From the Other "M" in the Journal

Hmm - where to start. As you can probably tell this is the other m from the other m that writes in our m&m journal. Now that I have you totally confused - here is my first post. Let me just tell you how my day started out today. You may or may not know our hot water heater runs off of propane gas (like you would have for your gas grill outside). Well we have one of those propane tanks underneath our kitchen sink to heat our water and one for our gas stove. You never know when you are going to run out of gas until you run out of gas. For example as I was in the shower this morning the gas decided to run out and when it runs out it runs out. No warm shower for me just cold water. But what does the Book say? It says: rejoice in everything, and if that was not enough it says it again, "rejoice". I rejoice because I have water.

Late last night I had a friend drop in that I had been trying to reconnect with unsuccessfully. I called his cell phone and even sent text messages in our new language (of course my sentences were really short) but was still unable to connect with him, until last night - he just dropped by for a late night visit (that can happen a lot here). He showed me my text messages. He had saved those text messages and he actually understood what I was trying to say to him. As we sat and visited we looked through a small photo album. He laughed at the pictures where I had hair. We were able to communicate a whole lot more than the first time we met. He doesn't speak any English so I always look forward to communicating with him.

This Friday - both mm's are going to a furniture store for lunch. You heard me right - who would have thought you could have food at a furniture store, right? Well, I have a friend that owns a furniture store who I have eaten lunch with on several occasions. The older lady that cooks the food told me the other day that she had missed me because she had not seen me for seven whole days and wanted me to come this week for food (meaning: lunch). I said I will come this Friday, so we are going to a furniture for lunch this Friday. I can't wait.

Just to clear things up . . .

Several people have sent messages telling me what a great job I did on the "turkey," but I should have added to the description that it was another lady who thought of it. And there were about 5 ladies working on it together. I cannot take credit for something so creative!! I wish I could! Also, some of you asked if that was the only turkey we had. No, we actually had real turkey. Not a whole turkey - but turkey nonetheless. Turkey here comes cut and packaged like skinless, boneless, chicken breasts. It took quite a few packages to feed our crowd!

I broke down tonight and bought 1/2 kilo of half ground beef/half ground lamb. It was on sale for $10.99 per kilo. Of course, when I got to the check out counter I couldn't find my discount card and had to ask for a new one just to get the special price on it! We also bought a package of beef sausage things (kind of like pepperoni) to try. Before we buy the big "sausages" (none of it's pork) we thought we'd try little pieces first.

We'll be sure to report back on the new additions to our diet!

Look who made it to our feast!!

Isn't he a beauty?! It took some time and quite a bit of team work to get him looking so good. And he was delicious!!

We had our big Thanksgiving meal yesterday in a nearby city. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we ate some really delicious food, spent time talking with one another, and gave thanks to God for all of His blessings.

It was just like at home . . . the ladies were scrambling around the kitchen trying to get lunch ready, while the men were getting in the way, trying their hardest to taste test pies and other goodies, and the kids were playing together all over the house. Thankfully, we had some snacks that distracted the men for a while, and then they made it outside to play some football.

Our contribution to the meal included two pumpkin rolls and a potato casserole (like hasbrown casserole). A friend had some canned pumpkin that I could use for the pumpkin rolls, so other than a few minor differences in a couple of ingredients, they turned out really nice. The potato casserole was also really yummy, but it did require a little more work. At home, I could buy frozed hashbrowns, canned condensed soup, and bags of grated cheese. Here, we had to buy a bag of frozen french fries and cut them into hasbrown-sized pieces (this was a team effort!). I had to make my own condensed soup using a powdered soup mix. And I shredded my own cheese. It still didn't take too long, but it's not something I'll be making all the time!

We're supposed to all get together for Christmas, too, so we can't wait to see what makes it on the menu for that day!!

