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.