Homemade Bagels!

There is a key to thriving in this country- her name is Ashlei and she makes life so much easier. She is an expert at living here- raising a child here, shopping here, efficiently getting things done here, she speaks the language SO well, and did I mention that she is PHENOMENAL cook!? Because that might be an understatement. I'm pretty sure she could make anything from scratch.

She sent me a text last week asking if I wanted to come over and make bagels with her. Um yes. I most certainly do. I thought she might give me a couple when we were done. Nope. She gave me them ALL. AH easy breakfast for the next 12 days.

I can't explain the process well quite yet as I am not quite sure how exactly we got from ingredients to bagels, but I plan to know very soon. 

It first involved kneading the dough in the bread maker. Then shaping them into bagels- which was not quite as easy as I thought it would be. Then we let them rise a little under a towel.  

Then we boiled them- for around 45 seconds on each side.

Then we let them dry a little on the cooling rack so they wouldn't be too soggy. 

Then we popped them into the oven and 20someodd minutes later.....

Beautiful, delicious bagels. Just short of blissful for this white food loving girl. 

Next time I plan to make them myself in my brand new breadmaker (that Ashlei of course ordered off of the EAian version of ebay for me). I'll share how its done once I've got it figured out. 

Thanks Ash! 

Joyfully fed,

Sweet Sweepy Baby

Saw this sweet, sweet little sweepy baby on the way to Wal-Mart last week and thought she was just too cute to not share :) 

Seeing NaiNai's (grandmothers) and MaMa's carry babies in unique ways like this is not uncommon. I mean, why not just strap a chair onto your back and go!?

Joyfully loving sweet ones,

Papa Johns!

Yesterday, we had a LONG exhausting, BUT productive day in the city...

Starting with a trip to Wal-Mart with the girls- borderline nightmare-ish. Wal-Mart in America is bad enough on a Saturday, BUT put one in a country with a WHOLE lot more people- Saturday resembles Wal-Mart at 5am the morning after Thanksgiving- and just to add to the craziness- everyone in the store staring at you AND looking in your cart to see what the foreigner is buying AND every 5 feet there's another sales person SCREAMING into a low quality microphone trying to sell who knows what. BAH. I was ready to scream by the time we left. BUT I found CHEESE! Sliced AND a little block of it! Made it all worth it.

 On our way out, we grabbed some fries and ice cream at KFC and jumped into a cab and headed to.....

The FABRIC MARKET! Love it. The girls I was with wanted to get fabric to make clothes. This trip I was solely looking for decorative purposes, and boy did I rack up! 

I got 5 meters of thick khaki linen for new curtains in our bedroom, a cute white fabric & velcro to make a little curtain for the bathroom sink, and LOTS of REALLY fun scraps to use for lots of things- which I will share in a post very soon. Then we jumped into another cab and headed to......

The furniture & mattress store-ish kind of a place! Where we met Adam & Ryan so Adam & I could get a mattress for our bed since we've been sleeping on a foam pad. I wish we would have been proactive with taking pictures there, because we saw some REALLY funny things. Furniture here is so funny and SO different from what we're used to (unless you shop at ikea of course). Then once we found our mattress, we went to the first floor to buy a new VACUUM! and then jumped into ANOTHER cab and met more friends at......... 

PAPA JOHNS!

There's nothing more satisfying on an exhausting day in a foreign country than some good pizza. I'm not a fan of PJ's in the states, but it sure is tasty in EA and the restaurant is SO nice comparatively speaking. 

and the best part of eating pizza out is.......

LEFTOVERS! Cold pizza in the fridge! 

