Meet our newest Friend

Our language teacher had her baby three weeks ago and last weekend we finally got to meet the little one we had been torturing through our horrible attempt at this language. I am sure he is very glad that he doesn't have to listen to us speak during our lessons anymore. He is such a happy little guy, and our teacher said he is such a peaceful child. She is doing great and both she and her husband are proud of this new little guy. This is a picture of him in his first outfit. She dressed him for the first time when we came to visit, and already one of his outfits was too short. It was such a relaxed time with her family, of course the fed us a huge meal and we enjoyed talking with her husband and her sister while she was busy with the baby. We are thankful for the friendship we have with our teachers, it makes learning this language a little easier.

Concert

One of my friends is a talented you lady and comes from a family of musicians. Her father is a composer and her mother is a singer that has traveled all over our country singing. So when she told me that they were going to have concert in honor of her Father's birthday I was excited to finally be able to see her and her mother perform. It was a great evening, and we couldn't believe it when it started on time!!! I am sure this will be the last time this will happen. The show opened with an orchestra playing a few songs that my friend's father wrote. They were accompanied by beautiful opera singing. Then the second half of the show was a mix between beautiful singing and people ballroom dancing, and then my friend sang a couple songs. She is such a laid back person, but she came alive on stage. We are thankful for these opportunities to get to do something out of the ordinary once in a while. My friend is the one in the front row standing on the far right.

A Great Easter

We had a great time this Easter and the weather was so much different than last year. The sun was shining the entire morning, which made our trek to Marvin’s hill fun and enjoyable. We had a good time singing and reading over the village and it was neat to hear the sounds of cows and chickens in the background. We are glad we have these fun opportunities and great colleagues who get excited about doing things like this too.

Going to the Doctor

My first trip to the Doctor

Well you wouldn’t think going to the doctor would be exciting, but well when you don’t know the language very well, it sure can be exciting.

So I was able to explain everything I wanted to, but I didn’t understand some of her questions.

My favorite question was “How’s your Liver?”
What I wanted to say was, “it’s still there”, but what I really said was, it’s good.

She was asking me about morning sickness and I told her how often I was getting sick, and then she asked me another question that I didn’t really understand, and she repeated it. I have no idea what she was talking about, but that she wanted me to get some more tests done, and she needed to have an ultra sound done of my liver and kidneys, not of the baby apparently, because we went there and I asked the lady what kind of ultra sounds they needed to do and she told me that my doctor didn’t say anything about the baby, so we asked her to do an ultra sound to show us the baby, and she happily agreed.

Marvin got to see our growing little pumpkin for a while, I only got a quick glance as she only turn the monitor and showed me for few seconds. The good news was we heard a good heartbeat, and pumpkin has two legs, two arms and looks like everything is developing alright. It is nice to know I am not imagining this whole being pregnant thing, as I haven’t gained any weight.

Here are a few of fun suggestions my doctor had for me:
Eat lots and lots of cabbage!
Eat a lot of vegetables and white things but not together because this isn’t good for your liver.
Don’t drink water that is too cold or too hot.
If I eat meat don’t eat it with any bread products.

Second Trip to the Doctor

I had to go back to the doctor so that she could interpret the results. The funny thing is that she spent most of the time telling me about how to keep my liver and kidneys healthy, and didn’t say anything about the ultrasound I had of the baby. I just don’t get it.

Anyway the great advice continues! Today she told me that I should only eat white bread, not dark bread and I need to light incense 3-4 times a day and drink this ½ liter of this special tea while the incense was burning. About the only good advice I got today as don’t drink any alcohol. I brought a translator this time and even my translator thought that the whole burning incense was a little weird.

Let the Games Begin!

Well folks remodeling has started and we wanted to give you a look at some before shots. We will post the finished product later.

First are a few pictures of the kitchen before they started to rip all the tiles out.

Of Course there are always problems you discover when remodeling, and here is a picture of what the counter of the sink looked like when they took out the sink. It was pretty gross.

