Aajej

Aajej = duststorm

Last Saturday, after enjoying a coffee at a nearby hotel, we decided to see the city from the roof (we'd been told it offer the best view of the city). Impeccable timing we have because just as we stepped out, a mighty storm blew in. I was telling a friend that if we'd been back home, I wouldn't said a tornado's coming because the sky was the strangest color. Fortunately there were no tornados, a surprisingly little amount of rain, but my oh the dust!

1:15 pm

1:19 pm

1:22

1:23 pm

1:24 pm

Sitting with the carpets

Sitting with the carpets

Somehow, I always end up holding the bags. haha! We went to the "old city" this week, walked through narrow walkways crowded with people, and shopped for a carpet. Let's be honest, Beth did the shopping, and I did the bag-holding, observing, and nodding of approval. But, oh the amount of people watching one can do from within a carpet store. If only there were a way to discreetly photograph it all!

The man across the walkway, tying off the fringe of his carpets.

This one covered alley is full of seemingly small vendors, but they can really pack some stuff into those little rooms!

A Day in the Life

So randomly this morning I decided y'all might want a look at what an average day around here looks like, although for some of you, it may be TMI. ;) The beauty of each day here is that they are never the same, regardless of planning and scheduling every day brings new opportunities and experiences.

Here's a look at a day in my life:

We adopted a kitten a few months ago. Bnaya still doesn't understand a proper morning greeting or that biting my feet while I'm on my way to make coffee is much more dangerous than biting my foot AFTER the coffee. 

Making a decent cup of coffee is quite a process around here, but we're so thankful to have good grains with which to make it! First, we filter the water (it's not really bad, just has a lot of calcium), then we heat the water in an AMAZING electric water heater thingy, and then we let it roast in the French press. In general, it's very delicious and very much worth the effort!

Today, Beth studied with the tutor, so I attempted to review on my own.  I ended up spending most of my time studying the Word instead, but I did take a picture of our lessons!

My desk window offers a very distracting vista. The Med is in the distance.

Hop in a taxi (this was the only one I remembered to take a picture of, but this is our main mode of transport so we do it a lot!)

Met Beth for lunch at one of the nicer restaurants in town.

Appetizer: Bread + dips (diced tomato dip, mayonnaise, harousa) and olives 

Beth's seafood dish and my delicious lasagna!

We ran a few other errands before English Club at our house. I forgot to take pictures  but we had several girls come today and we had lots of fun! We used these conversation questions to get started with the English practicing.

At 5, we walked to our Arabic class. The sun literally set on our way to class-it gets dark so early here!

Arabic class. I snapped a photo while our teacher stepped out for a moment.

Beth's feet are staying warm during Arabic class - it's nearly cooler inside than out! (Don't tell her I posted this! ;)

Leftovers for dinner: Beth's delicious stew!

Beth was getting all creative in the kitchen making Christmas goodies and I decided to come write to all of you.

So this is an idea of a "typical" day. It's just after 9 pm, we've just finished dinner and will probably try to watch a Christmas movie before turning in, but that's the basics. Today was a really good day, nothing crazy happened but we had lots of good conversations with new friends and that's always our favorite!

Good Soil

We were traveling along the northern coastline with Beth's parents, showing off some of the beautiful mountainous scenery in the North and enjoying the surplus of greenery that we don't see much in 'the desert' when I saw one of the most moving sights of my life. The parable of the sower literally jumped off of the page and engraved a powerful image in my mind.

Our compact, rental car had just wound it's way past a group of people harvesting olives on the hillside when we reached something of a high road, with slight valleys to either side. The greenery was intermittently interrupted by patches of freshly turned dirt and someone had just commented on how many fields were filled with bright white rocks. To the right stood two men walking side by side down the middle of a fresh field. Across their right shoulders and hanging low on their left side rode a large sling filled with seeds. As they walked downhill they each would literally sling the seeds from left to right, across the area. We whizzed by before anyone thought to stop and take a picture, but in my mind some of those seeds fell on the path, some on rocky soil, some among weeds and thorns, and some on good soil. And hopefully, some were caught in the wind and produced a harvest in fertile soil that the farmers would never step foot on.

I suppose the picture froze in my mind that day because I felt like I was seeing the culture in which a beloved parable of mine had been told in - among people who planted in a much similar fashion. It made perfect sense to the original audience why some seed feel on the path, or rocky soil, or among weeds - that's what happens when you're all but scattering/throwing seeds everywhere. In my western mind, I'm afraid some of the poignancy of the story has been lost because my only context for farming or planting consisted of small patio planters or, at best, a small backyard garden - the kind where you map your garden before planting and everything is in a nice, neat little row. I've never planted seeds on a path, among rocks, or in a thorn bush. But now when I hear this parable, I'll no longer be thinking of the WWII victory gardens in "suburbia" but rather two North Africans walking alongside each other throwing seeds across a field as if it were an art form. And the visual of not just one sower but two, working toward a common goal, spreading seeds, and sharing the labor will be forever etched on my heart.