You wouldn't think that a day like this would be that exhausting- and in America with our conveniences that we are used to, it's not. BUT take away your own vehicle and (are you ready for this?)..... 

 wait 20 min. for the bus going into the city, take a 45+ min. bus ride standing up, walk 15 min. from the bus station to Wal-Mart, endure Wal-Mart madness, shove everything you purchased into your backpack and another bag, attempt to find a taxi, and after 20 tries, ride in said un-airconditioned taxi with all of your purchases in your lap while the driver maneuvers through traffic like a banshee (we all know my motion sickness issues), get dropped off at the wrong side of the fabric market, walk 10 min with Wal-Mart purchases on your back, walk through the fabric market, buy things at 3 different places, try to figure out how you are going to carry around your fabric since you already feel like your back is going to break and arm is going to fall off, run into crazy traffic to hail the only empty cab you see, dive into it as it's rolling down the road, take another nauseating ride- this time SHOVED next to your friends and unable to see out with no air conditioning, get REALLY nauseous on this ride, get dropped off at the wrong place AGAIN after the driver swears he knows what he is doing, walk at least another 15 min. with ALL of your new goodies (did I mention that the girls bought a dvd player that they were carrying around?), find the furniture place, go to 4 different "vendors" before you find a mattress that doesn't feel like a slab of cement & arrange to have it delivered at your apartment (in another language), make your way to the vacuum section of the store, pick one out, take your ticket, walk down stairs to pay, walk back upstairs with your ticket to get your vacuum, carry your vacuum outside to find the 3rd cab of the day, pile into 2 cabs with your friends and all of your accumulating purchases to FINALLY go to Papa Johns, get dropped off at the wrong side of a HUGE crazy intersection, lug all of your goods down the road, over the bridge, and upstairs to Papa Johns, where pizza, coke, and ICE goodness is waiting for you.  

Not such a big deal in America where I can drive to the store, park in the parking lot, roll all of my purchases (that I don't have to limit because I don't have to lug them around tim-buk-tu) to the car in a buggy, drive to the next location, and so on and so forth... AND where you speak the language and aren't stared at all day.

Quite the adjustment. Productivity and efficiency have been reduced significantly, but that's alright. 

I snapped this one of Grady and his shushu Adam. Love it. Grady has Adam wrapped around his little finger.

The night ended with all of us piling into the 4th cab of the day and taking the long ride back out of the city to our "village". Needless to say, we slept soundly after such a long exhausting day. 

Joyfully exhausted, satisfied, and stocked up,

You know you've got good friends when......

They are willing to spend their Friday night helping you ghetto-rig your toilet to stop it from leaking... 

Our friends Ryan and Joseph spent their Friday night helping Adam run all over our town finding the most sufficient solution to our leaking toilet since they don't make wax rings here- let me rephrase- I'm sure that every wax ring in the world is made here.... they just export them all and don't sell them here.... which = leaky toilet. 

It's pretty ridiculous when there is a significant difference in the size of the pipe coming out of the toilet and the one going into the drain.... and therefore not all liquids make it into the drain and start seeping out of the bottom of the toilet. gag. I forgot to mention in my last post about adjusting that you can't throw ANYTHING in the toilet- including toilet paper. QUITE the adjustment. But clearly you can understand why. Did I mention that most things in this country are made this way? 

(Please note the ghetto-rigged "lip" for the shower in between the toilet and shower drain that Graham created last year to keep the bathroom from flooding when you take a shower. That's pretty much how it works here- the shower head is just hanging out in the bathroom.)  

There's nothing that pvc, duct tape, and caulk can't fix though right? Lets hope so. 

Here is sweet Joseph trying to get the water out of the toilet with a towel so it wouldn't end up all over the bathroom when they moved it back. Don't worry we threw these towels away. 

This is only a glimpse into the joys of adjusting to living here. As frustrating as frequent leaks can be (the sink leaked in 3 places before we got to the toilet), I am so thankful for this bathroom. It is SO nice compared to many others. 

Joyfully no longer concerned (for now) about moisture around my feet,

playing catch up... or something....

thoughts thoughts thoughts. I have a billion right now. I'm trying really hard to catch up- but it's not like I've been here long enough to be behind- so I don't really know what you would call it. I'm trying really hard to stay on top of ANYTHING I possibly can.... which right now doesn't feel like much.... I'm not sure what is going to come out right now, but I couldn't go any longer without blogging.... so here goes! 


