Joyeux Noel

We had a Christmas party at our apartment.  About 15 girls came which was really exciting.  Most of them were Becky's friends/current & former students.  Amanda and I invited two girls that we've become friends with at the shop that sells American products.


So, three days before Christmas, we put decorations up. 

As I look at this now, it seems pathetic.  But it really did feel Christmas-y.

Amanda and I with our two new friends! :)

When people first started arriving, it was a tad bit awkward.  Or maybe more than a tad.  So what do I talk about?  How bad my Wolof is.  That usually makes people laugh.  Becky finished cooking and we served dinner.  We had fajita style mexican-y food..  white rice, black beans, grilled peppers and onions with beef.  Did anyone actually like it?  Maybe 1 or 2 girls out of 15.  It's really funny to watch them move the food around much like we do when we go to their houses.  There is a huge difference, however.  They don't eat hardly any of it and didn't mind telling us that they didn't like it.  We could NEVER do that in their house.  We seriously get force-fed til our insides are going to explode and then get told we didn't eat anything.  So I had a good time last night telling them to "eat" which they didn't do at all. 

Becky read the Christmas story in Wolof to them and there were no cries of outrage (always a good thing).  They all took it well, in fact.  We then made a chain by writing things we were thankful for and introducing ourselves and reading out loud.  Overall, the evening turned out pretty good! 




We went to a nearby village for Christmas where our friend Sherrill lives.  It was a nice relaxing time for the most part.  Lots of laying around and eating :)  My kind of time!  haha...  The food we had was delicious!  Fresh green beans are coming into season here now so we had the first of them..  along with homemade mashed potatoes, chicken, my corn casserole (that I saved my one box of Jiffy and creamed corn for), etc...   The only not so good thing was that none of us slept very well because our cousins decided to chant literally all night long to make their presence known..  Monday night, I slept for 12 hours straight after not sleeping much over the holiday. 

Here's a pic of us eating our Christmas meal together:

On Monday on our way home, we stopped to go to Acrobaobab.  It was phenomenal!!!  It's a ropes course through Baobab trees.  Seriously cannot wait to go back and do it again!  Amanda, on the other hand, would be happy if she never got in another tree again.  So she took our pictures!

Here is Acrobaobab...  just kidding!  Playing in a litle kids playground.  I'm training ;)

Aren't the trees just gorgeous? 

This is the very last thing you do after you've completed the course you get to zip line down!

After the ropes course, you could rock climb the tree if you wanted to.. when your arms were like jello. 

You can barely see but I made it almost all the way up!

Finally, as a closing treat.  Amanda and I decided to buy these as Christmas presents to ourselves because we laughed so hard when we found them. Even better is the look on any African's face when they see us in them...

Our love/hate relationship with appliances...

First off, before I even let you read on, let me just tell you that I am really appreciative of our appliances.  Seriously.  It's nice to come to the apartment and it's about as westernized as you are going to find in West Africa.  We love our appliances.  For real.  But there are just times when when you laugh about phrases spoken in relation to the appliances.  We wanted to share some of those with you here.


From least ridiculous to most ridiculous.

First up: the water filter.

Gone are the days of water directly out of the fridge or sink for that matter. Who knows what tiny microrganisms lie waiting to destroy us.  So this beast cranks out clean water.  We just have to pour it in there ever day or so.  Do not underestimate it's power.  When we stayed with the host family, they had one and the top layer of water before it was filterered was BROWN.  It came out clear at the bottom.  And we drank it with no sickness to show.  So mad props to the water filter!

Here is our water heater.  To save electricity money, we unplug and plug in the water heater (sometimes).  I'm thankful for hot water! (Now that it's getting cooler it is nice to have.)  I was on the phone with a friend one night and asked Amanda if she could "plug in the shower."  That's a sentence I've never said before :)

The dishwasher! Bahahahaha...

