (eat, send, get, fall, etc.)! Thank you for remembering us in this journey!