Happy New Year!

This New Year celebration was by far the most different celebration we have had.  I have celebrated New Years in Georgia, Texas, driving from GA to VA, in El Salvador and in India.  Each New Year brings it's own excitement and adventure.  I am not quite sure where this New Year's celebration fell amongst the other New Year celebrations.  It was new and different but also a little of a let down.

Andrew and I went downtown for a late dinner at our favorite restaurant (also where one of Andrew's friends works so it is a good place for us to go).  We enjoyed a relaxed dinner and then made our way to where we were told a lot of local people celebrate the New Year.  There is an old castle ruin in our city, and our language helper told us that a lot of people go down there for the New Year.  She said that they count down and then it is a good place to watch fireworks from.

We made our way down to the old castle.  It was incredibly crowded right around the castle area, so we moved a little bit away down along the beach boardwalk.  There were so many people out.  Families were gathered together on the beach, drinking tea and coffee, smoking argeela and even some people singing and playing drums.  It was fun to just sit and watch everyone enjoying themselves.

According to our watches, the New Year was approaching.  About a minute before we thought should be the New Year, close to where we were, about five fire works went off.  There was no counting, no one even did anything different.  Just the few fire works that went off near us.  We could look out across the water and see the fire works of the neighboring country.  We were able to see many fire work shows along their coast line going off.

After a minute or two of watching their fireworks go off, we decided to head back up to the road and catch a taxi.  Thankfully we found one easily and except for the minor traffic jam on the way home, made it home easily.  It was neat to see yet another culture celebrate the New Year.  There was no kissing at the stroke of midnight.  No one played "Auld Lang Syne."  And as Andrew is quite sad about, there will be no Football games on the TV today.  Oh the excitements of what a New Year will bring!

Gluten Free Bread

Well, I attempted my first gluten-free bread baking from scratch.  It was quite interesting.  I did a bit of reading and looking at different recipes before I got started.  Since rice flour, sorghum flour and all the other flours that are used as substitutes to wheat are so much thicker, it creates some difficulties.  The neatest thing that I did different for baking this bread was putting a pyrex of water on the bottom self of the oven.  It helps to add moisture to the oven and therefore helps the bread to be more moist and not dry.  I also used a convection oven for the first time ever on this bread.  Between trying out gluten free baking and using a convection oven, I'm not sure which one made the biggest difference.

I also decided not to put it in a loaf pan.  It turned out interesting, but it is definitely better than the gluten-free bread that you can buy in a store.  It wasn't exactly bad, but I do think I need some more  practice baking it before I get it right :)

Changes

I know, I keep on changing the background and layout of my blog.  I like all the old ones, but they are just not feeling right.  I think I really like this new look.  Not quite perfect for me yet, but hopefully there will be no major changes again in the future. :)

As far as what we've been up to lately....not much.  We have to wait three weeks, then I have to go back for more blood work.  We have just kinda been hanging around.  This past weekend we went white water rafting with our small group.  It was so much fun!  We all fell out of the raft and had to fight for our lives at one point, but other than that we did amazing :)

Hope all is going well with my readers.  I'll try to keep you up to date with what is going on with us, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) not a whole lot is going on these days.

The New Face of Wheat Harvests

Andrew and I have had a long day in ESL training again today, and this is what I have to show for myself :)  I really liked our old blog background, but I wanted to try to be just a little more high-tech.  This might actually be a little too high-tech for me, as I am struggling through some technical difficulties.  Hopefully ya'll will enjoy the new look though, and be patient with me as I try to get all of the technicalities worked out.  Give me some feedback.  What do you think?  Do you like the new look of the blog?