Excited about Life after Death

Someone that I have known since a youth just passed away this last week, and I had a potentially strange emotion immediately upon finding out: JOY!

This man is now no longer in pain and no longer worrying. He is sitting at the feet of His Maker, enjoying the place prepared for him, and basking in the beauty of JC's radiance and light, along with all kinds of other wonderful things that are possible. Our Dad is sooooo good, there's no way we could limit thoughts about Heaven to looking brainwashed, playing harps, and getting angels' wings (plus there's absolutely no foundation for those conclusions). What we get to look forward to, in part, is finally getting to enjoy the life that the Garden of Eden was supposed to provide...stupid sin!

My heart goes out to his family as they learn to walk through life with their earthly father and husband now enjoying their heavenly Father. What a road they have ahead while still here on earth...but what a joyous reunion when they get together with him again in the future and together get to experience Dad fully.

Clean Clothes for Valentines Day

Hopefully, you will find this as amusing as we did. If not, you can laugh at the fact that we found this amusing. Either way, please laugh. Or at least chuckle. Or giggle maybe???

Anyway, here's the scoop: I'm not good at doing laundry by hand since we currently don't have running water in our house. Or, let me clarify that statement a bit. Sometimes water comes up out of the drain in the middle of the bathroom floor after we've poured down more than the partially frozen pipes can handle, but that's not really considered running water. That's more like standing water.

So I'm not good at doing laundry by hand. I am, however, incredibly resourceful. While studying to be an early childhood education major, that's what seemed to strike me more than anything. So much of what we did was teach information, but an almost equal thing we did was teach kids how to be resourceful. If they didn't know something, where and how could they find it?

So, knowing that I'm not good at laundry, and wishfully spending each day giving our currently lifeless washing machine a glance and reassuring thoughts ("I want to use you, but just can't." "It's not you, or me...it's the lack of water." "No, you haven't been forgotten. I would use you if I could."), the realization dawned on me. We don't have water. However, we DO have power!

This quickly became one of those situations where later I said, "But in America this would have worked." Note to self: You are not in America, you are not in America, you are not in America. Maybe I have enough memorized now.

In the States, a washing machine works in such a way that you can turn the dial to the portion of the cycle that says spin, and it will just spin. That's it. No water required.

This machine that came with the house we're renting is all in Russian. Before the first use, I translated everything with an app on our computer and drew it out just like it is on the machine. Since there was a button that seemed to let you select wash, rinse, or spin, I figured that when only the light above the spin picture was lit, then it would just spin.

Wrong!

The clothes got locked in the machine (yay front-loading washer) because it couldn't get water in...why it needed water, I have no clue! But since it couldn't get water in, it wouldn't get to spinning. and it wouldn't finish a cycle which would unlock the door in order for us to retrieve our much-needed clothes (pretty much all of both of our base layer stuff was in there).

After several hours of it just sitting in there, we tried doing different settings again. No luck. Then Matt unhooked the water hose so he could try pouring water into it. Again, no luck. Just when we were about to give up, I remembered that the little drawer where the detergent goes gets water in it in order to dilute to powder. So we chose the setting that was rinse and spin only, and started pouring in water through the drawer. IT WORKED!!!!

I was doing the happy dance while it was spinning because we wouldn't have to tell our landlords the next day, when a rap-tap-tapping came on the door. Guess who? BUSTED! Oh well, they didn't say anything about it, so guess it didn't alarm them too much. Needless to say, after they left (they were trying to fix the frozen drainage situation...still is a problem though), we both laughed at the hilarity of the situation.

But now I have a trick to get the soap and water out better than I can do by hand: rinse and spin in the machine. Hooray for being resourceful...and HAPPY BELATED VALENTINES DAY!

Merry Christmas!

 Okay, so this is a little bit late. Make that almost 2 months late. But oh well. Better late than never, right?

When we got to the capital, awaiting us were a couple packages. Actually, they spread themselves out over the next several weeks, so we got to get goodies over the span of 4 weeks, one at a time. Not a bad deal.

First arrived a package from Zambia. Yep, that's right: Africa. Matt's parent's live there and they wanted to contribute to making our first Christmas abroad special. It only took a few weeks for this one to arrive. This bad boy made it before we went to our meeting. Check out all the stamps that it took!

Inside were several food goodies, like coffee, tea, sprinkles, and icing, as well as some seasonings and reminders of Zambia.

Next we received the Christmas presents from my parents and sister. Though it was mailed before Matt's parents mailed theirs, it took a few weeks longer for it to arrive. Go figure. Guess that coming from a third world country is faster than from the good ol' US of A. Go figure!