A couple of pictures to show you some of the upstairs bedrooms

The bathroom, is now looking a bit more bare than this picture as most of the tiles have been stripped.

We can't wait to see the finished project!

Let me just have an Eeyore Moment!

I must say that I miss spring in Kansas. Let me just tell you what spring is like here, grey, wet, cold, and disgusting! Every now and then we get to see the sun, and we are thankful for the little bit of brightness we can get. Here is what I miss about spring vs. what it like here:

Waking up and hearing little song birds out your window, with the sun shining in your room.

(Here the birds sound like they are crying because it is cold, and they migrated too early.)

When you look out the window in the morning to see a little bit of frost left on the ground, being melted by the sun.
(Here we see massive puddles of standing water.)

The crisp clean air you breathe in as you walk outside in the morning.
(The air here just doesn’t have that crisp smell to it, and it is often scented by cows and exhaust.)

How the air warms with the day and getting to shed layers throughout the day.
(I’m pretty sure I will be wearing my coat for a while longer.)

Maybe I’m being a little dramatic right now, but it is currently snowing and all I know is I miss spring in Kansas!

Marvin's Excursion

We had a friend from the states come a couple of week's ago and wanted to take him to see some of the local scenery, so we asked on of our language teachers about public transportation to see this part of our area. He quickly suggested that he would borrow his brother's car and take us. He also suggested showing us his village, something that he has only offered one other time. I skipped this excursion, due to the nausea I already am having I didn't think it would be wise to give my stomach one more reason not to agree with me, but Marvin and our guest had a great time. They stopped by a lake near our city that is crystal clear and incredibly deep, that they still don't know how deep it actually is, and then they went to my favorite part of our area the tunnel through the mountain. There are literally 180 degree drop offs. Unfortunately it was cold while they were there so they couldn't enjoy it for very long before freezing. We are hoping to be able to take the summer team out to this area and go even further as there are some ancient houses still standing if you keep going past the tunnels.

On the way back home they were able to stop at our language teacher’s village. Marvin was able to meet his mother, aunt, and uncle. They had tea, and of course our teacher's mother wasn't happy that he didn't tell her that they were coming. In the end Marvin left with a lovely sweater his mother knitted, and a huge jar of pickles and a huge jar of tomatoes. She even threw in a little candy for the road. What a sweet woman. .

Our Train Adventure

We're ready for a long ride!

Well traveling by train has been something Marvin and I have both wanted to do. There is something about it that is slow and deliberate and allows you plenty of gazing out of the window. Before we departed life was moving about 100 mph, so we were anxious for a few days at a slower speed. Our ride up when well and we were able to see a lot of country side. We rode in a cabin with four bunks. We were fortunate to get the lower bunks on the way to Moscow as it gave us prime window seats. There were two other guys in our cabin and one departed early in the morning and slept most of the time he was with us, but the other guy was a very nice guy and very patient with our language. He even taught Marvin a few card games; he had plenty of time to learn. We were a bit sore after our 36 hour ride but very thankful that we were able to go on such a journey.

Our return home was a little more on the adventurous side. Our tickets were for the top bunks so this meant that I had to figure out how to get up on my bed, there is no ladder. I took an interesting approach and every time Marvin watched me flop up to my bed he would shake his head and laugh. I am sure it was quite the sight. I woke up the next morning and needed to use the bathroom and wearily walked into the toilet near our cabin and discovered someone had thrown up everywhere. Obviously this sent my whole body convulsing and I about lost it as well. So it took about 4 hours to recover from such experience.

As you can see they provided us with a bed rolls, sheets, blankets, and a pillow. The heat was on during the night, so we were nice and toasty as we slept.

