Monkeys, Kittens, Dogs--What Next?

Hey, ya'll. This post'll be pretty much ramblings of the past couple days...Since I'm currently writing this on a LibreOffice, things may not all happen at the same time. :) Blogger is currently not working for me, so I'll just have to write it here for now. (P.S. Obviously it is working now) 

Currently, we have four cats and two dogs—Pippin you know of already. We still have him (he's quite the guard dog—bites the fence savagely and growls, but is as docile as a lamb to people INSIDE the fence, unless you're a Liberian kid. If you're a Liberian kid, don't come in at all. The last one who did nearly had his shoe bit off...>_>). We also have Merry now, too (yes, LOTR all the way!). He's brown with shortish ears that go backwards, but aren't floppy and don't stand up. He has brown eyes, a black muzzle, and is so timid and eager to please people that he whines when you pet him a lot. :) We got him about a month ago, but he's as old as Pippin. He was beat in his old home, and not always fed. They moved and abandoned him, so we took him in. :)

Our cats—well, you all know Ninja. She's taken on a motherly streak since we got these kittens. A friend of ours found them in a school closet, and no mother showed up over night. They were so young they're eyes were still closed. The teachers were pretty much going to throw 'em out the window, but instead a boy took them (four of them) to the family who own Ninja's mother, Stubs. She had some milk left, and half-nursed them. One died, but three survived. Eventually, they gave them to us (Stubs was dried up and about to have more kittens) and we completely bottle-fed them for a long while. That was maybe two months ago. Now, they're almost as big as Ninja when we got her, and are completely weaned. Ninja attacks them sometimes, and we've only been able to have them out at night for the last...oh, three weeks to a month? Anyways, sometimes she'll roughly bite them and then begin to lick them. Thus, the motherly side of Ninja. They all love my sister's carpet and fall asleep on it. :)

The kittens' names are Chai, Cess, and Snitzel. Chai is white with black spots, and kind of has a silly face. She's longer than the others, but thinner. We decided to name them all after cultural symbols or objects. Chai is named after tea from India.

Cess is the sassy one—gets annoyed when people pick her up while she's playing and once bit my sister while she tried to give her a bath. XD She's mostly black (kind of a tabby black) with a white face, paws, and stomach. She's the one who had a lot of problems when we first got them—she didn't have very good digestion, always had a big stomach, and had a hernia on her stomach from her umbilical cord not being cut right. It is completely gone now, but was huge when we got her. :) Unfortunately, the other day the poor kitten had a seizure, just like Ninja...>_> It was short, though, and we think she jumped off something. She's fine now. Anyways, we named her after a river here in Liberia, and when we looked it up, found it is also an Irish word for 'curse.' Haha.

Snitzel (Sh-nits-ull) is gray, like Ninja, and is the smallest be the most well-formed. She's pretty good-tempered, though not as cuddly as Chai. We named her after a German food. ^_^ Though we sometimes call her Shnizzle...

More news? Well, a couple days after my last post, our mongoose died for unknown reasons. We just found her one morning, feet in the air. :'( A very sad day for us all. Now, though, death has stopped its walk through our halls, and all of our animals have survived since then. We're hoping to find another mongoose and possibly a monkey...>_>

Actually, we saw a monkey at the pump the other day! He had a leash around his waist and sat on the guy's shoulders with his hands on the man's head while the guy pumped water. We asked if he was friendly, and got to touch him. He actually tried to shake our hands. XD He was gray, with eyes close together. He had a Liberian name, but I can't remember it. When the man filled the gas can's lid (they use these things to pump water in), the monkey climbed down and literally stuck his face in it and drank. XD The monkey was awesome. ^_^

Liberian English is strange. You not only have to change the way you say things and the words you say, but you have to change the TONE. So that you have the right accent. They can't pronounce the 'th,' and thus can't say my real name, and they've officially named my older sister 'Alice' even though her name is Alex. :)

“Ey, I wanna spea wih you.” vrs. “Hey, I want to speak with you.”

“Wha you eat today?” vrs. “What did you eat today?”

“Can you help us wih a watta bottle?” vrs. “Can we have a waterbottle?”

“My dog is very fine, yeah? You wanna buy my dog?” Haha. You can't stop and admire a puppy because sometimes they'll try to sell it to you. XD

Yeah, you probably get the point. XD Liberian English is hard to type up...I wish I had a recording instead. But I don't. :)

Pippin is called 'Pinpin' by most Liberians, so we've kinda picked up the nickname. They say, “Wha your dog name?” and I say, “This is Merry,” they say, “Oh, Mary a girl dog?” and I say, “No, Merry like 'Merry Christmas!'”

I once tried to spell it out to Jerry, one of the neighborhood kids, but then realized that he'd told us he can't read...smart. Real smart.