The oven and the thermometer.  And can everyone see the tiny hole in the middle where you stick a match in?  First, you turn the gas on.  Stick the lit match into the gas encased oven.  Turn knob and wait for fire to spread out over the bottom.  Tons of fun.  LOVE doing this every time! :)


Last but not least, who of you gets to say that every time you do a load of laundry, you get to hold the washing machine in place?  We do! :)  You can wash about 3 pieces of clothing at a time and when it gets to the spin cycle, it seriously sounds like a rocket about to blast off into outer space.  We don't want our washing machine zooming into outer space (or across the bathroom floor) so we hold it in place.  Sometimes it takes more than one person.  This time in the video below it was pretty calm.  (Sorry, it is sideways...)

Random Snippets of Life

Well, I know I haven't blogged in a while.. that's mostly because life has settled into a routine here (that word is used VERY loosely).  I decided I should just post about random odd and end things that happen here so you can be informed..

First of all, Amanda and I are doing the near impossible: cooking.  I have figured out the stove/oven.  Yes, we have advanced past the microwave. Amanda refuses to be in the kitchen with me when I light it because you stick a match into this tiny hole at the bottom of the oven (all the while the gas is ON)..  so I'm poised to run at any point in time should it decide to explode.  I really don't like fire.  Learning to cook has not been without it's injuries..  Case in point, the chebu-legumes of death.  I tried one day to cook rice and veggies on the stove like the local people.. only to learn the hard way that pouring water in hot oil doesn't work well.   We lost a pan lid in the explosion as well as burning my left hand.  Luckily, the local remedy seemed to clear it up just fine: toothpaste.  Amanda turned the gas off before even worse damage could be done.  All that to sum up, we have mastered: french toast, pancakes, eggs and cookies.  Diet of champions.  One day, we'll attempt an actual meal.  If you have any supererty duper easy recipes, send 'em our way! 

I don't think I took a picture of the final product but our homemade sugar cookies were delish!  As I made them a second time, I chuckled as I thought to myself that in America, homemade cookies wouldn't have even crossed my mind..  as in, why in the world would you do that?  The only way to make cookies it to buy already made dough! :) 

Next up on this random blog post:  African clothing.  There will be a blog post in the future about the fact that we went a little bit crazy buying fabric and getting outfits made.  I only have a few pictures for you to see for now. 

The internet is an absolutely marvelous thing.  We were able to take Christmas pictures this year.  I wanted to do a completely ironic card (as in, the desert) but when I saw that these people had put so much effort into decorating this street corner, I couldn't resist taking pictures here.  The cards were expensive so we didn't send too many out but basically, it's about 90 degrees the day we took these pictures.  As you can see, the decor is pretty extravagent.  We were like a freak show and random people stood around us to watch, some of which you can see in the pictures.  At first, they weren't going to let us on the sleigh because "the corner wasn't finished" but we just stood there talking long enough that eventually they let us in :)

This one didn't make it to the card but is an honorable mention! :)



Here's the winner! 

We went to the MOST amazing restaurant here:  The Thailand Garden.  I felt like I had been transported to Asia which made me super happy.  As Becky and I are discussing how delicious the food was on the ride home, I'm concerned that I'm turning into Becky (who's always gushing after she's eaten something good).  Amanda's response?  "I'm just thinking about the fact that I just dropped fourteen dollars and it doesn't even phase me."  Yep.  It's expensive.  But worth every penny.

It's like a rainforest-y Asian decor heaven in there :)

Fried rice with chicken...  not as good as Bali's but still delicious! :)



Last but not least, the internet can only entertain for so long and who in the world wants to learn Wolof?? (kidding)  Thanks to a new friend in the city, we are stocked up on movies to watch for a while.  Neither Amanda nor I are huge movie buffs and in the states neither one of us watch very many.  But here?  Why, yes, thank you.  I'll watch anything.  We're going to get caught up on all these "classics" that neither of us has ever seen. 



First up on our check off list.  I now understand the quote "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die."

Our ingenious home theater!

Gearing up for the movie!  Amanda has joined my league of Wolof notecards on the wall.

Hard to even imagine that blankets are needed!  This blanket is from Morocco.. lol... bought it at the international fair that was just held here. 

That's all for now folks!

Recent Happenings

We've been super busy lately.  Here's some fun things that have been happening:

Cleaning out the homeschool room in the center that is being renovated.  We find such neat toys to play with as we sort through all the materials.

I joked with him that I was snapping a photo of his usual...  haha!  Although he is the hardest working of all of us!!