Soon after this recovery our favorite people the police came to our car to check everyone’s documents. Surprise, surprise they needed to ask us some more questions. They asked us to follow them to the train attendant’s car. We gathered our documents and followed them. They started asking questions about our visa and how it didn’t match our job. Then they started in on leaving our city without permission and told me that they were going to kick us off the train. This is where I start to panic a bit, because I have no idea where we are or how we would get home if they were serious. So I start to tear up and he immediately looks at Marvin and says can he speak? I said yes and then told me to leave because he didn’t like emotions.

Marvin's chilling in his top bunk, while I am breaking a cultural rules by putting my feet on his bed. Don't worry my feet are pretty clean because we brought our house shoes for the ride, so everytime we walked anywhere we made sure we had them on.

So while Marvin was talking to this police guy I talked to the other guy and he was quite nice and didn’t think there was a problem. Well this other guy persisted. We called our lawyer and she talked to him, and still he persisted. This whole time I knew full well what this guy wanted but since we had done nothing wrong made me a bit angry. He told us that he needed to smoke so follow us to the smoking area. This is when he decided to tell us that he could make this whole thing go away if we gave him something. I played dumb and called a translator and our lawyer and they both translated what I thought he was saying. While I was on the phone trying to decide how much money to give this guy, he looked at Marvin and crossed out our information that he had written down. We had no idea what to do, so we finally decided how much we thought we had to pay and went to his cabin where he told us to meet him, but when Marvin said thank you he told him he didn’t need to pay, end of story. We made it home without getting kicked off the train. But you better believe we were very glad every time we left a station.

Here is a picture of the toilet. It was locked during stops, and we quickly found out why. When you flushed it just opened up and dropped everything outside.

The last part of our fun journey home happened around bedtime. Apparently someone decided it was a good idea to play rap music very loudly when it was time for bed. After enduring an hour of being blown out of our beds and searching for a volume control, Marvin went to ask the train attendant how we could lower the music. Surprise the answer was in our cabin all a long, we just didn’t see it. Overall we are glad we had a train experience, and yes we would do it again, but we are very thankful to be home.

Soul Food

I decided that there should be a new definition for the word soul food. We are not talking down home southern cooking, but food that perks your mood. We were so thankful that we were in a place where we could find some "soul food" this past weekend. For us it meant McDonalds, Sabaros, Chinese food, and a fat juicy restaurant burger at TGI Fridays. We also had to make some difficult decisions this past weekend: cheesecake or Baskin Robin’s Ice Cream. (Just so you know cheesecake won, it was the real deal too. Not this stuff they call cheesecake where we are from.)

It was also fun to find a bit of home in Moscow. We will admit that we ate at TGI Friday’s twice while we were in Moscow, things that good are hard to pass up. But during our second trip we noticed a bit of home right beside our table, a Kansas Flag. It was the only flag in the whole restaurant. It is so neat to see how father touches us with these little gifts. PTL.

CRAZINESS OF THE PAST WEEKS

The last few weeks have to be described by nothing else but pure craziness, lots of things that we were looking forward to have crumbled. This is how our world has felt like, imagine you are around 6 or 7 years old and you just built this rockin’ structure out of blocks and you were really excited to show your mom and dad then a bully came and started pushing one block off at a time and then finally, kicked the tower over, spreading your blocks all over the place, some are now laying across the room, under the couch, etc. Well that is how I am feeling like right now. All of the stress and disappointment has knocked me over today. It’s been a weepy day.

I will begin by the order in which they occurred:
First we found out that a meeting that was planned in August won’t be happening. This isn’t that big of deal, but August is a month of misery in Nineveh due to my allergies, so we were looking forward to getting out of the country for a little respite and now that no longer will happen.

Secondly we found out we have to move pretty soon, we have less than a month to figure out where we are going to live, it’s a good thing that people don’t plan much more than a month in advance where we live. When we moved into the fortress we knew it was a temporary thing, but this latest change threw us for a loop. We have to move so that another family can move into our house, and then when they go back to the states this summer we move back in to the fortress. We were a bit disappointed, but understand the reasoning behind the decision that was made about us moving. Being in transition for that long is something that we aren’t looking forward to. I think it is harder for me than Marvin because as a woman I feel this sense of importance of setting up a home for our family, and right now looking at the next 8 months I can’t see it as a place we can call home. In a little way I feel like I can understand how the women must have been thinking as they were wandering around in the desert.

