Hello there forehead!

So I always think that I don't have alot to blog about.  But when I actually do sit down to write an update, I have a lot more than I think.  So I'll just update with a lot of pictures and some words on the important points.

First up:  Tea making lessons.

Thing #8756 I've never done before:  Light charcoal with none other than the trash paper on the street.

This is after I've spilled the tea several times.  Starting to get the hang of it here :)  It's a lot harder than it seems!



Second, we went up a "mountain" (aka a glorified hill but might as well be a mountain as I don't exercise) to a lighthouse.  It's really calm and nice up there.  You can see a good chunk of our city and it's quite a different perspective because looking down, it almost seems calm, serene, non-chaotic.  But we know better.

This is the western-most point of our continent :)



I like doing handstands with cool backgrounds!

When we left, we were standing on a roundpoint trying to catch a taxi.  We notice a herd of cows walking on the opposite side of the road from where we are.  If you know me, you know I love any kind of animal and one of my favorite things about this place is the incorporation of livestock into everyday life.  So naturally, I'm stoked at the sighting of a herd of cows.  I ask Amanda to start taking pictures. 



Still far away at this point.

Wait.. are they coming this way???

Lindy:  "Omgoodness!! This is awesome!  Keep taking pictures!!!"   Amanda:  "We HAVE to get out of here!"  Lindy:  "No! No!  It's okay.. keep taking pictures!!"

Cows stopping traffic.

This picture was taken after we waited til the very last second to run away from them :)

Hair braiding extravaganza!  Yes, it did and still does hurt.  Yes, I look sometimes like the Chucky doll or that I am a proud owner of a mullet.  Yes, my forehead is huge and shiny.  But you know what?  It's not about us! :)



Working on Amanda's!!

Look how happy the girls look!!

Lookin good!!  haha!

I really like these sheep closeby so we took a some pictures.  I'm just putting this one up so you can get the full scope of how silly I look with braids.  Only in West Africa.







New Years/The hairiest chicken I've ever seen

For New Years Day of 2012, we went to the home of a new friend that works really close to our apartment..  She invited us over for lunch.  This is really exciting to us because it's the first time that we've been invited into someone's house.  Our language teacher went with us.  We get there and they are finishing up cooking lunch  so we had live entertainment by her two kids (among others... family members?) 


The Friday before, we stopped by her work to finalize plans for coming and of course at that time they were eating lunch.  So, the words that I've come to LOVE hearing: "Kaay lekk" (come eat) happened...  You never know what in the world is going to be in the bowl.  I told them that we had already eaten but that we would taste which is the polite thing to do.  So we walk over and I think it's the typical chebu-jenn (fish and rice) until I put a bite of it in my mouth.  It's really, really fishy, cool and runny (like watery rice).  The fish for the dish was small & very boney and as I was chewing, I realize that I have a bone in my mouth..  not knowing if it's rude to spit out bones, I swallowed it...  I just thought that someone was a worse cook than I am.  But the next day we learned that it was a new dish altogether- it's supposed to be runny.  I am pretty sure I could go my whole life without eating that one. 


So... back to New Years Day: when we get to our friends house, because of the previous experience, we're a little nervous about the meal.  I taught our language teacher the m's pryer:  I'll put it down if You keep it down.  She thought this was the funniest thing ever.  When the bowl comes with spoons, it's regular chebu-jenn but it's the white kind.  That means that there is no tomato paste in it to help take away fishy taste.  So we dig in and, by the grace of the Lord above, it wasn't really that fishy!  I actually was sort of enjoying it until one bite when it tasted like I had eaten my once pet goldfish.  Chew & swallow.  Don't think.  After it was all said and done,    our langugage teacher says "I'm proud of you two!"... haha!  She's the one African that knows us well enough to know what we are really thinking.


So the rest of the day was spent hanging out and drinking attaya which is my favorite.  The kids played around.  Her son, Cheikh, kept calling Patricia a boy which was the funniest thing ever.  He was such a ham! 


I see this chicken running around in their yard.  It has feathers on it's feet.  I've never seen such a thing in my life...  They tell me it's just a baby and that they bought it for $16 because when it's grown it can be sold for $50.  Because I'm so amazed, we walked to the end of the street where they sell this same breed of chickens so I could see them as adults. Coolest. chickens. ever.  Upon arriving in Africa to find that lions, cheetahs, and monkeys don't exist here (everything I've been taught is a lie!! haha) I have to be impressed with the livestock :)

Wrestling

Dancing

I still don't know what some of the things are in the middle of this dish.  I'm convinced part of it looks like brain.

Making attaya!

 

Seriously.. this is the coolest chicken ever.

 

 

 

Here's a big one!  This thing had to be like 20 or so pounds!

 

 

 

 

Can't wait to go back and visit again!

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.