Currently doing One Year Adventure Novel. Just started the Novel outline. Glug. We're doing two lessons a day or more at this rate, because we want to write the whole thing in the month of May. :P

I finish school this week...or it could be last week by the time I publish this blogpost. O_o Anyways, I finish on April 26th, 2012. Not allowed to do school on the 27th...Ry's birthday. :) Our very last book of the year is Ender's Game, and I will be finishing it tomorrow...I finished most of my school weeks ago but only have readers left...my only subject left. :P Other than OYAN and French, of course. And Composition, which I'll be doing next month. :P

French...well, let's just say I know maybe ten, twenty words and botch them. Still, its French, right? Yeah. Right.

I know the word for life in French...its riz. Translated, rice. XD That's what life is here in Liberia. Rice. If you're not eating rice, you're not eating, as a Liberian once told my brother. And its true. We eat Liberian food every day here except for Sunday...from palm butter to groundnut stew. All over rice. Want a list?

Jolliff rice
Palm butter
Cassava
Potato greens
Pumpkin (known as squash in America! 'Tis not in the same category as jack o' lanterns!)
Okra
Groundnut stew (they call peanuts groundnuts)
Pepper soup (LITERALLY MADE OF SPICY LIBERIAN PEPPERS!!! Haha. Spicier than jalepenos. Oh yeah)
Beans
Fufu (just guessing at spelling)
Fried cabbage
Collared greens
Eggplant (much smaller than the eggplants in America, and more white than purple)

And more. O_o Liberians like spicy food...a lot. The kids eat pepper soup without flinching. We also get a variety of exotic fruits, depending on the season. Mangoes (or 'plums' as the Liberians call them) are in season right now, and especially good picked right off the tree. ^_^ You can usually find bananas, and recently we've gotten some oranges. You can go on the street and get a coconut if you want one, and there are papaya (methinks they're out of season) and pineapple and watermelon...the watermelons are all dark green, not striped like American ones. We went to visit someone, and they gave us bananas, oranges, butter pear (avocados), a pineapple, a watermelon, cucumbers...lots of good things to eat. They grew it all themselves. You don't usually find tomatoes here though. They don't survive in the heat, methinks.

We've seen a couple of snakes so far, nothing to be scared of...our guards killed most of them, but missed one. :)

More news...

There was a rabid dog a half-mile down the beach. Scary. This happened...oh, a month ago? Several people were bit, and many, many dogs had to be put down. The people we got Stan and Valli from had to put down both of their puppies (the mom died shortly after we got our puppies from snake venom sprayed in her eyes) and the husband was bit trying to help them. He got shots, and he's perfectly fine now. We've been getting the rabies vaccinations—three of 'em. We've gotten two so far, and another in two weeks.

And what do you do when there's been a rabid dog nearby?

You research rabies, of course. XD Lovely, eh? I looked it up briefly in cats, dogs, and a little in humans. I happen to want to be a veterinarian, so I can't help it.

And then our security guards (you have to have them here—that, and a dog. A dog, a fence, and guards are the best choices for security here) began to ask me questions. They know of rabies and know that its dangerous, but they don't know ABOUT it. “Wait—more animals than dog can get rabies?” Thomas asked me. I explained that most warm-blood animals can. Then somehow we got onto the subject of alligators and whether they fight with their tail or their mouth...>_>

We have several security guards—Jonathon, James (he's temporary, but he's a night guard right now), Thomas, Ezekiel, Aloysius (pronounced Eee-lush-us), and Friday. They take shifts—one from early morning to four o'clock in the afternoon, another from four to ten, and two to three people are on the night shift. There are a couple more temporary guards—Dolo being one who is here at night when one of the other guards has a day off.

My art pencil broke...the new one got lost in the mail...I haven't drawn a real drawing for...WEEKS. I'm dying here. >_> Okay, so maybe not dying, but I have nothing to do any more. School? I've only got readers. Read a book? I've read all the ones on my Kindle. Play a game? Nada. I can doodle some, but I'm running out of doodling paper... GRAHH!!!

As you can see, I'm a beast. Its late. Possible reason? Ah.

My One Year Adventure Novel MC is named Brennan Holster...awesome, eh?

Regulations on this novel?

Twelve chapters.

One scene per chapter.

Write only in first person.

Yup. **headdesk**

I'm suffering from lack of sleep. I should go. But I really don't want to.

Meh. This is too long already. Goodnight!

--Vrenith

EDIT: This is a couple days later. We saw a baby monkey! The man who lives at what we call the 'warehouse' got his sons a baby monkey. They brought it over, and we cut up a mango for him to eat. It was hilarious. He'd climb into our laps, but didn't like our hair and batted it away in annoyance. It was great. 

He tried to tease the dog...poor Pippin had his face sticking out of the bars the whole time. He really wanted to get ahold of that monkey. Merry, though, didn't touch the monkey. :) 

We gave him water in a plastic cup, and held it up to his mouth. He actually drank out of it! It was funny. The boys had fashioned a 'diaper' out of a plastic bag. He had a piece of yarn around his waist, with a long line. He was hilarious. :) 

And...HAPPY BIRTHDAY RY!! She got a drum, two 'sassa,' I think they're called (gourds with beads strung around it, you hold the end and move the gourd), and a Liberian painting from me, depicting huts and a canoe on the water. :)  It was painted by a man down the road a bit. 

Nothing else to say. ;)

--Vrenith