Finally the one that broke the camel’s back, Marvin’s brother was planning on visiting us and so we decided to take a little vacation and meet him in Moscow before John came to Nineveh. So we got on a train and spent a few days traveling to meet him in Moscow. Once we got to Moscow we were waiting at another train station, making our way to the airport when John called us and told us they wouldn’t let him get on the plane because his passport would never get through customs in Europe. So he had to get a new passport and obviously since it was new it didn’t include a visa to our country, so his trip had to be canceled.

So after all of this stress I am pretty bummed and a bit homesick, and asking for a better understanding of all of these events that have just unraveled. Many people who know me know that I am a bit of an idealist and when I am looking forward to things it is hard when they don’t turn out.

Valentine's Day Trip

Since John was able to make it to Moscow we decided to call this an extended Valentine’s Day trip. Complete with trips to McDonald’s, Sabaros, TGI Fridays, and a Chinese restaurant. We are thankful that we were able to enjoy a few of these treats. Here a few views of the sights we took in. It was pretty cold and I almost wiped out on more than one occasion. Walking through the snow and on ice was a strangely familiar and reminded us of spending several hours in the market on the ice buying things for our apartment last year.

There is an ice skating rink in the middle of the Kremlin. It looked like there were a lot of crazy people who were taking up such a friged pastime.

Views from where we stayed

PORK for dinner…shhhh don’t tell anyone

Yes we had pork for dinner, and I have never been so afraid to buy anything in my life. Our market doesn’t sell pork inside but there are a few places you can find it on the outside of the market, I just have never been brave enough to buy it. The local peoples are not the ones who buy it because they are Muslim, so I didn’t want anyone to see me buy it. I actually had to walk by the stall that sells it because I saw some of my students. I was very thankful that there was a blanket over the awning that day I quickly made my purchase and placed it in my bag and was on my way. I am such a rebel.

So after that experience I didn’t think I would be buying pork again anytime soon, but I just got home from the grocery store and what did I find, BACON, real sliced bacon! Now I am not a big bacon fan, but Marvin loves it. So what did I do? I put in my cart and quickly covered it up with the yogurt. Whew. Grocery shopping has never been more adventurous.

Sporting Event of the Year

Monday several of Marvin’s friends called to invite him to a wrestling match between the U.S. and the country we live in and the U.S. and the locals. After one of his friends told him that his friends could get him free tickets and that his wife was going we thought we would accept his invitation and go as well. It turned out to be quite an event. First the minister of sports promised our friend’s friend would get actual tickets, what really happened was that we had to have someone with an event badge come to let us through 2 sets of guards. (Security was everywhere at this event.) Once we made it through the first set of guards we had to go to a different entrance where the important people get in. Now here we found a bunch of people trying to convince the guards to let them in. A lot of local people were trying to speak English to pass them selves off as Americans, it didn’t really work. (Most of these people were men so it was a little awkward being a woman in this crowd.) It was literally like a mosh pit, we were so crammed together, and at one point I was pressed up against a guard’s gun. The three of us women locked arms and I pushed from behind as and we eventually made it through the crowd, but our husbands were still left outside. About 10 minutes later Marvin came into the stadium and said it got a little worse because the president came and they had to clear a path for him. I was very glad that the ladies were not there at that point. The good news was that everyone made it in without having to pay.

The crowd packed the house, every aisle was filled and eventually people who wanted a better view decided to sit up in the rafters.

