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Saturday, August 26, 2006

A LONG ROAD TRIP

Do you know where this was taken? We don't either.

The trip was only supposed to take 6-7 hours, however we managed to make it a 10 hour trip. We turned 5 Kilometers too soon, which eventually lead us into the country and villages. Every time we would stop and ask someone where our destination city was their reply would be, go straight and when we asked the question, “How far away is it?” people would say, “it’s a long ways away”. We eventually made our way back to the main highway and 10 minutes from town we run out of gasoline. We called our friends and they brought us some gasoline to help us make it to town, and we get stopped at the checkpoint for crossing the line. They are very picky about that rule. Eventually we made it to town, and this will be a road trip we will never forget.

Delicious Cultural Food

Here is a picture of some of the foods our local friends made for cultural day at English Club.


Below is what I made. I tried to be creative in thinking of something American to bring.


A few comments I heard were, "These are what Homer Simpson eats" and "Police eat these don't they". You have to love the media's influence on stereotypes.

Friday, August 18, 2006

A Morning We Won’t Forget

After a long early morning battle with allergies that included little sleep, Marvin woke me up to get started on the day. I quickly surmised that it would be impossible to make it to language, as my eyes were already watering and itching, and quite swollen already. Shortly before Marvin left I looked outside to see the cats had cornered a pigeon and were waiting on their opportunity to pounce on it. I said goodbye to Marvin then went into the dinning room to get a little morning reading done, when I heard a shuffling in the living room. I had left the window open, and grew frustrated as I figured the cat jumped in again. I got up from my chair to remind it again that it belonged outside, when I met the crazy thing in the hallway, but I also heard a noise coming from behind our washing machine, (which recently was moved from our old apartment, and sitting in the hallway awaiting to be installed). This is when I freaked out, I screamed and ran to the living room, jumped on top of the couch and began to shake and cry. The noise persisted, and eventually I gathered enough courage to move around the room, I made my way around the room by climbing on various pieces of furniture to check and see what was going on. This is when I discovered a few feathers laying on the ground in the living room and some drops of blood. My eyes followed the trail until I noticed blood smeared on the wall by the washing machine. So I did what any normal girl would do, I freaked out again. This time it was worse, as I put all the clues together and formulated that the cat had brought its catch inside. There is no telephone in our living room so I knew I had to make my way to the bedroom to call Marvin. As I quickly made my way to the bedroom I noticed more blood smeared on the wall behind the couch in the dining room. I did a quick check of our bedroom and didn’t find any cats or pigeons so I quickly shut the door behind me, and reached for the phone. Trembling I called Marvin, at this point I was pretty hysterical, I explained to the best of my abilities that the cat had the pigeon inside and I needed him to come home. He calmly assured me he would be home soon.

Marvin met our language teacher at the office and told her he had to cancel language. She sympathized with me as she had a similar experience of “something terrible” in her yard this week, and told him to hurry home. He got home to find me curled up in bed, and not willing to move until everything was disposed of. So Marvin got to work, and spared me any of the details of what he found. I only know he found a dead pigeon and the cat sitting under our desk in the dining room. I am so thankful Marvin quickly came home, and for his willingness to clean up the mess.

Now while Marvin was cleaning up the mess he heard some of the neighbor boys yelling outside and noticed they had opened the gate. He discovered them carrying a scarecrow like object on a stick. They explained to him, that he needed to give them money or water, so it will rain. Marvin didn’t really understand what was going on, so after repeating “I don’t understand” a couple of times they left and went on the next neighbor, chanting the same thing.

Whew…what a morning.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Anniversery Get-A-Way

It's Cold Up HERE! Sights from Our First Chair Lift!
Here I am hiking in the morning, notice Marvin took this picture from a distance while waiting on me.

We had such a great time in the mountains. We found a mini bus that took us right to where we needed to go. It was a little bumpy but for the price we won't complain.

While there we relaxed and enjoyed several great hikes. As with Marvin's personality his pace of hiking is steady. Mine however changed on the time of day and my body temperature. For all those who know me know that I am not a morning person, so when we decided to start our hike out in the morning, let's just say Marvin didn't think we would ever reach our destination.

We also made our way up the tallest Mountain in our area over 5,000 meters. Many tourists come to summit it's peaks. We actually met some Americans there, and we heard some people speaking German and Italian. Unlike the other tourists we used the chair lifts to make our way up the mountain. This was our first chair lift experience, and a little intimidating based on our knowledge of how things are maintained in our part of the world. The final chair lift took us into the clouds, and as we assended it started to snow. We were thankful we purchased hats that day, it was quite cold at our highest elevation. We were thankful to warm up with a hot cup of tea when we reached the bottom.