The Little Things

I want to write a quick blog about this picture so I don't forget it one day.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, I was quite emotional around the time that I found out I was pregnant.  For Christmas, Andrew gave me these little red Converse shoes as a gift, and a sort of symbol that we wanted to have a child.  I knew in my mind that whenever we did get pregnant I wanted to take a picture with all of our shoes to announce the little one.  So, we found out on a Friday that I'm pregnant.  My family usually all gets together on Tuesday for dinner together.  I really wanted to tell them all then so I wouldn't have to wait very long.  In order for the picture to be ordered and sent to them by Tuesday, we needed to take the picture asap.  Unfortunately, that was an extremely rainy and overcast weekend.  Andrew didn't even want to go outside to take the picture, but I convinced him that it would be worth it and that even in the rain the picture would still look cool.  I had a couple of places in mind to take the pictures and this one here is at an overlook just near our house.  When we left our apartment it was raining but not quite as hard and just as we walked up to this overlook the rain slowed down to basically nothing and the clouds parted letting through some sun and sky.  We set the shoes up and Andrew started shooting away and after a minute or two we realized there was a rainbow!  It's quite hard to see in this picture, but coming out of the right hightop, there is a faint rainbow.  It was such a blessing to me.  I was such an emotional wreck, I didn't know how on earth we were going to have a baby, but God cleared the sky for us and gave us a rainbow.  His rainbow is a sign to all the earth that He will never destroy it again by flood, but for me that day, it was His way of comforting me and letting me know He designed this pregnancy and give us this little life and He is going to take care of us even when we don't understand or know how.

As soon as Andrew was satisfied with the pictures he had taken, we were about to move to another location and take some more but the skies closed back up and the rain began falling hard once again.  We decided that those pictures were just perfect and God had given us that little window to take them.  Sometimes it is easy to think that God has so much going on and He doesn't have enough time to worry about your little problems, but that's not who God is.  He loves us, each, individually, and believe it or not, He even cares about the little things in our lives.

Pregnancy Overseas

Well, I don't really know what pregnancy is really like overseas since I am not quite through my first trimester yet, but I'll tell you how it's been so far...

At Christmas time Andrew and I decided that we might be ready to have children.  We weren't really going to try to get pregnant, but just stop all forms of birth control, put it in God's hands and see what happened.  I honestly expected it to be quite a while before we ever got pregnant just because I know so many people who have tried and tried to get pregnant and it took so long for them.  But God blessed us and less than a month later we found out we were pregnant.  Perfect timing :)

I noticed that I was getting quite a bit more emotional about things.  I believe I cried in two taxis the week before we found out I was pregnant.  So, when we did find out, I was quite the emotional wreck.  I realized I had no clue about anything!  I didn't know when I should call the doctor, is it like a sickness where you have to call right away and they see you asap?  Thanks to Google, I found out that in America doctors don't usually see you until like 8 to 10 weeks or something like that, but that you needed to go ahead and call and get your appointment scheduled.  Our company has a list of doctors for our country that they know as good and would recommend.  I pulled out the list and there were two doctors listed under OB/Gyn.  I Googled them both and one of them had his own hospital so I picked him :)  I got up the courage to call...it was a nightmare!  The ladies on the phone didn't have very good English, and I was not of the right state of mind to attempt Arabic.  I finally hung up the phone having made an appointment that was a week and a half away, but realized they never took any of my information and I had no clue which doctor I had made an appointment with!  I called back about a week later to reschedule my time and thankfully I had pulled myself together enough then to be able to confirm the doctor and make sure they had all of my information.

When the day of my first appointment came, we walked the thirty some minutes from our apartment to the  hospital.  We walked into the main lobby of the hospital, told the lady at the reception desk we had an appointment and with whom.  Since it was my first visit, we had to go into the clinic to sign in.  Andrew and I make our way down this little narrow hallway.  There are men everywhere (uncomfortable there are so many men around, but also glad because I kinda thought Andrew might be the only guy there), Andrew has to part the waters for me to make it into the clinic.  The clinic is probably exactly like what you would picture in your mind as a clinic in an Arab country.  There were people standing and sitting everywhere.  I of course am the only white and uncovered woman in the place, it's so hot in there I'm beginning to sweat after just a couple of minutes.  I check in at the desk, they get my name and this is how it is listed on the form: the wife, the husband, the father (my father), the family.  So yes, my dad will be glad to know that he is now registered at the hospital here.  After we fill out the proper paper work, the lady tells us to take a seat.  There are no seats so one of the other girls there tells us to go back out to the lobby and they'll come get us.  As we're waiting all I can think to myself is, "What have we gotten ourselves into?!?"  I didn't want to have my baby in that clinic back there.  Thankfully, after a few minutes of waiting, a lady comes to get us and takes us upstairs to the 11th floor.  When those elevator doors open it was like we were in another country, like back in America but nicer.  Huge windows, huge plush furniture, espresso machines...I knew we had made the right choice :)