It was very interesting watching a sporting event where you can understand both languages being spoken. At one point the American who was getting beat gained a couple of points and the announcer said, a present for the American. When the American team finished getting smoked by the national team (who had about 6 Olympic Gold Medalist on the team) the announcer told the crowd there would be a 5 minute break for the Americans took on the locals which turned into a 30 minute show of dancing and singing. This "5 minute break" was followed by 20 minutes of presentations to important people in the box seats (pictured above). It was also funny watching how the Americans were always ready to go immediately after the previous match ended; they did a lot of waiting around for the locals and the national team, being prompt is not valued in this culture. We were very glad we were able to make it to what the papers said was the “Sporting Event of the year.”

Latest Pastime

My grandmother taught me how to crochet right before we left the states and shortly after arriving here this hobby got pushed aside by the craziness of life, and the fact that I wasn’t very good. I made a few pot holders before we made it to Nineveh that turned out to be trapezoids instead of squares. The scarf I made took on a circular shape, but I didn’t give up. I found some incredibly soft yarn in Turkey and decided I wanted to make a blanket, that project disapated quickly. A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning out a cabinet and found the yarn and decided it was finally time to master crocheting. I started out better than last year and I have actually figured out why I was making trapezoids and circular shapes. But I quickly learned that if I was going to make a blanket I would need more than 4 sheaves of yarn, so it was off to a market in town that sells knitted and crocheted items as well as yarn. They sell the yarn in these loose huge bunches and they sell it by the kilogram, for half a kilo I only paid $2.00! Now I got home and was pretty excited about adding my new colors so what did I do? I found the end to the yarn and start yanking away, and quickly came up with a knotted mess. This is where my new pastime started. 6 hours later I had a nice ball of yarn ready to crochet with! Now it get’s even better because I bought two of these huge bunches and I knew there must be an easier way to do this. It was sitting on the table and Marvin was sitting down ready to study and he decided he was going to figure it out; it took him 5 minutes to discover that if you just lay the bunch on a table and make a doughnut shape you can make a ball of yarn in no time.

This yarn experience tells a lot about our personalities, I tend to get a little excited and I just dive right into things and get started, where Marvin is a little more observant and carefully plans things out before he begins something. I guess there is a time and place for both, I only wish I hadn’t spend 6 hours of my free time this week untangling yarn.

Happy Birthday Mom

We wish you a very happy birthday and we want you to know we are thinking about you today. We miss you and hope you have a great day. All of us here love you, even those who haven’t met you. You have blessed them as well as us by your willingness to send us packages with our favorite shows and games from America. Thank you so much mom, we appreciate all you have done for us this last year. Thanks for being so supportive of us. We Love You and Happy Birthday!

Living Room Circus

This past week we were able to entertain 3 of our “nieces and nephews” while their parents were busy house hunting. We had a lot of fun with them, but were once again reminded how much energy children have. I think we did a pretty good job at tiring them out this week. Marvin and I challenged them to a basketball game. Then all of the kids and me took on Uncle Marvin. Marvin barely pulled out a win. We played sardines, which I found out I was much better at hiding than finding. Marvin and their other uncle took them to a field and they tried out the Marvin’s boomerang. (Kathy thanks for sending it, they had so much fun and couldn’t wait until Uncle Marvin got home to go try it out.)


We topped the whole week off with a grand finale, a living room circus. ) It seriously felt like a circus during rehearsal, they all were very excited.) They all did a great job and even Marvin who sat down right before dress rehearsal and said, “Oh this is my nightmare” had fun. Marvin stole the show with his one ball juggling act. Other acts included a tightrope show, dancing monkeys, lion & tamer, magic tricks, and a clown show. We had so much fun and we certainly won’t forget that evening for a while.

Watch out for falling Trees

I was on my way to language last week and experienced a slight delay. The city decided it was time to trim the trees by the market. It was an interesting process because half of the street was blocked off by the truck lifting the guys with chain saws in the air, but nothing was blocked off people were still walking on the sidewalks like normal, dodging falling branches and getting sprinkled by wood chips. I decided it would be a best if I waited a bit before walking through the snowing woodchips. I observed something you would never find in the States. The guys were literally between the lines, and a branch got stuck on the line, so what did they do? They just shook the line until the branch fell off. As amuzed as I was I need to get to language so I closed my eyes and walked straight through the falling wood chips.