Things that currently occupy my life/thoughts/time....
- The obvious- ... (i can't go into the details of how time consuming this is and how NOT on top of things I feel right now... maybe look for an ema!1 soon....??? but of course this is how I'm spending about 90% of my time right now)


- Settling into a new "house"..... which might be the most thought, but not necessarily time consuming and includes....
   ..... waiting for new furniture to be delivered, assembling new furniture, putting it to use, dying to "decorate" which falls low on my priority list, dying to bring order to the chaos that surrounds me in my house from not unpacking everything and not having time to get organized.... and so on and so on. Just living in a new place that is quite different from the last place I lived is challenging enough without the "cross-cultural" difficulties that come with it. Pictures to come soon. 


-figuring out how to "adjust" (if you will) to a new way of life-WHICH includes (BUT is most certainly not limited to)...
 .....cooking from scratch (which only consumes my thought life at this moment because I haven't found the 2 hours I need to go to the market to get anything to make a meal) and along with that, figuring out how to eat breakfast & not spend my entire day hungry. Thankfully our wonderful friends who have lived here for a long time have been amazing and invited us to have dinner at their house with them the last 2 nights for AMAZING home cooked meals. I do love food in EA, but now that I "live" here, I just really want to eat a meal every once a while in my house. 
...... not ingesting any tap water.... which means figuring out how to brush my teeth with water from a cup (which if you know me well, you know this is not easy. I am really quirky/particular when it comes to this), as well as making sure that I clean any produce well with soap and water since it is coated in who knows what.... but still somehow not ingesting the water, as well as many other things .... AND with this comes learning how to call and order more water "tongs" (the large jugs of water that go into water coolers) for our house
...... dealing with crappy plumbing and fixing a new leak in our bathroom every day. Adam has caulked and re-caulked our toilet and sink multiple times- wait for my post on the toilet. It'll be a good one! 
...... no central ac. 
...... trying our hardest to reduce the insane amount of moisture in the air so as to avoid the extreme buildup of mold that adorned the walls and graced our noses when we got here. We decided a de-humidifier was necessary and so Ash and I spent 4 hours in the city, taking 4 cabs between 4 locations trying to find one but we did succeed.... and found it at the safe store -yes a store that sells only safes- and 2 dehumidifiers in the office supply district (that's what it looked like to me). We empty it multiple times daily- at least 4-5 liters a day! I'm sure if we emptied it as soon as it was full it would be even more. 
...... walking through a crazy market every morning to go to class since the normal one is being renovated which includes all the meat tables with any part of many animals that you can imagine- which I really don't love at 745 in the morning
...... waking up to chickens (who are about to meet their fate) "cock-a-doodle-doo-ing" every morning at 6:00
...... poor electrical wiring which = no grounded outlets which = getting shocked when doing certain things without rubber shoes on..... like taking my laundry out of the dryer (WHICH I am SO thankful to have btw.)
...... my tiny washing machine in the middle of my kitchen
...... no dishwasher
...... being stared at 95% of the time. it's just part of being a foreigner here, but sometimes I feel like I live in a fish bowl. 
...... and the list goes on and on and on.....


- Being a student again!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH this is so hard. 8 am classes again at 25!? If you would have told me that I would be doing this 3 1/2 years ago I would have laughed at you. Now it is my reality. And lest you forget- class at 8 am in a language I do not yet speak that is so very difficult. I seriously feel like I am 18 again... wait no really like I'm in kindergarten again since I'm basically relearning my abc's


- my list of 27 things that i REALLY want to blog about but a- have 582 things that seem more important and b- our internet is so slow at times that uploading pictures can be a pain


- DYING to keep up with people at home... I haven't even talked to my poor dad yet and we've been here for almost 3 weeks. Any time I think, "Oh I have a little bit of time to call someone", it's like 4:30 in the morning and I don't think anyone would appreciate it.


- Responding to emails. I need like a 5-7 day grace period on all of those right now..... I promise I'll get to you at some point..... I have a folder in my inbox labled, "URGENT to do's" and I created one today that says, "NO REALLY! DO IT NOW!" because apparently urgent didn't get my message across. 


- Figuring out how in the world to continue to deal with the issues I've had with my health.... which is supposed to be my priority right? 