A Different Kind of Day

We hope that yesterday all of you enjoyed a day full of joy, laughter, and turkey, of course! This is our first Thanksgiving outside of the States, so we did have a different kind of Thanksgiving Day. It wasn't exactly business as usual, but it wasn't an extra special day either. It was somewhere in between. We did sleep in, and for breakfast I (Melissa) took the time to make from-scratch orange cinnamon biscuit rolls - kind of like the Pillsbury ones. We enjoyed every bite!! We went downtown with another family to see the recently released and translated "Garfield" movie. We understood a few words, so we could follow what was going on pretty well. We actually did have turkey for dinner, but it was in the form of sandwich meat, and I made some party sandwiches using a special kind of dough that is sold here - very tasty! Then we went over to visit with some other families from the US for dessert and a little football. Apple pie, chocolate-peanut butter squares, vanilla ice cream, and hot chocolate were served. YUMMY!! We had some of ALL of it! We even got to see a wrap-up of Macy's parade on BBC World - well, we got to see a brief clip of Santa but not really any of the balloons. They just described what characters were highlighted this year.

Tomorrow we will have our real Thanksgiving celebration with a few other families in a nearby city. Complete with cranberry sauce, potato casserole, carrot souffle (we can't get sweet potatoes), pumpkin pie, pumpkin roll, and, the star of the show, a turkey!! One of the moms has chosen a skit for the children and some of us adults to act out in honor of the pilgrims. It should prove to be quite entertaining!

Thanks to all of you who sent your Thanksgiving wishes over the past few days! We've enjoyed hearing from each of you.

Blessings,
M&M

Thanksgiving

I've tried for two weeks to explain what Thanksgiving Day is about to my friends/neighbors. I haven't adequately succeeded yet!! I guess it's going to take a little more language skill than we have at the moment. Maybe I should have carried along a Pilgrim hat to use as a prop!

Since you all know what it's about, I thought I'd share our "what we're thankful for" list with you. Family and friends go without saying, so in addition to all the usual things . . . . . these are things we either have never had to be thankful for before now or took for granted in the past.

Vonage/Skype - for LONG distance calls (webcam, too!)
E-mail - for LONG distance notes
CNBC & BBC
English subtitles
Extra money when our driver accuses us of not paying our "taxi" fee
Covered windows
The public toilet downtown (even if it only has squatty potties and we have to pay to use it)
Chicken
Bottled water
Coke
Nescafe
Burger King & Starbucks - even though they're over an hour away
Bread (especially when our doorman delivers it in the mornings)
Correctly formulating a sentence and being understood
A friend who carries fancy slippers to an afternoon tea for me because she knows I don't have my own
A plate full of sardines (because it shows we are liked by our neighbors)
Friends who tell us over and over again to visit them at their shop (even though we did buy from their rival company instead of them)
Closets
Slip on shoes (since they have to be removed at the door)
A hot cup of tea

Oh, it could go on and on, but those are a few things I can think of that we are truly thankful for every day. Have fun making your own lists this week/weekend! Try to think past the usual.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Bon Appetit!

Last night as I was getting our leftover spaghetti dressed up to go in the oven as a baked dish our door bell rang. It was one of our neighbors, and she handed me a plate wrapped in aluminum foil. She said it was fish. We thanked her, wished her a good night, and closed the door, hoping there would be no heads or eyeballs under that foil!! It turned out to be a plate full of sardines (beheaded thankfully). Neither of us had ever tasted these little fish but we knew that we could not avoid it here - the time had come!! So we each grabbed a fork and dug in. Surprisingly, they weren't all that bad. I won't go so far as to say we'll be cooking them ourselves, but at least when they are served to us we'll be able to handle them. So for supper we had leftover baked spaghetti, broccoli, AND sardines!! How crazy is that?! I'm sure it's only the first of many interesting food combinations. Bon appetit!!!

All in a Day's Work

Hello, all! We hope that today finds you enjoying a beautiful fall day!! It occurred to me (Melissa) that maybe you are curious to know what a typical day is like for us. Well, I'll attempt to describe what a "typcial" day is like. About the only thing that remains constant is our quiet times in the mornings! After that, it is different depending on the day.

Most mornings we spend a couple of hours on homework. During that time, we also try to get some laundry done (that is, if the clothes on the drying rack from the previous load are dry). Since it takes so long to wash one load, it works really well to run the washing machine during our study time. Multi-tasking at its finest!!