I think my first appointment was pretty standard compared to America except that along with the usual mix of things I also got my kidneys and gallbladder sonogramed.  I guess being in the desert a lot of people don't stay hydrated like they should so they show up with a lot of problems.  The doctor wasn't available the day of my first appointment, so his two assistants just did everything.  We got to see the little round ball of our little Wheat and given a long list of blood work I needed to have done.  They scheduled another appointment for me just a couple weeks later.  At that appointment we just went straight up to the 11th floor (bypassing the clinic altogether).  We met the doctor this time and I am pretty sure he is the oldest Arab man I have ever seen in my entire life!  You don't usually see a whole lot of older Arab people (I think mainly just because they stay inside), and this guy just quite frankly is really old.  We did another sonogram and saw little Wheat's heart beating.  I had to do a little bit more blood work because my blood type is O- and they scheduled my next appointment for a month later.

That appointment we had today :)  Everything went smoothly and quickly.  We got to see our little Wheat jumping, kicking and punching.  He was so cute!  It is crazy to believe that that little round thing now looks like a little baby with arms and legs!  The doctor seemed excited that he was jumping.  He said that that rules out a lot of problems he could have, like downs syndrome.  At every appointment they always ask us if we have any questions.  We never do.  We kinda just go with the flow, but I kinda feel bad for not having any questions.  But honestly I don't know enough to have questions.

They scheduled two more appointments for me today.  One in about ten days (after my first trimester is over) and then another one a month after that.  I am not entirely sure, but I think at my next appointment in ten days they are going to do a 3D ultrasound.  We have to go to a different floor for that appointment and I have heard that it is their usual routine to do a few 3D ultrasounds during the pregnancy.  So who knows?  Maybe!

Here is our sonogram picture from today.  Unfortunately it doesn't look as clear and you can't see his/her little arms and legs, but trust me they're there!

Sorry this was such a long blog, maybe my Mom and Aunt Sharon will enjoy it :)  Thanks for reading and I'll definitely try to keep you updated, especially if I do get that 3D ultrasound in ten days.

Little Wheat

I guess since we officially announced it on Facebook, I should probably write a quick blog about it too :)  Andrew and I are expecting a little Wheat!  I'm not quite out of my first trimester yet, I am a little over half way through my tenth week, so not too much further.  My official due date at this point is September 21st.  I was going to try to wait till after the first trimester to make the official announcement, but I just couldn't wait any longer!  I'll write more later about all the details that I am sure only people like my mother want to know :)  But for now, We're Expecting!

This is the picture that I sent to my family to tell them that we were expecting.  The picture I sent to them had words on the bottom that said: Coming September 2012.  They couldn't figure out what the picture meant so we ended up just having to tell them.  Later one of my sister's friends guessed that we were predicting the rapture.  Although I can see it, we're not announcing the Lord's return but rather a little Wheat.

Language School

I don't have too much to write, but I wanted to update my blog.  Today we had the first day of our second week at language school.  Andrew and I are loving every minute of it so far!  We were able to test into the second semester and so our whole class is made up of students who all tested into the second semester.  Sometimes we know more than they do, and sometimes they know more than we do, but regardless, we are all trying to get the hang of this new school.  Just in the first week of school Andrew and I have already learned so much grammar and we are looking forward to the months ahead and all that we will learn and progress in Arabic we will make.

Rearranging

Well, we have been living in this apartment for a few weeks now and we have had a few troubles, but in spite of it all, we still like it alright :)  When we returned from Christmas (we went back to our original city) we had a bit of a mold problem.  We have since been trying to treat it.  It's been slow going with the mold, but it is getting better day by day.  On New Years evening, we had a pipe "fall off the wall" in the bathroom.  It was truly just like the movies where water is spraying out everywhere.  Andrew was trying desperately to get the pipe back on, and all I could do was laugh uncontrollably at the situation.  There was so much water it was flooding the bathroom and beginning to come out into the rest of the apartment.  Fortunately I could hold it together long enough to keep squeegeeing the water into the drainage hole in the bathroom (remember the one from the laundry).  Andrew ran down to get our landlord.  A few minutes later the two of them come running through the door frantically and they get the water turned off. Our landlord told us 5 minutes and a plumber would be up to fix it.  The first thought I had was, "An Arab 5 minutes?"  Arabs tend to be more free with their time, not using clocks and things of that nature.  Their day runs mostly off the sun and moon.  Incredibly though, about 5 minutes later a plumber and the building manager showed up and probably within 20 minutes had the thing fixed!  We were a little late for our NYE plans, but things turned out okay and we had a great story to tell when we got there :)

Here are a couple of pictures.  We have recently rearranged our little apartment.  We were able to acquire a small dinning table.  The place is beginning to feel like home.