A view of the whole room!

This is the courtyard with the guesthouse in the background.  We are seriously really excited for the potential that this place has..  we are asking Him to show us how best to utilize it when we can open it..hopefully by the beginning of the year.  The ideas include English classes, teams could come host camps, possibly a kids club, etc... :)

Having language for four hours everyday can be an overwhelming thing.  Most of the time, we designate Friday as our "go out" day..  This last Friday, we decided we would cook "chebu-legume."  A famous dish here is "chebu-jenn" which is rice and fish.  These people RAVE about it.  It's seriously the best thing ever to them.  After the standard questions it's always, "Have you eaten chebujenn?"  And while we definitely prefer chebu-jenn over chebu-yapp (explanation- see here ), overall we prefer no meat at all.  Who needs the meat here?  I don't.  Amanda doesn't.  It's much safer when there is no meat.  So we made up our own dish.  Rice and vegetables.  This may sound healthy but the amount of oil necessary to cook it the way they do here negates any nutritional value (not that I really care about that....).  Our teacher was absolutely convinced that it would not be good without the fish.  We proved her wrong.  She actually liked it.. or so she said (as we know all too well the art of saying something is good when it is in fact horrible).  

I'm pretty sure the ladies we bought this from at the market thought we were crazy.  But no, we are legit.

Yes, I did eat these.  Surprising, I know.

Pounding away.

So authentic!  We even have the communal bowl going! 



One day we'll be bold enough to try eating with our hands again.  Until that day - spoons it is.

Got my first outfit made here.  I look ridiculous.  But it's okay because I'm not wearing a skirt!  It's not as crazy when I take the headpiece off although that seems to be the most popular thing when I wear it. 

Well, last but not least, we were unaware that the city can turn your water off whenever they feel like it.  It's not off for just like an hour or so. So this morning, when our house help came, we went to our neighbors with buckets to ask for water if they had any.  Apparently it was on in the middle of the night and people around us knew that so they stocked up... the crazy Americans were asleep instead of collecting water.. ooops.  Luckily, our neighbors gave us some and we got to joke around with them!  I can cross begging for water off my list of things to do in life.

And a very special HAPPY BIRTHDAY to a dear friend, mentor, and monster! :)











Best Taxi ride of my life!

So, you seriously NEVER know what you are going to get when you get into a taxi here.  It can range anywhere from downright boring, to frustrating, to annoying, to peaceful, etc.  Most of the time, I try to communicate a little.  Amanda and I joke that our tipping is directly proportional to the question, "Do you have a husband?"  If you ask, you get no tip.  If you don't ask, you get a tip (sometimes).  [Taxi tips are not necessary at all but sometimes if we like a particular driver we will tip].

Anyhow, so we eat dinner at none other than Shaddy's and get a taxi at about 6:30 to go home.  It started out as any other taxi would with him trying to charge us more than we should pay.  We tell him the price we will pay and get in. 

From then on out, he never stopped talking.  Not for a second.  Mostly in French.  Amanda doesn't understand French at all and I understand very little (two years in high school + three semesters in college = pas comprends).  This did not deter this taxi driver.  He is talking a hundred miles an hour about everything.  He wanted to spout off every American celebrity that he knew.  This ranged from Michael Jordan to Phil Collins to Michael Jackson.  Then he starts singing.  Everything.  He sang songs we didn't know; he made our names into a song; he started singing "This is the life for me"; and finally, the best was when he started singing Michael Jackson's "Black or White" [Shout out, OB!  I will always think of you when I hear this song].  He starts holding up a fake microphone and I chime in with him.  He wants to be a "grand artist" in this country and invites me to sing with him.  He shows us his newspaper, his spray of some sort, anything to keep the conversation going.  Amanda and I are just dying laughing.  At one point, he mentioned languages he knew/could read and he mentioned Arabic among others.  He is not paying attention to the rode at all.  The actual cab of the taxi is terrible..  everytime we hit a bump, we thought the back of the taxi was going to literally fall off.  It was awesome.

