Things Learned

So it crossed my mind that a few new tricks have been added to my repertoire since moving here. If you are interested in learning any of them for yourself, just ask. Otherwise, enjoy this random listing:

• In order to have a warm shower the entire time, turn the water off while lathering and don't set the water for good pressure until the very end. Also, having a small heater in the tile room is a plus. When you put socks on first, you can stand by the heater to warm up without getting your feet dirty.
• Brown sugar can be made at home by mixing sugar and molasses. Wow.
• Calling the States is only 5 cents/min. Really nice.
• Radiators double as dryers for clothes.
• It is physically possible to live out of a fridge the size of one you might find in a college dorm room, minus the functioning freezer.
• Anyplace can feel like home quickly when it's the place you know you've been led to from on high.
• When eating at someone's house here, never ever clean your plate. Otherwise, they feel like they didn't give you enough and bring on more.
• It is easy to pray with and for people here. Fabulousness.
• Garbage disposals are best if alive...like sheep, for example.
• Washing dishes is a great 2 person job (thanks Matt!).

Village Visit

While my wonderful husband is working on making omelets for brunch, I thought it would be a good time to head for the blog. Since the last posting, we have been busy moving out of our friends' house (who were SOOOOO nice to accommodate us for over a week) and into a place of our own! We are super excited and love our new little house, but have yet to take pictures. That will be a project for this week, so you can be on the lookout in a few days for some literal glimpses into what life here looks like now.

But in the meantime, you get to see what our life will mostly consist of. Well, they may not be completely accurate for the next several months. During winter, we will be hunkerin' down (does that sound Southern or what?!?!) and working on mastering language learning while simultaneously staying warm. The sun is shining really brightly today through the windows, which should make it a good laundry day (hooray for line drying). Anywho, my mind wanders...

Most of our work will be out in villages in the surrounding areas. We were able to visit a couple of these places last week, but one place in particular provided some good photo opportunities and cultural sights. The people here are known even in other countries for their hospitality, and we were not let down one bit. The mom immediately swept me away into the house when we arrived (being the only female in the group) where I got to meet her sweet blind mother-in-law. I sat with Granny for quite a while, the whole time with her touching me and trying to talk with me. But the language I've learned only a minuscule fraction of is not a language she understands, so her words were falling on deaf ears...and she couldn't even see me smile and nod while trying to follow her! Oh well. It was still a really neat experience, and maybe in the future I'll be able to understand them and be able to talk back. In the meantime, it's a lot of sitting.

Here's the beautiful skylight that is found in pretty much every traditional house.

Hooray for indoor heating that also doubles as the stove.

The fantastic spread before the meat was brought out...fresh cream, fresh yogurt, and homemade bread, along with a few sweets.

Pumpkin Soup

When I lived in Africa to teach for an absolutely amazing family (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICAH!!!), they introduced me to many new and wonderful things. One of them was pumpkin soup, which was Micah's favorite meal at the time (don't know if it's been replace by anything else since then), so in order to celebrate his birthday week and my success in making sweet-ish (whoops!) pumpkin soup, here's the start to finish of the project that occurred several weeks ago when we were still in the capital.

I  never actually cooked it in Africa...just ate it. But while in the States there were two ingredients that made making it really easy. One was canned pumpkin. Um...that's not available here. So instead the process started with this: 

Select a pumpkin...Check!

Turn the pumpkin into puree...Check!

Ground your own nutmeg...Check!

Make some yummy soup...Check! (But next time, distinguish between sugar and salt before cooking...heehee!)

Deeeeelicious!

On a different note, today was the first day of snow! It normally starts at the end of December, but it's the beginning of November. Wonder what this means for our first winter here...

In our Town

Welcome to the little pieces of our life that we'll be able to share via this blog. At times it may be boring, and other times we hope you find yourselves laughing until you tear up. But in all occasions, we hope that you get a glimpse into the crazy adventure of a life that we've been led to lead and feel like you're able to walk this road with us (whether it's a safe one or on the side of a mountain).

Once we find the camera where the pictures of our arrival trip are stored, we'll see if it works to upload some of them, so be on the lookout. And comments are good motivation to keep writing, so if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share, put them on here or shoot us an e-mail.

Here's to years of life on the edge...