So my family, though we don't think of ourselves as having many traditions, has traditions. In keeping with such, each present was neatly wrapped and labeled with a "to/from" sticker. Marvelous packing job guys! It didn't look like anything shifted at all.

 My parents also sent another box that had a HU-MON-GOUS stainless steel french press/carafe from REI and a container of coffee creamer. Needless to say, both have been put to good use every morning since they arrived.

Last, but definitely not least, is the box that my sister sent. Matt's Kindle died once we got here (of course it would), so he was going without. But below you will see the happy man reading electronically once again (current selection: Is That a Fish In Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything). He was so excited about getting the Kindle out and checking it out that we completely forgot to take a picture of the goodies inside. But the socks are my bedtime socks, the chocolates have been consumed...completely, and the other goodies have been put to good use or are waiting the perfect time to use them.

Thanks family for all you're doing to stay connected while we're over here. The e-mails are priceless, the phone calls are fabulous, and, well, anything tangible is simply fantastic (though if we had to choose something to drop, it would be the stuff...we like communication!!).

Love you all!!!

Language Fun

Disclaimer: This post is free-thinking. That is, it follows stream of conscious thought. If you get lost in it, don't worry. We do too.

            Any of you who have ever learned a new language, not for a class or for fun but for necessity of life, know what a joy that process is. Yeah, sure. It’s a struggle for anyone, even those good at learning it. One of the added joys to the particular language we are learning is a new alphabet. Now, it’s not a hard alphabet, not anything like Devanagri (for Hindi or Nepali) or a Chinese alphabet. It is Cyrillic basically, the Russian alphabet with a few changes. It is phonetic (each letter makes one sound) and the letters look remarkably like Latin (English) letters. That is where the fun comes from:

            Let’s start with vowels. A is normal, pretty easy to deal with, E looks right and sounds right, O, yep, still doing well. I? Well, I is a backwards N, sounds like a short I (mit) but looks like И. Oh, and the N is an H. So bread, Non, is HOH. Fun huh. This, of course, means you will never be able to write a capital N in English again in your life without pondering for a second how to write it. The H is a X with a tail on the end of the bottom right side. The X without a tail brings us to another joy of this language, gutturals. These are sounds that aren’t in English at all, but are formed at the very back of the throat. German has one (the X sound in our language, sort of like you are clearing your throat) but we have the joy of two more: K with a tail (a K made with your throat, not your tongue, just try it, it’s fun) and what looks like a F (the X, but you add voice to it, sounds like you are gargling). They use X all the time too (the words for house, how are you, good, all these use gutturals) so you get a clear throat on a constant basis. Now, just to keep you hopping, there is an F without the lower line, the Г. You would think it would be an R, nope, it’s G. R is P. Yep, that’s right, so from now on you never will be sure writing R if you actually need that little tail. We do have something that looks like R though, the Я. It’s fun, it’s ya. It’s what is called a yoted vowel, one that starts with y sound. We have four of those: ё (sounds like yo, not ye), ю (yu) and й (yi) round them out. Just in case you thought you were done with vowels, we do have a y, it’s u (like in Luke, unless it has a line over it, in which case it is look, or maybe I have those backwards). If you really do like the u look though, we have it in handwriting, it is the cursive version of И. Yes, many of the cursive words have no relation whatsoever to the English or typed letters. A g handwritten is the D sound (a Д) and the handwritten T (wonderfully enough, a T in our alphabet) looks like M. Oh, we have an M, it is M, it even is handwritten M, but it has a rounded top, the T is pointed. Joy.

We do lose some sounds, there is no W in this alphabet, but we do have the Ш. It’s sh. Do you happen to like the letter B? If you do, Russian is great for you. They have lots, we only use a few. В, capitalized or not, is the v sound. On the other hand б is the sound b in English. Ъ isn’t a sound at all, it’s a glottal stop used on words imported from Arabic, sort of like the middle sound in uh-oh. Just in case that’s not enough for you, occasionally things are written in Russian, so we also get the Ь and Ы and I don't even know what sounds they make. We do have a C, but it always sounds like s. Always. Numbers are the same, but З is not 3, it is a z sound. On the other hand, a backwards Euro sign Э is a soft e, sort of like in “eh”. P is fun, it’s П, not P (remember P is R and Я is ya) Now, just in case you thought the pi thing is easy, they also have Л, a very close letter, which is the L sound. There is no plain vertical line, like I or l, those are only in Russian and I don’t know what sound that is at all. Other than that they have the ch sound Ч and something like the j in judge Ж as well as our normal j, the ch sound with a tail. It’s not in Russian, they added it for our language by the tail, so I can’t type it. Other than that, it’s really a very easy and simple alphabet.