Here is a little section of our mold.  It's along the bottom of the walls in the entry way and a little behind the big sofa in our living area.  This is not mold in the picture.  We have scraped off a lot of the paint to try to get to the mold's roots.  We had been spraying chemicals on it, but recently we have been washing it with baking soda water and then Andrew smears a baking soda paste on and leaves it, that's what you're seeing here.  Baking soda is not only supposed to kill the fungi, but also helps keep away moisture.  It's been working the best so far.

Washing Wednesdays

Now for the long awaited post about our washing machine!  Since we have moved to the big city, we now have to deal with limited water.  In our old town, we lived right on the sea and an aquifer so we had unlimited water.  Now that we are in the city and miles and miles from the nearest source of water with millions of people to water, we are limited.  Unfortunately, our first full week here we found out just how much this limited water affects us when we ran out on a Monday night and found out our tanks wouldn't be refilled until Wednesday.  Wednesday is when the water comes to our area of the city, so we can use as much water as we want on Wednesdays and it won't affect the rest of our week on the tank.  With that in mind, Wednesdays is when I try to get all the laundry and cleaning done.  So, without further ado, here's the procedure for laundry these days :)

Here's my washing machine (in the bathroom)

First things first, I have to plug in the washer.  Yes, that's right, I plug in the washer outside of the bathroom.

Load the big cylinder up with laundry.  You get to join us for towels :)

Next I have to fill up the cylinder with water.  There are two tubes I am supposed to hook together and connect to the sink in the bathroom to fill up the cylinder with, but it's too difficult and leaks a lot, so I just take the "shatafa" (kinda like a water hose for the toilet), turn it on and rig it up so it will be filling while I walk around and do stuff around the house instead of standing there holding it the whole time.

Add some detergent, put the lid back on and set the cycle for anything up to 15 minutes.  I was doing everything for 15 minutes, but I am noticing it is really rough on our clothes, so I've been putting it on for less time.

When it's done (no beep or anything I just notice I don't hear it anymore) it looks like this, sometimes more sometimes less suds.

Now for the draining.  This is a hole in the floor of our bathroom.  We also have one in the kitchen.  It's actually quite nice when you're mopping.

So I have to take hose from the washer and put it to this hole.  The water comes out too fast/strong, so I have to kneel here the whole time it's draining and hold the hose to the hole so water doesn't get all over the bathroom floor.

Here's a good view of the gauges on the washer.  Once I drain the water, I basically repeat all the previous steps except for the detergent to rinse the clothes/towels.

Once I have rinsed and drained, I then move all the clothes over to the second cylinder.  If I do a full load on the left side, I will not be able to fit them all in on the right, so I'll have to take several turns to get them all done.

There's this weird lid thing I put on top of the spinner cylinder.  I guess it keeps the clothes from flying out?

Close all the lids and set it to spin for 5 minutes.

They look kinda like this when they're done.  All smashed up against the sides.

I drain everything again and set to hanging up the wet stuff to dry.  Here's our drying rack.  I did another load of laundry after this pic so I was saving room on the rack for more clothes to come.

For big towels and jeans, I hang them on Andrew's pull up bars :)

Since our new apartment is so cold and it's quite wet in the city right now, it takes several days for clothes to dry and can take up to a week for jeans and big towels.

Well, that's just a brief summary of how we get our clothes done :)  If you're ever doing some cleaning on a Wednesday, think about us, we're probably cleaning too!

The Move

For those of you who have not heard, we just recently moved.  We were living in a small town/city of about 100,000 people in the South of our current country.  A little over a week ago, we moved up to a big city (almost 3 million people).  The main reason for our move was language.  For the past year we have been studying Arabic with tutors who may or may not be reliable to show up and who may or may not be well educated in Arabic themselves.  Because of these and a few other reasons, our Arabic was just not progressing as it should be, so we made the decision to move to the big city where we will now be able to attend an actual language school.  Our hopes are high that our Arabic will get a jump-start and we will be able to quickly progress.  Our language school doesn't begin their new semester till the end of January, so in the meantime, we are getting some tutoring from a tutoring center in hopes of bringing our grammar skills up so we will be able to test into the next semester at the language school.

The move and transition to the big city was fairly smooth.  We got settled in and unpacked fairly quickly. We are still getting to know our neighborhood.  We are not used to having everything we need right outside our door, and we are also not used to taxi rides taking thirty minutes or more (did I fail to mention that it is also extremely cold here right now).  Even though we have just moved cities, it feels like we have moved to a different country in a way.  I (Sarah) have a lot more freedom and independence in the big city than I did in our small one.  Because it is a big city, there is a lot more western influence and sometimes I feel like I am actually in Europe or the States.  I just recently read that our city is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, and sometimes looking out our window at the buildings surrounding us, I can see that it is true.

Welcome!

View from the entry of our place

Maybe the smallest kitchen in the world, but since it's open it doesn't feel as small

Our Bedroom....ignore the mess, it was a last minute decision to take pictures

Guest bedroom

View from our Bedroom

Bath

Washing Machine that will get it's own blog at a later date :)