- Figuring out how to get money right now which involves DEALING WITH THE BANK!!! AH its been such a pain.... especially since we can only call during "office hours" in America- which gives us from 10 pm until we go to bed at night. We've spent the last 3 nights + a couple other in the last 2 weeks on the phone with them. I can't even get into it it makes me so frustrated. 


- taking care of lingering things at home (again the whole opposite side of the world time zone thing makes that really hard)


- Dying to walk with BG intimately. Oh so difficult with so many things before me, but oh so impossible and crazy to do any of these things by not.


AND with all of these things- figure out what the heck a balanced life looks like in a whole new world that quite possibly could not be more different than the one I left 3 weeks ago. 


sigh. so now that I just spent 20 minutes that I could be using to organize, email, plan, study, skype, "nest".... I hope you feel a little updated/connected to me..... Thanks to all my close friends/fam for giving me grace right now.... I think about each one of you multiple times daily and do miss you immensely. Don't think that not hearing anything from me means that I'm not thinking about you or disconnected from you- it's quite the opposite. 


All this to say..... life is good. We are here and we are blessed. Being here makes me more and more aware how true this is. He's good. Very good. 


Thanks for listening to my ramblings and I promise as soon as I get on top of a few things, the fun will begin. And oh what fun it will be.... get excited. 


Joyfully adjusting, 

The most horrific thing I have ever seen....

.....and honestly... I'm not being my normal dramatic self.  I saw the most horrific thing I have ever seen in person tonight. I'm tempted to not even write about it. But it's moments like this that seem life changing.

I will add this disclaimer: this is a little traumatic and you may not want to read it.

A couple of hours ago, I was eating dinner with an EA-ian friend that I met last year, inside a restaurant that has an open front (like everything here does) that sits right on a corner of the  that curves and goes straight up a hill in our "village". For the 4 of you who might be reading this who have been here before... the restaurant up on that concrete ledge a few doors down from "Big City Little Kitchen". It's a pretty steep curve and there are always lots of kids running around there. There are also more cars that drive through there than you think should. Most of the village doesn't seem very "driver" friendly and seems much more pedestrian friendly. Yet there are always cars flying through laying on the horn for people to get out of their way.

All of the sudden we heard a loud crash- that was clearly a car crash- and children screaming, no more than 50 feet away. My heart stopped. There pinned between the concrete ledge and large SUV was a little girl probably around 7 or 8 years on her bike. I'm still shaking just thinking about it. The SUV stalled out when he was going up the hill and jumped backwards right as the little girl was passing on her bike, crushing the lower half of her body between the car and the concrete wall. Dozens of people immediately swarmed around them and began trying to push the car, but since it was on a hill it wouldn't move. The little girls friends or sisters that were with her were screaming hysterically. Finally, after a few minutes of mass chaos enough men had come running to move the car enough to take the force off of her, but it took several minutes to get her out. Her legs were clearly broken, possibly crushed. One was short of being mangled- bone exposed, blood everywhere. Absolutely horrific.

It was crazy to see the response from the people and just how different our cultures can be. In the states an ambulance and fire trucks would be there immediately. And although people were screaming "Call an ambulance!!!" (my friend told me what everyone was saying).... one never came. Once they finally were able to get her out, the driver of the car scooped her up and ran for the hospital with her in his arms, her poor broken legs dangling over them, with the sisters/friends running behind. The police showed up a half an hour later to "investigate" but the man and little girl weren't there, so it really wasn't helpful. It was really surprising for me to see everyone respond though, and there was no hesitation in getting her to the hospital on foot..... that PTL is no more than 3 minutes right around the corner.

My friend and I began chatting for her healing and well-being. It was such a blessing that she wasn't lower on the hill where her upper body would have been crushed, yet so tragic as she may not be able to walk normally again. We chatted that she would, and that she would maybe come to know the dad through it. Chat for that precious little girl. And for the driver. He wasn't driving like a maniac like most usually are. His car just happened to stall out on that hill at the moment she was passing by. I can't imagine the emotions he may be feeling.

It's definitely something that I wont forget, and will probably think of every time that I come around that corner. life is fragile & precious; and I'm really grateful the bg protected hers tonight.