            Ah, the joys of language, and we haven’t even mentioned learning the language and having a high version (the one that everyone teaches you, the one written in literature, but not how anyone talks at all) and a street version (what you actually need to be able to speak, but it’s nearly illegal to learn it in class, so you have to fight to have someone actually give you those words and grammar structures which are in no grammar books) and living in a place where this language is not the native one, so no one wants to speak it.

Somehow though, we are picking it up, little by little, talking with people, and actually learning to love speaking it. Once you start communicating, reading, and even writing in another language like this, even though you sound like you are 2 (look me, I go market, I come after your house and tea drink, me like eating tea) somehow they understand you and you understand bits of what they say, and it’s all worthwhile. Sometimes, it is actually pretty fun. 

Fairy Barf or Else

So one of the ideas left was to get a picture of what our bazaar is like. Every week (usually), we as a team take the wonderful waz to the bazaar in order to load up on food items for the week. Because Matt and I live on a public transit route, we sometimes make other trips for a few small items at other times also, but for the most part, our shopping gets done on one day. Hence calling that day of the week "Bazaar Day."

We can find all kinds of wares, though not always the same ones from week to week. There is an entire hardware section, but we didn't visit that section the week we were taking pictures for you. A good portion of the shopping is done outside, but there are 2 large indoor areas where vendors set up. We were very excited during this week of picture-taking to find tomatoes (didn't think we would see them up there until spring), which cost about $2/lb. We knew this was high compared to summer months or warmer places (the capital has them currently for about 75 cents/lb), but it was totally worth it. I enjoyed tomato sandwiches and we made plenty of salsa as well. (Salsa = happy Matt = happy Cindy)

This is where you can find several versions of several things. You can see some of the vegetables. There is also homemade butter and sour cream, bread, and non-perishables like margarine and grains.

Our spice lady friend is set up here. All of the spices are in Russian, so I've gotten fairly adept at recognizing pictures once they were explained. 

More indoor shopping.

The outdoor hustle-and-bustle of people. This is the typical crowd size. Pretty much all shopping is done in the morning and the bazaar shuts down starting at lunch time.

Seller from a nearby country selling sheepskin vests. And yes, Matt did buy one of them for our supervisor for Christmas.

Welcome to your home goods section...on the ground. This is where I found a cutting board and rolling pin (we're still looking for a better rolling pin, but this will do for now).

Seriously?!?! Could the options for dish soap get any better? I submit that they could not! (And for your language learning, barf means snow here. Yep, go ahead and have fun using that where you live.)

This day we also decided to try something new. Before we came, we were told that a meat grinding attachment for our KitchenAid would be really helpful. But since being here, we pretty much only heard that buying beef in our town was not something that was really done. Being the brave (okay, maybe unwise) people that we are, we decided to try the meat-buying thing so that chicken and hot dogs weren't the only meats we ate.

Welcome to a local butcher's shop. Matt kind of got some dirty looks for taking pictures here, so we didn't get any better ones. But look at that meat! He asked for a piece without bones and fat, and got a chunk that pretty well met that criteria.

At home we tried to figure out what to do next. Matt is cutting it up small and getting rid of the nastier-looking parts.

Nothing appealing about this

Nothing

Gross! It looks much better when it is pre-packaged. Yuck!

We set aside a few "steaks" for supper that night (since frozen green beans were a surprise at the bazaar that day). Matt's was palatable. Mine, well...

So after that experience, we may be doing it once a month tops. The flavor wasn't all that great, but it was nice to have a little change in the diet.

Turkey Tour

This is the second post by Matt, the guest blogger here.

One of the incredible advantages to living overseas are the opportunities we get for very cool vacations. Destinations that are normally too far or too expensive for Americans are now much more accessible, so we get to do some things we would normally never be able to afford. One such opportunity came up in January. We were going to a meeting in Turkey and went four days early to take a “Seven Churches” tour in Turkey.

The name refers to the seven churches mentioned in the opening chapters of the book of Revelation. These churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, were all rather important towns in the first century and sights of early congregations of Christians. They are also all in modern day Turkey, a country simply full of ancient historical sights, so we jumped on the chance to see what is left of each of these cities.

