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!!!

Home Cookin'

I've just begun to try my hand at cooking in our new home, and so far it's been OK. Nothing spectacular but edible nonetheless! Chicken is easy to find and easy to cook. Oh, but you should see the price of ground beef!! When we went to the store to look for ground beef and saw a package that looked about as big as 1 lb. (maybe) for about $10.00 we thought it must be some kind of "special" ground beef. Nope, that's just what you pay here for it! I guess we'll be eating lots of chicken, huh? Rice is easy to find and easy for a lot of people - not so easy for me! Of course, when I picked up the bag of rice to cook it the other night I looked for directions, and there weren't any. Women around here just know how to cook good rice! I think it's in the genes!! Maybe once I make a few friends they can show me how to do it the local way. And tomatoes are easy to find - in lots of forms, so I cooked spaghetti last night. I made the sauce "from scratch." No, I didn't have to peel the tomatoes and make my own paste or anything like that. I just had to add all of the seasonings. I used this really thick tomato paste stuff - well, I didn't know it was that thick until I opened the can. It's like double the thickness of what we would call tomato paste in the US. I doctored it up as much as I could and added a can of regular diced tomatoes, but let me tell you it wasn't Ragu!!! And it made a lot, so we had leftovers tonight. I'm not sure what we'll do with the rest of the leftovers - maybe some of the stray dogs might like to taste my spaghetti sauce!!

The best thing we've found in our new home is that if we put 30 "cents" in a bag and hang it on our door at night, our doorman will deliver fresh bread in the morning. Add a little butter and honey and ummmmmm ummmmmm good!!!

Oh, this has nothing to do with food, but we ordered some furniture for our "living room" today. It's red (well, more like crimson maybe) - not what we would buy in the US but our local friends will love it (we've been told). It will take 3 weeks to get it ready - we can't wait to have something to sit on!!

Happy cooking!

PS - If you have any hints on successful rice cooking or good "from scratch" spaghetti sauce recipes send them my way.

If at first you don't suceed . . .

try, try again!!! That seems to have been our motto over the past week. I'll explain what I mean . . .



We have access to a vehicle, which we are thankful for, but it has led to a few frustrating moments. I learned to drive a stick in high school because the car I had to drive was one, but Mark has only driven one a few times. So our first outing alone in the car was a try, try again moment. Mark got us to the parking lot at the local grocery store, and we walked the rest of the way. I drove home.



Later that evening . . . we heard that the same grocery store we parked at earlier in the day was selling good phones for cheaper than normal. We desperately needed a phone so we got in the car and Mark stalled his way halfway uphill before he stopped the car and I got in the driver's seat. We got to the store only to find that they had sold out of the phones. We chose a cheap basic one and headed back home. We understood enough of what the check out girl told us that we knew if we had a problem with the phone to bring back the receipt. I drove home, and what do you know? one of the parts to the phone was missing!!! We drove back to the store, showed the picture of the missing part to the customer service rep., and waited for her to bring the part to us. Of course, we're sure she just went to the one other phone like that, pulled out the piece we needed, put the box back on the shelf. I feel for the person who bought the last one!

Well, the next day we went shopping for appliances . . . what an experience! I won't go into detail about it, but I do want to tell our "try, try again" appliance story. We got our washing machine hooked up and a friend helped me make sense of the writing/instructions on the machine. I was so excited to get to wash clothes!! We discovered that the faucet connected to the washer had a leak. After trying to get a plumber to fix it and trying to get our apartment doorman to fix it, it was decided that we should just take the old part to the hardware store to get a new one and fix it ourselves. Mark set out to get the part and found out that there are multiple kinds of hardware stores here one for plumbing, one for electrical things, one for construction supplies, etc. He finally got to the right one, got the part, brought it home, and installed it. I was so excited, again!!

So then we decided to start a load of laundry. Our washer holds 5 kilos of laundry at a time - not very much, but we were still excited. In the time between the initial instructions we received from the installation guys and our friend and this moment when I could actually use it I had forgotten what the words on the washer meant, where to put the detergent, and what buttons to press when!! I stood in front of the machine with the dictionary trying to translate and understand for an eternity. I finally decided to just go for it and see what would happen. Everything worked beautifully, but it had been washing for an hour and had not changed cycles yet. I was a bit concerned. After it continued for another few minutes, I decided to stop it and start the wash cycle over again. The wash cycle took 2 1/2 hours!!! That was OK though because the water leak had been fixed and we were washing clothes.