Then, if homework doesn't take any longer than a couple of hours AND if we're not waiting on something to be delivered (like water or gas) we'll head downtown to shop or visit with our friends who work downtown. Usually after being downtown for a couple of hours or so, we need a break before language class. So sometimes we'll spend a little time at home before going to class. We might review our homework and/or vocabulary or just rest our eyes/minds for a few minutes. Class is about a 20 minute walk, so we get some good exercise (up and downhill) on Mon., Tues., and Fri. evenings! Now that I'm meeting more of the ladies in my apartment building, I'll be spending less time downtown and more time at afternoon teas. Yummy!

After class, we sometimes stop by the market to pick up some groceries before cooking supper. Or we might stop by a restaurant on the way home to get something to eat. We discovered a great one on the way home a couple of nights ago!

Then after supper, we try to get caught up on e-mail, maybe work on some homework, watch a little local TV, read, fix something not working on the computer, do more laundry, finish our house chores, etc. You get the picture. We're hoping that soon we'll start getting some invitations to have dinner or evening coffee with our friends in their homes.

It all sounds like lots of fun - and it is - but it is also quite demanding and draining mentally! In order to become proficient speakers of the language in a timely manner, we are following a program that is designed with at least 30 hours of language learning activity each week - that's like a full time job. We are getting 6 hours of language class time each week with a teacher. We are also required to spend at least 6 hours a week in personal study (homework, vocab. review, etc.). We have the option to employ a tutor for a few hours each week, but in two weeks our tutors haven't shown up at all. We aren't sure what's going on. Then the biggest chunk of time is to be spent in the community with native language speakers - at least 12 hours, but since we haven't had a tutor, we're supposed to be getting about 18 community hours. That's the hardest part!! Right now, our community time is spent listening to people speak and trying to figure out at least the topic they're discussing. Then if we're really thinking clearly, we might be able to formulate a response. We are understanding A LOT more than we did a month ago, and we are very grateful for that!!

So there you have it! No two days are exactly the same, but that's about what we can expect each day. Living in a place where the norm is to expect the unexpected, to never get in a hurry because people will be late, and to chunk your to-do list after being awake for only an hour or two is teaching us so much about taking things one day at a time and enjoying each moment as it comes. I hope that you will take some time away from your to-do list today, quit worrying about what may or may not happen later today or tomorrow, and enjoy the life you've been blessed with at this very moment!! Remember the flowers of the field and the birds of the sky . . . you are more precious than both.

BINGO

Tonight I (Melissa) attended my first "Ladies Night Out" with some of my neighbors. We drank lots of tea, ate some cookies, and played BINGO. It was lots of fun and GREAT practice listening to numbers in our new language. The most interesting part of the evening was when I realized that the catalogs being passed around the room of women were for Avon and Tupperware!! How about that?! I suppose that we women really all speak the same "language," huh? I didn't buy anything tonight, but after I begin to understand some more of the language I might have to do a little shopping!

Our relationships are beginning to blossom, and it is so exciting to begin to understand a few words here and there when we speak with them! Nights like tonight are just what we need to jump start our language skills.

The rest of our furniture was delivered tonight, so stay posted . . . we'll send pictures soon.

Yum Yum!!

The snickerdoodles were a huge success! Our neighbor's mother liked them so well that she asked for the recipe. Now I have a problem . . . every recipe I find for snickerdoodles calls for cream of tartar, which is not sold here. I've found a couple of substitutions online, but I was wondering if maybe some of you "chefs" out there have a good substitution for cream of tartar. Please pass it along if you do!! In the meantime, I'll experiment with what I've found online.

Snickerdoodles anyone?

In our city, it is a very hospitable thing to take a small gift (often food) to someone when you visit, especially the first visit. The last time I visited a neighbor I took banana bread (which they think of as cake instead of bread). They seemed to like it OK. This time I've made snickerdoodles. The name may be a little strange for them, but it's not really unlike some of the cookies we've had here. I just can't wait to hear how they pronounce the word "snickerdoodles!" It's such a fun word!! I'll let you know what they think of them.

If you've never had snickerdoodles let me know and I'll send the recipe to you. They're great!!