You ask if I got his telephone number?  Why, yes I did.  When we are having an off day, we will certainly be texting our friend the taxi driver for some good ole entertainment.  We also left him quite a tip because he didn't ask if we were married and he entertained us the entire way home.  We also left him a gift with our Father's message in Arabic :)

Best. Taxi. Ride. Ever.

Wolof bi neexul

Since there has been some distress about the fact that I haven't blogged in a week, I decided that I would.   We went to a women's retreat this past weekend and I seriously thought that I had been transported out of this country.  Crazy pretty.  Then, Monday morning, back to the grind of language study.  I thought I would share with you some pictures and some excerpts from my language notebook to give you a sense of how much we LOVE learning this language.. :)

Most normal people will drink coffee for breakfast.  Well, I'm neither most people nor normal so for my little pick-me-up before language starts too early for my comfort:  Mtn Dew!

This is the absolute BANE of my existence.  If you can, please zoom in.  This is a chart of about 1.746 billion pronouns that Wolof uses. 

And the ever-so-handy flashcards of pronouns that litter our bedroom walls to help us learn.

Can you tell how much we love Wolof?  :)

One of the first days with our language teacher she called me crazy.  This t-shirt literally translates "big crazy"

And here is just a taste of what a daily lesson looks like:

 

Sometimes, this language just does not make any sense.  Here are some excerpts from my notebook:

• "Di" is sometimes seen as "y".....  [OK....  so why is "di" even there?]
• Throw a "y" on the end of it if it seems crazy.  [If you see someone doing something crazy, throw a "y" on the end of the question word... ex..  Loo= not crazy, Looy= crazy]
• There are no adjectives in Wolof.  [They are just called something else]
• Magget means old person
• Daily, our teacher says: "Yalla, dimbali ma ak Mariama" = Lord, help me with Mariama

To break up the lesson a bit, we instituted "pause time" two hours in where we typically eat snacks.  The last thirty minutes of class are reserved daily for walking to a boutique and buying a coke (to practice language, of course!)

As daunting as four hours of language a day is, we are grateful for it.  We know other organizations do not devote near as much time to language learning as we've been granted!  I should go study right now... but probably not! :)

My thoughts on Tabaski

Well, for as much as I had built up the dread in my mind over this holiday here called Tabaski... for the most part it wasn't too bad.  Now granted, even though we did have a house invite, we did not go because we thought we were having language class and well...  I need to be a little more holy before I can start putting down liver (just kidding!)  But for real, my roommate Becky got to eat sheep liver as well as other sheep parts..  I think I'll do it next November!
Anyhow.. you can learn a LOT of interesting things just by sitting on your balcony and watching the happenings on the street below.  We picked up a lot of stuff and confirmed it with our language/culture teacher the next day. 

1.  I have decided that Tabaski is a combination of three American holidays:  Christmas, Easter and Halloween.  That may seem like a stretch but here are my observations:

a.  Christmas = In America, we pick out a tree...  (well, not my family - as my mom prefers a fake tree... not only fake but fake WHITE.. like it really snows in Florida!) Anyhow..  here, they pick out their sheep.  It's a big deal.  The fatter the sheep/tree - the better.  You have to care for your tree - water it, decorate it.  Here, you care for your sheep (until you kill it), wash it, sometimes put a red ribbon around it's neck. 

b.  Easter = well, there is an obvious connection of sacrifice.  They are sacrificing for their sins.  Our sacrifice has been paid.  But it's similar in that everyone wears their best clothes.  They will fork out a lot of money for getting very nice new outfits made for the entire family! 

c.  Halloween = Since families that purchase a sheep are supposed to give some meat away to people that are less fortunate, people that are less fortunate go "trick or treating"... for MUTTON!  Literally..  we watched a man come up to a house, ring the doorbell (we live in a wealthier neighborhood), speak to the person who answered, that person took his plastic bag, went inside, filled it up with meat (as he waited) and return to give it to him.  I wonder if they have a phrase they have to say on the equivalent of trick or sheep............ 

About the give the lady his pumpkin green plastic bag....

No Trick today...  Only sheep meat!

2.  The Talibe boys (this is a whole other blog post in and of itself) are young boys who are under the tutelage of a Mslm leader but they go around collecting money all day.  It's really really sad.  They walk around with no shoes and a bucket to collect money.  Well, on Tabaski everyone gives them sheep meat.  They put it in their buckets.  Some people will actually come and buy the meat from them that they got for free.