I felt so confident about the second load that I didn't walk into the bathroom to check it every 10 minues like I did with the first load. I chatted with my mom on the phone for a while, sent a few e-mails, cleaned up the kitchen. When I noticed that the machine had stopped (after another 2 1/2 hours) I went in to get the clothes out and hang them to dry. Well . . . the floor was covered in water, everything on one side of the bathroom was wet, and I looked up to find that another leak had sprung out of the water faucet connected to the washer! We mopped up the floor, hung the clothes dry, and managed not to cry over it.

The next day Mark went back to the plumbing hardware store to get plumbing tape. I'm happy to report that after two loads of clothes today there have been no more leaks!!! It really does pay off to try, try again!!

We Made It!!

So here we are in our new home . . . we're somewhat settled and getting more so everyday. So much has happened since we left the states nearly 2 weeks ago! We'll attempt to brieflydescribe some of the highlights.



Travel was fairly uneventful. All our flights left on time and we did not miss any connections. We got a little sleep on our trans-Atlantic flight - Mark more than Melissa, as usual. We even got decent food on 2 of our flights! We encountered no problems once we reached our final destination . . . well, there was the minor problem of all of our luggage getting left behind at the previous airport! Yes, ALL of it!! We each had a carry-on, so we were OK until it was delivered to us the next morning.



We left the States on Tues. Oct. 9 and we arrived in our new apartment Thurs. night Oct. 11. We got to see a lot of the countryside and a few dfferent cities on the way. We enjoyed this first glimpse of the country. It even rained when we first got here - the first time it's rained here in a year!



OK -so lots of time has passed since then. What in the world have we done? Traveling, eating, shopping (we moved into an empty apartment and arrived with only 7 pieces of luggage), sleeping, walking - that seems to sum it up! Does it sound exhausting? You may not think it does, but it is!! We've been blessed with good sleep every night since we arrived, and that's helped tremendously. We even got to sleep in with no alarm today!!



Hope you all have a blessed Sunday! We'll post again soon.

M&M

Puppy Love

This entry is devoted to Melissa's parents, who have so graciously and lovingly "adopted" our dog Titus.

Lessons they've learned over the past 8 weeks. . .

1. When he wants to go potty - he stares at you and expects you to read his mind, even when you have your eyes closed.

2. A potty break for #1 doesn't guarantee that 10 minutes later he won't need a potty break for #2.

3. When Burger King wrappers are left lying in plain view on top of the rest of the trash in the trash can, he will invite himself to dinner.

4. Girl dogs freak him out, even when he does think they're cute!

5. He's a bed hog.

6. He's a real life Houdini. Yes, he can escape, even when we think it's impossible!

7. When the car door is opened in his presence, he will demand a ride by jumping in the driver's seat.

8. He's a man's dog. Even though he loves the women in his life, it's the men he prefers to follow to the bathroom to visit!! (Sorry, Dad!)

9. He loves to mess up a perfectly made bed, BUT he never makes it up again!

10. AND . . . they've learned that camping is way more fun when you have a dog to share it with!

The End of the Beginning

Here we are nearing the end of the first leg of our journey. Boy, has the time flown by!! We've been hanging out with some friends learning about what overseas life will be like. There have been some ups and downs along the way, but overall we've had a great time. Over the last few weeks, as we've finished our preparations we've had lots of shots, signed lots of papers, learned what it's going to take to learn a new language, eaten some new foods, and the list could go on and on. If only there was time to share everything with all of you!

The quilt is almost complete. I have 1 1/2 sides left to hand stitch, and then I'll be done! Yahoo!!! I do plan to post a picture, but I have to wait to get back to my mom and dad's house to get our cable so I can put them on the computer.

Our parents are coming to visit us next week, and we're excited about seeing them. Then we'll be leaving to stay with them for about a week before we leave the country. We get to see our brand new nephew (who's a real cutie!), and we get to spend a few days with our beloved Titus.

We have our plane tickets, which reminds us that our time in the States is growing short. There is still a lot to be done. We're finalizing some paperwork and making sure we've made our lists and checked them twice (or three, four, five times!). We've learned some fun things about the place we're headed to, and we can't wait to meet the people and learn to talk with them in their own language.

It's almost dinner time here, so I'll close for now. I'm not sure how long it will be before we get to post again with all of the traveling, packing, and moving. But we'll post when we can. And maybe the next time we write, we'll have a few interesting stories to share about our new home!

with much love,
M&M