We made it!

Well, we made it to the mall and back safely! We had a good time, but it wasn't terribly relaxing. If you think malls are crowded at home on the weekends you should have seen the people at this mall!! People were everywhere - it ended up being quite the cultural experience.

We started with a Whopper, Jr. value meal at Burger King - Mark had Pepsi, Melissa had an off-brand "Fanta" orange drink. Then we wandered around looking at the different stores in the mall - quite a few name brands we recognized from home. The least enjoyable part of the experience was our real shopping at this huge Wal-mart like store. To get a cart you have to insert a coin into this chain/lock kind of thing and it releases the cart from the other carts. So we did that and were off to look for all the random things on our shopping list. Some things we found, some things we didn't find, and some things we thought we found until we got home, unpackaged them and found out that it wasn't exactly what we thought it was!! Overall, it was successful though. We got the most important things. Then we made it through the check-out line, got the warranty papers completed for a couple of things (every electronic gadget here comes with a warranty and you have to go to a separate customer service desk to get it done after checking out - it's not a difficult process, just time-consuming), returned one of our carts, and unloaded all of our stuff into the van. Whew!!! I'm tired just thinking about it all again!

After that we decided to check out the movies. Nothing good was playing, so we decided to skip the movie and go straight for the Starbucks - YUMMY!! It really was delicious! Wish we could sit down with some of you with a hot cup of coffee and catch up.

So now we're back home and back to life as usual - washing clothes, washing dishes, sweeping the floor, gathering the trash, etc. Oh yeah, and putting together the things we bought that didn't come pre-assembled. You know how that goes!

We have a busy schedule this week, but I'll try to post again as soon as I can. Take care!

Thinking About Home

I've noticed this week that I'm starting to miss things from home. Of course, I miss my friends and family, but I mean things. Like the other night I was thinking that I would love to have a pizza or some really crispy fried chicken. Then Mark started talking about Taco Bell. I miss the familiarity of things at home - roads, stores, words on signs, houses, restaurants, foods, TV shows, etc. Don't get me wrong . . . I have enjoyed getting to know my way around this new place and getting to know the people. But I am realizing how often I took the familiar for granted. And even after a month the thought of a store as big as Super-Walmart blows my mind!!

So with all of that in mind, I think Mark and I are going on a date this weekend. There is a city a little over an hour away that has a mall with some fun things to do. We were going to go just to do some necessary shopping and come right back home, but there are a few places in the mall that are "imported" from home that we are looking forward to enjoying - like Starbucks and Burger King! A little taste of home!!

Let's just hope we can find our way. It's the first time we've been out of the city alone. Yikes!! We'll report back and let you know we found our way back home. Maybe we'll even have some crazy, silly story to tell about our adventures during the day!

Until then . . .
M&M

If a picture's worth a thousand words . . .

. . . a language class is worth two thousand at least! We're in our third week of language class, and tonight for the first time we actually communicated with our teacher in sentences using our new language. That is so exciting!! He said something about an exam sometime in the near future. Hmmmm . . . we're not so sure we're ready for that.

We at least know how to say a few things if we have time to think about it. For example, our rent is due this week, so we have to go to the bank to pay it. Before we go, we will write down how to say "I want to pay rent." so when we get there we won't stutter while trying to think of the right words to say. It worked today when we had to get something photocopied, so hopefully it will work at the bank tomorrow, too!!

Who knew talking could be such hard work?!

Wishing you many meaningful conversations,
M&M

Just a Glimpse

This is just a glimpse of what we see everyday. Isn't it beautiful?!

The Rugs

Just thought some of you might be interested in seeing the rugs we purchased from Mark's new friend (see previous blog). We think they're great!! What do you think? Around the edges there's even a sparkly, metallic gold thread woven into it. It's too bad you can't see it in the picture!

Making Friends

Well, this has been a week full of all kinds of experiences. But the ones I want to share with you deal with us making new friends in our city and apartment building.

I'll start with Mark's story. . . . .