After all the excitement of coming down from the mountains (see previous story) and a rather long delay for our flight out of our country, we spent a very short night in Istanbul (Turkish Airlines gave us a great hotel room for free, even though it was a weather delay; good for them) we jumped off the plane in Antalya and got directly on a tour bus. We were tired, but really enjoyed seeing the history set in these cities. Since it was winter, we often had the sights almost entirely to ourselves, though it was often a bit cold and rainy, and were free to pretty much wander over two thousand year old ruins at our pleasure. This is something you simply can’t do in America, we don’t have many two thousand year old ruins, and even two hundred year old ruins are roped off and kept far from anyone who would want to touch them.

I will tell the story of our vacation in some pictures, since seeing is so much better than just hearing about it. Sorry some of the pictures look squished, the orientation got a bit weird while uploading them. You get the idea though. It does make us look rather thin, we have been eating better than that. 

The main street of Laodicea. The pillars have been put back up, but these are the early paving stones. 

Matt at one of the main Temples in Laodicea. It was really cold and drizzling that day, but it's our first stop so we had to hang out a while.

Matt and Cindy among ruins in Laodicea. The first of many piles of old rocks. 

The hot spring at Pammukale. It is a mineral spring that falls over the mountains and makes the cliffs all white. This is where the "hot or cold" lecture makes more sense. 

This is why Cindy loves turkey. Yes, it's a plate of cheese and olives for breakfast, pretty much every day. She even found curds, one of her favorites. 

All that's left of the old city of Philadelphia (huge Eagles fans here). Interesting to see the columns of a Byzantine church with a mosque in the background. This was the case in almost all the towns we stopped in.

The first thing you see in Sardis is the public latrine. Yep, that's seats made out of stone in the wall with a trench under them.

This is the floor of the synagogue in Sardis. It is one of the oldest in the world, though not functioning. 

They even had marble left on the wall that had inscriptions of which of the prominent citizens paid for them. 

This is the old Torah seat at the back of the synagogue where the scrolls were kept.

This is the main table, apparently dating from well in the BC period. The building itself was Byzantine, this table is much older. 

Us in front of the baths. Yep, that's a bath behind us, with the gymnasium grounds in front. Romans took their baths very seriously.

Pergamum. This is what is left of the Zeus temple, the "throne of Satan". 

Far and away the most impressive theatre we saw. It overlooks a cliff with the new town way down below. Not as big as the one in Ephesus, but almost all original. 

This is the theatre entrance.

Cindy leaving the theatre.

The underground tunnels in Pergamum.

Top of the city, the Domitian (I think) temple.

Matt with Domitian. I am sure he would be horrified to have a Christian leaning against him like this (he wasn't such a fan you know) but such is life. 

This is the underground mall in Smyrna. Seriously, their agora had a basement with the columns and arches still functioning. It was huge. 

The fountains in their mall are still working. 2,000 years later, you can still drink out of their fountains.  There is still some of the decorations on the walls even.

The shopping seems to have dropped off some though. Odd. 

This is the above ground part. 

Apparently Smyrna (now Izmir) is famed for their meatballs. Who knew? 

In Thyatira, another place with a Byzantine church and remains of a pagan temple in the center of town the only thing left to see. The ground is higher than it used to be, either that or they were really really short Byzantines. 

Nike in Ephesus. The left side of the picture, with her robe sort of swooshing out, is supposed to be where the Nike Swoosh comes from. 

Matt in Ephesus on the downtown street. 

Ephesus is the most impressive and rebuilt city of that period in Asia, lots left of it to see.

We are in front of Celsus' library, easily the most impressive building in town.

Greek statues in all their glory. Oh, wait, that's us, well, close enough.

It's hard to see, but it's actual 2nd century graffiti. Someone carved a menorah in the steps of the library. 

Cindy made a friend at the theatre. 

This is the theatre at Ephesus (yep, the "great is Artemis of the Ephesians for hours and hours" one). It is rather impressive, and you can hear the stage easily from any of the seats. Seriously, a Korean guy sang Ave Maria while we were there, you could hear him perfectly from anywhere I walked. 

Just outside Ephesus, this is supposed to be the tomb of John. Yes, that John, of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and the Gospel. 

An early baptismal at John's church.

This is all that is left of the Artemis temple the Ephesians were so riled up about. It used to be one of the seven wonders of the world, now it's a column. From the size of the column, I am sure it was pretty impressive at one time. Ironic that Cindy (whose first and middle name are both from Artemis') is there.

Cindy with Artemis' pose where her idol stood. We saw the actual idol in the museum, but we couldn't take a picture. You get the idea anyway.

So that is our Turkey vacation in pictures. I know Cindy doesn't ever put up this many, and I am sure not everyone is going to bother looking at all of them, but at least you get to see them if you want.