Recent Happenings

Well, folks, it's been a while since we last posted anything here. Here's some snippets of life for us lately . . .

Nathan is rolling over both ways now and scooting backwards in the walker. He's also just started eating some solid foods.

We got to visit a 600 year old tree with some friends. It was fun to sit under the huge limbs and drink tea and eat some delicious food!

We learned that if it looks like it's raining too hard to get out and about, it probably is! In order to get to a new coffee/pizza place so we could have a "homework date" we ended up in the middle of the rainstorm of all rainstorms. We were so wet you would have thought we just stood fully clothed under a faucet. It was terrible! Later in the day we found out that there had been lots of flooding downtown where we had been. If we had waited much longer to get home we would have had a very hard time getting back. After all of that we didn't even get our coffee. We ended up back at home drinking Nescafe (instant flavored cofee).

The pizza/coffee place mentioned above is a new place. Their specialties are pizza, coffee, and cheesecake. You can also get a steak and cheese sandwich - philly cheese steak-ish with corn! It's actually quite good, even with the corn. :-) We hope this place will get lots of business because the handful of foreign families living here LOVE it! Mark and I went for a date one night, and I ate an entire small pizza, a piece of cheesecake, and drank a huge mug of hot chocolate. (Gotta love all the calories my body is burning from nursing our little hungry hippo!) I felt so sick after all that!

Mark got bitten by a very long and scary looking centipede. Didn't know they bite? We didn't either . . . Didn't know they could get into your house, crawl up into your furniture, and sneak into your covers at night looking for a snack? We didn't either . . . but we saw it with our own eyes! He's OK, but he said it's the most painful "bug" bite he's ever felt. We tried to take a picture of the creepy thing, but he got away (we thought he was dead, but I guess we were wrong). Just so you know, those things can run fast!!!

I realized, after we got caught in such a terrible rainstorm that led to some serious and unexpected flooding, how much I miss really good weather forecasting! Yes, while living in the States I was a news-a-holic! I LOVED to watch the weather especially. Here, you're lucky if you find out what the temperature will be in a city an hour or so away. After that bad rain system came through, there were a couple of forecasting centers set up with some special forecasting equipment. It was like going back in time! People here were saying they've never seen rain like we had that day, and I guess since it's so unusual for it to rain that hard no one was prepared or really knew what to do in such a storm. No kidding, there was rain, wind, thunder, and lightning for a full 24 hours! It was like a tropical system in a place that's far from tropical!

I'll leave you with a few recent pictures of Nathan. Good night!

our future fisherman

It was a really long day!

getting ready for his first solid food meal
Can you tell he likes to eat?!

"Where's the TV remote?"

What will the neighbors say?

The other night, Mark and I were both up with Nathan in the middle of the night. He was so restless, crying, fussy, and both of us were walking around a little dazed and confused and at our wit's end trying to figure out what else to do with this unhappy baby. I had the bright idea that I was going to try to go back to sleep while Mark sat with him for a little while. But in our little apartment there was no getting away from the crying. I got back up, and Mark was headed out the door with Nathan. It was about 4 in the morning. A hundred questions were going through my head, but I was so out of it by that point I didn't even ask. I honestly thought he was going to just go sit in the car with Nathan.

A little while later, I heard the door unlock, and here comes Mark pushing Nathan (who was bright-eyed and very happy) in the stroller. I was relieved to know that they hadn't been just sitting in the car because I kept thinking, "What will the neighbors say if they see them in the car like that?" Then Mark explained this story to me . . .

As soon as he got Nathan outside he immediately stopped crying. Mark remembered that the stroller was in the trunk of the car, so he decided to stroll him around the neighborhood for a little while. (Remember: 4 AM) He noticed some older women sitting on the balcony eating breakfast (they eat before sunrise because of their fasting right now). Then he saw how quickly they all popped up out of their seats to watch this man pushing a stroller around the street in the middle of the night. So much for the relief I felt when I realized they hadn't been sitting in the car. Now the neighbors had even better ammunition - we had our baby in the cold night air! And what would they have thought if they had seen he was only wearing a onesie with no pants, socks, or blanket?!

Somehow we finally managed to get him back to sleep, and amazingly, I've heard no whispers of the crazy foreigners who take their baby out for a stroll in the middle of the night! Of course, I can imagine that some of those women watching Mark have done some even stranger things to get a baby to sleep! Oh, to hear the stories they could tell!!!

Our feast

Tonight we hosted some local friends for a large evening meal. They are fasting each day from sun-up to sundown, and the meal that breaks the fast in the evenings is often eaten together with family or friends. Since we aren't fasting, and the preparations for such a large meal when you aren't even supposed to taste test anything, can be difficult, we're trying to bless a few friends by preparing the meal for them and giving them a break.

Here's what we had to eat:
dried dates (traditionally used to break the fast along with a glass of room temperature water)
rice stuffed grape leaves (I bought these ready made at the grocery store - yahoo!)
tomato soup (homemade and not too shabby)
salad
pickled veggies (out of a store bought jar)
bread (right out of the baker's oven - piping hot - mmm, mmm good!)
a vegetable medley (potatoes, tomatoes, green/red peppers, eggplant, zucchini, garlic that's all fried/sauteed first then all placed together and stewed. Yummy!)
bulgur pilav
a local version of chicken stir fry (with onions, garlic, peppers, and tomatoes)

And after all that, our guests were too stuffed to eat the dessert I made, so we just sat on the balcony and chatted while we drank our tea. (I didn't think the dessert turned out all that great anyway. It's these bland little cookie things that are soaked in a sugar syrup and serve cold with cream or coconut.)

We had a great time with our friends, and if I must say so myself, "It was delicious!" I will also tell you that I've never chopped so many veggies before in my life! There is a reason no one cooks like this every day of the year!!!

More Good News

I'm wearing my bracelet! And it only cost about 3 dollars to have it fixed.

Good News

My bracelet has been found! Now to get to the shop and pick it up before it gets lost on that very dirty and crowded work table again!!!

(For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, please read the previous post.)