We visited with a friend at a hardware store on Thursday to practice our new language skills (and help him with his English). A couple of his friends were there, too. Mark asked them if there was a place they would recommend to us for rug shopping. They told us there was a store right around the corner, and one of the men walked us to the store. We went in, met one of the "sales reps" and began to look at rugs. We found a couple that we liked but we realized that we forgot to bring a pillow from our furniture to match it to. Mark tried countless times to tell them that we needed to go home to get our pillow to match the colors, but they kept showing us more rugs thinking that we wanted to see beige colors. The word Mark was using for pillow was close in sound to the word beige, so they just thought we were saying, in English, that we wanted to see beige. Finally, after seeing several different rugs and trying to explain about the pillow, Mark told them that our money was at home. (That was something we had learned to say in language class during the previous class!) They understood that and told us they would be waiting for us. We came home, got the pillow AND some cash since we told them we left our money at home. When we took the pillow into the store, they understood what we were trying to do and were so helpful!! They showed us even more rugs!!! We found the perfect match and ordered two of them. They only had one like that in the shop, so they told us the factory would deliver it to the store on Friday. Mark was told to come back and ride with them to our apartment. Well, after they delivered it to our apartment, we decided that we liked the bigger size the best, and Mark headed back to the store. This time, while waiting to deliver the rug, the "sales rep" took Mark to lunch. On the way to the restaurant he walked with Mark arm in arm, waving to ALL of his friends, and telling them about Mark, his new friend. Of course, he doesn't speak English! The really cool thing about this is that by the time Mark's new friend went back to his rug shop, he referred to Mark as his brother. That is probably one of the highest compliments to be given by a local friend. So now Mark has the freedom to go back anytime he wants to this rug shop just to visit and have tea. How cool is that?!

OK - so on to my (Melissa's) story . . . also on Friday. I have only met one of our apartment building neighbors during the month we've been here, so I decided that this would be the week to get out and meet some women. There is a lady upstairs from us that speaks English, whom we've spoken with briefly a time or two. I thought that would be a great place to start. (I even made banana bread to share!) I went again on Fri. and she wasn't home again. Well, I remembered one of Mark's friends downtown telling us about a family on the same floor as us that he and his wife are good friends with. I decided to guess which apartment would be the right one. I stood between two doors for a brief moment listening for noise in each apartment, thinking that it would help me firgure out who was home. I heard noise in both apartments, so I made a aplit second decision to knock on door number 2. The lady of the house opened the door, took my banana bread, gave me a pair of slippers to put on (about a size too small), and ushered me into the salon within a matter of seconds, it seemed. All the while, she was rattling off all sorts of words I didn't understand. There were two other women in the salon, and she introduced me and (I think) told them that I'm the new person in apartment number 1. My hostess asked me if I wanted water, tea, or coffee. I asked for coffee, which was delivered to me with a placte full of food!! While she was bringing coffee and food to me, more women started arriving, and one of the women in the salon when I arrived called her daughter, who speaks English very well, to welcome me and explain why all the other women were coming. Unknown to me, this group of friends was having their bi-weekly gathering for socializing. So here I was with a plate full of food, the only one in the room (10 women at this point) with food! And the only one who doesn't speak the native language!! I finished my food about the time the table was set and all the food was spread out for all the other women to enjoy. I think I drank 2 or 3 more cups of tea, but I couldn't eat another bite! I enjoyed listening to the conversation, and occasionally I could pick up some word or phrase. Then they all started giving money to one of the women. I had heard about what they were doing, but before I could try to explain that I understood the same lady with the English-speaking daughter called her daughter and had her explain it to me. When they meet twice a month, each person gives a set amount of money to the lady hosting it. It comes from a tradition that was meant to help women save money to buy something special. I stayed a total of 2 hours, but for this introvert, it seemed like an eternity!!! I was invited to the next gathering in 2 weeks. The problem is that I don't know where any of these women live! Thankfully, I also got a couple of phone numbers, including the English-speaking daughter, so I'll find my way.

We are so excited about these new friends!! Maybe soon we'll be able to have some real conversations in their language.

If you haven't made a new friend in a long time, look for opportunities to meet someone new this week. You never know what kind of adventure it will lead to!!!