Language Bloopers

Our language teacher had a birthday, so I made cinnamon rolls. We were all very surprised to learn that all 3 of our teachers had never tasted cinnamon. They were very impressed with the flavor so they requested the recipe. My teacher right now doesn’t speak any English so I had to translate the recipe, which is harder than you think. I had to look up a few words like, knead, mix, rise, and pan and after it was all done I thought it was going to be understandable. So I proudly give my teacher this recipe I worked so hard to translate and she began to read it and then when she came to the step where you place the cinnamon rolls in the pan and let rise for 10-20 minutes, she stopped and looked at me with a puzzled face and said, “Erica what are you trying to say?” So I told her I didn’t know what the word was for pan and described it to her, using a few words and gestures. Then she started laughing and told me what I really said:

Lay cinnamon rolls in a glass toilet and let rise for 10-20 minutes. Oops!

After I told this story to a few our ex-pat friends they told me never to use the word preservatives when you refer to the stuff that keeps your food fresh for a long time. (Many times when it comes to technical words like this they are borrowed from English and sound very similar you just have to add the local accent.) Apparently this is not the case with the word preservative; it actually is the word for condom. After they told me this I just laughed because I remembered talking to a taxi cab driver about bread and how long it lasts in the States because it has lots of preservatives in it. After my comment he was silent for the rest of the trip, I thought it was kind of odd that he stopped talking. Now I know why!

Our Hot Water Woes

Meet our Hot Water Heater! We have a little love/hate relationship with this thing, and Marvin has become very familiar with it. First I have to tell you what an amazing plumber and husband Marvin is, because we wouldn't have hot water right now if he hadn't taken apart the pipes of this thing and gotten all the rocks out of it. Right now we have a lot of pressure at our house and our hot water heater is cleaned out which leads to two beautiful words, HOT WATER!!!

It is amazing at how a hot SHOWER will make my day. I seriously feel like a queen! We have learned the art of bath in a bowl. Boiling water and pouring into a tub inside a bathtub and then pouring the water over yourself, but for the time being I will cherish every hot shower I can get!
Marvin was laughing about how I always would hope there would be hot water everynight when I went to take a shower. After about 5 minutes of being in the bathroom trying to get hot water I would walk out to get the water that I boiled, just in case I needed it, and I would have this glare of irritability on my face. We had a good laugh about this and we both agree I am much more pleasant after a hot shower.

The good news is I have had to confront my attitute about hot water this last year. It is funny how as an American I expect things to go a certain way and if they don't I get frustrated or grumpy, as in my case with hot water. This past year I came head on with my sense of entitlement i.e. that I was entitled to a hot shower, a washing machine, space on public transportation, etc. I had a good hard look around me to see how people live here and my eyes were opened to the fact that hot water comes and goes and locals don't blink an eye, women wash clothing for their family of 6 by hand, while waiting on a ride home I see people who are tired and want to get home as much as I do. To make a long story short I have learned that a hot shower is not necessary and that my "standard of living" based off of America isn't a right, but it is a priveldge. So everytime I get a hot shower I feel like it is a gift from above.

The Hill

Marvin took these pictures from his favorite spot in the village where we live. It is a hill that is near a creek that divides the village. When it was warmer Marvin would go up to this hill and read and a local shepherd would sometimes sit down beside him while his sheep grazed. Ever since finding it Marvin couldn’t wait to sled down it, now we have the snow, all we need now is to find a sled that is big enough to hold us!
The buildings in the background is our booming metropolis, as you can see the city isn't that big.

This picture is looking out over the village we live in.
Those are sled tracks that you can see in the snow. Sleds are the winter bicycle here of our area. It is very common to see children walking down the street pulling someone in there sled.