It's hard to see.. but that's meat in their buckets.

And someone checking out the selection of cheap sheep meat from the boys.

3.  There are guys willing to kill your sheep for you.  They walk around clinging their knives together down the road to let you know that they are offering their services.  Their payment?  Money and sheep meat.

4.  I only had to see one discarded sheep skin (and apparently the head was right next to it but I looked away).  We also saw several holes that people dig in the road to drain the blood of the sheep into.  This is apparently the most important aspect since this covers their sins.

5.  I was SERIOUSLY surprised at how good the sheep smelled as people were cooking it.  I mean..  it was like firing a grill up in the USA.  I could tell it was marinated and it smelled really good. 

6.  Becky received some sheep meat.  In fact, she received sheep leg.  Leg o sheep.  So.. she cooked it tonight.  I had already eaten dinner (with the team that came in!! yay!) but I did taste her sheep leg.. It really was not bad.  A little on the chewy side but decent. 

I think that's enough ramblings on Tabaski.  There are still quite a few "lucky" sheep who are still alive!  That is.. until they are fatter next year!

Birth/American Day!

So my first birthday on another continent was ALOT of fun!  Kuddos and thank you to my teammates and friends for making the day so special. 

Here are a few highlights of the day :)

It's hard to read the sign but I think it says.. "Happy Birthday Lindy!"  ...and I'm still not sure who the random guy is on the end.. next to Sarah...  Chase?  <speculations> haha!

ALL of the Facebook posts were amazing!  Your comments and encouragement and pryers mean soo much!!  Audra.. your post almost brought me to tears... :)
So here's how I spent the day:
I decided it was American day.  American food.  American clothes.  Well, you get the idea.  We started off with "language class" which got transformed into American breakfast with our teacher (plus, a real short lesson and outing).   

Pancakes!  I brought the mix from home, dropped $8 to get some American syrup...  the country ham was given as a gift by a team that just came through!  (plus some apples just to have something else to pour syrup on .. haha!)

Notice the jeans!!!!  Oh so nice to wear jeans.....
Next, we went into the office to pick-up my first package from my family which contained the oh-so important icing for my cake!

Isn't the skirt wrapped around the jeans such a lovely addition to the outfit...??  Haha.. my language teacher told me that people will think I am crazy.. which is a frequent occurance anyway..  I told her that I'm starting a new African fashion trend :)

And opening the contents!  Mostly things that TSA stole from me or were too heavy to be packed.. plus some cinnamon and garlic powder for bread here!

So.. then the afternoon consisted of mainly baking the cake in the gas oven and skyping with some people!  I was super excited that I was able to light the gas stove today.  It's the little victories that you celebrate.. so I've been told!  There was a moment when I thought that West Africa was going to win the cake battle...  the pan was not greased well enough so the cake was not coming out of it too easily...  I cut that thing in the middle, dug a couple of spatualas up under it and took it out in two pieces.  It started to fall apart on the edges a little bit but nothing the icing wouldn't cover in the end.  I won the cake battle!

Here's my starting ingredients...  Oh and here's a picture of our tiny kitchen!  Fridge to the left, gas stove behind, and sink/cabinets to the right..  really tiny space!

Finished product! 

My boo.. aka Kristie sang "Happy Birthday."   I wanted to upload the video but it takes way too long. The conversation was hilarious.  She at one point told me that I reminded her so much of herself when she was younger that she gave her husband permission that if she died he could track me down and court me.  I told her that was the creepiest thing I had ever heard...  haha! 

I also got to chat with a Monster for a bit which is always a bright spot in the day!  Nice to see she does actually work in the office sometimes...

Finally, we head over to my immediate supervisor's house for American pizza, ice cream, cake and a movie. 

Just look at that beauty!  I'm gonna learn how to make this.  This country is going to force me to cook.

Most of my team :)  Don't worry Stacee.. even though you may see salad and salad dressing here.... none of it made it's way to my plate!

And finally... the funniest thing of the day BY FAR.  My supervisors singing their Kenyan version of Happy Birthday: