Saint Patrick's Day!

Well, in the States, I never really cared much about Saint Patrick's Day.  I guess it's because here no one even knows about Saint Patrick's Day and a need to have some American around me, but I forced Andrew to wear green today in Saint Patrick's honor.  We went out to dinner with some American friends tonight, and I thought it would be funny to go buy some green food coloring and give it to the people at the restaurant to put in their rice so when they served us it would be green.  But alas, we did not (it would have been funny though), instead we just got occasional laughs from our friends for wearing green.

The Watermelon Farm

At this phase in our language learning, we are using children's story books to help us learn Arabic.  Our language tutor reads us the story and then we either understand or gain new words from the story.

This is the last page of one of our most recent stories

Any ideas on what's going on?

The short version:  This little rabbit steals watermelons from a fox's garden.  The Mom tells the rabbit not to steal from the fox.  The fox tries to catch the rabbit but the rabbit escapes only loosing his tail.  He returns home with no tail and his mother's response is, "You deserved it."

Yes, that's right.  This is a children's story book.  Graphic picture of a little rabbit with oozing coming from where his tail should have been with his mother's response, "You deserved it."  I guess this story is followed up by the real life punishment of getting your hand chopped off if you are caught stealing.  I honestly don't know if they still chop off your hand if you are caught stealing.  I have not seen anyone walking around with a missing hand, but I do believe it is part of Islamic Law.

Blast From the Past

This is a picture from the summer of 2003.  I spent the summer after my freshman year of college in Burkina Faso, West Africa.  That was the sickest two months of my life; looking back I would like to think it was the Celiacs'.  It was the most painful months of my life physically: living in village huts, sleeping on the ground, walking miles every day in painful heat, being sick the entire time I was there and topping it all off with Malaria to finish up my trip 30 lbs lighter than when I left (thanks to my freshman year of college which gave me something to loose).  Although it was the most challenging time of my life physically, I look back on those two months with joy and fond memories.  It was the worst and best two months of my life.  

It was the first time I had ever spent more than two weeks out of the country, and it confirmed for me my desire to live overseas permanently one day.  I am pretty sure I was the tallest, whitest girl in the entire country.  I got at least one marriage proposal every day I was there, but thankfully I held out for Andrew :)  Even to this day, a certain breeze or a random building will take me back to those two months in West Africa.  When Andrew and I decided to head out overseas and were thinking of where we would go, West Africa came up frequently in my thoughts.  It was a tough place to live, but it will always hold a special place in my heart.

Life Overseas

Script of Life

We have just recently started a new phase of language study.  One of the things that we are doing now as part of our language study is something called "Script of Life."  This is basically taking a simple task that we are familiar with, breaking it down literally step by step and learning how to say each of those steps in Arabic.  We go over all the new words and then we act out actually doing the steps in order to reinforce the action with the Arabic word.  Our Arabic teacher loves this and she thinks it is a great time to teach us how to make simple Arabic foods (or mostly salads since they are quick and easy).  We have been enjoying learning how to make these delicious foods as well.  So, instead of just pantomiming the actions of doing something, we actually make the food.  One of this week's salads was hummus.

I made a fresh loaf of gluten free bread to go along with our hummus which conveniently finished up about the time we finished making the hummus.  Thus our language study continues to pay off and be rewarding. 

Mom Cave

I really enjoy sewing, crafts and just in general making things.  I get a Quilting Daily newsletter via email everyday.  Today's was about "Mom Caves."  Although I am not a mother, I would love to have one of these!

I have not been nearly as creative as I would like to be since we have been here.  It is difficult to get into the mood of making things and making a home more homier since I know we will not be in this house long term. We do not need to accumulate stuff, and I feel like we have already accumulated enough to make it the bare minimum of homey.  One day maybe I will have my own area to be creative in :)

Parades

People here love to have parades!  I do not mean the kind we usually think of in the States with floats and balloons and such.  No, the people here simply all pile into their cars, drive around town honking their horns, with their lights on, the passengers hanging out the windows and the windshield wipers going (yes, in a country that does not get much rain you got to use them for something).  The people here use just about any excuse to have a parade, be it a wedding, winning a football (soccer) game, passing your test in school or just about anything else you can think of.

Lately we have been seeing a lot of parades with people carrying flags.  When we win a soccer game, people parade around with the flag, but these flags have been bigger than the ones they usually use for soccer, and they are not always our national flag.  We asked some friends and they told us it was for the king's birthday.  We didn't feel like this was a good answer because it is not the king's birthday now, and we figured that many people couldn't have gotten the date wrong.  We finally got another answer that seems to fit better.

With all the unrest going on in countries in this part of the world, people want to have parades to let the king know that they like him and they support him.  With all that we hear on the news, I am thankful to be living in a peaceful country.  A majority of the people are very happy and proud of the king.  Obviously everyone is not completely happy, but the issues that they have are not that big and are dealt with peacefully.