A few bends down the road later, we managed to get this picture of a man sowing seeds before hopping back on his tractor. The image is completely different but at least this gives you an idea of the setting.

30 Days of Thanksgiving!

Last November I was living in my parent's old house (after they had moved across the country) with my sister, my best friend, and a new friend. The four of us girls were crowded into that house with so much stuff that our friends joked that it might explode. It was literally busting at the seams. I was in a very transitional time, it was my first year since college to not be teaching or working full-time or near my young siblings and somehow the teacher/big sister wormed her way out and created a cheesy thankfulness mantle display (it's a great replacement bulletin board).

It looked like this:

2011

2011

This year my sweet sister sent all the stuff from last year, so we've recreated our 30 days of thankfulness!

This year! Thanks to friends for sending the die-cut shapes, it put us straight into the holiday spirit!
And thanks Poly for the funny card and sweets!!

Join us in giving thanks to the Father, the giver of every good gift and every perfect gift (James 1).
If you send me what you're thankful for, we'll write it and add it to our list!

Today, I am thankful for the weather - it has finally begun to remotely resemble fall! The temperature is cool and we even had a little rain this morning. And we have a cozy little apartment where we get to drink our hot American coffee and watch the rain from the window. ;) His blessings overflow!

 

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name! Psalm 100:4

Exploring...

A few weekends ago, we took off one Saturday with a few friends to exploring a nearby city. The city is on the water (I suppose almost everything here is near the water. haha!) and has an art gallery/coffee shop that we find reminds us of our favorite Cups Coffee Shop from back home. We enjoyed a some art, coffee, and seeing the sea before visiting a popular museum. Enjoy the pictures as much as we did exploring our beautiful country!

Tasty (and pretty) coffee!

There's a cool castle looking thing - let's take a picture. Too bad we can't take the light pole and cars out of the background...

Along the Med! It's so pretty!

Aid Meled Saiid (Happy Birthday)

My 26th birthday - African style!

The pictures pretty well speak for themselves. I had a great day! Thank you to everyone who made me feel so special!

At our friends house, holding the "family birthday plate", onto which I piled Tamale Pie, Pumpkin Roll, Fruit Salad,  Chips and French dip, salsa, and bean dip, and hand cranked (Thanks guys!) peach ice cream! Thank you so much Beth and friends!!!

Birthday sign and balloons!

Friends from home and friends from here = a beautifully celebrated day!

They turned on the "Happy Birthday Song", so I was hoping a cake was coming...

A cake with something like fireworks. I promised I'm not that old...the candles here are huge like that!

I was not expecting the snow that smelled like cleaning supplies.

Or the scoop of icing that ended up in my face. ;)

You can even see the missing scoop of icing with my name on it. Oh well!!

Birthday happies from home and friends here! Overwhelmed!!

My sweet sister and brother-in-law sent packages wrapped in brown paper for me to open every week from my birthday til New Year's Day. SUCH a precious idea. Something to look forward to every week! I'm enjoying them IMMENSELY!! Thanks, Sis!

Beautiful clothes from my grandparents! They have a great sense of style!

Another fun thing that happened on my birthday that can't be commemorated in pictures is that my friends decided to sing the Happy Birthday song(s) multiple times per hour. It was hilarious and lasted until mid-week, when we started singing to sweet sue!

"Happy birthday to you..."
"It's a fact and we know it..."
"Happy, happy birthday..."
"Jump down, turn around.."

I am beyond blessed, not just because of another year to live for Him, but for amazing friends and family to share it with. ;)

Buckets of Community

It rained last night. (And yes, only in Africa would this topic merit a post.) The perfect kind of thunderstorm that begins in the afternoon so you can see the dark clouds along with the lightning rolling in, then the bottom fell out just as we were leaving to meet some friends for our Wednesday night ladies gathering.

As the rain was barreling down, we were amazed at how quickly the streets were flooding. Pools of water everywhere. I suppose the Sahara doesn't absorb rain so well. When we arrived to our friends' house, the front gate was ajar, so I jumped out of the truck and into ankle deep water! At this point we were all so excited about the rain and realized that it was only a matter of time before we were completely drenched, so four of us ladies giggled our way up the flooding driveway, across the house and into the rain-blowing wind, before we huddled around the front door.

We knocked and knocked but no one answered the door. We tried to call but the phones weren't working. So we peeked around the corner to see our friends in a small studio behind their house that is used as a schoolroom.

We sent one fearless member of our group, Beth, to investigate matters. When we got the motion to follow, we learned, halfway to the schoolroom, that the school was flooding and our friends have been locked out of their house.

So away went our giddiness, as we all got to work moving books and other easily damaged things off the floor while one man began putting down boards and mud to create a dam at the front door. Thirty minutes later, the water was pooling outside the front door instead of inside, nothing had been damaged, and we had each received an additional work out and a shower for the day by mopping up water.

Then another family arrives to help with finding a way to get into the house. Here's where we all get to use our imagination because while we were waiting in the schoolroom, these two men were pushing a ladder through a barred, open window, across the small kitchen to the locked door, and opening the latch. Living in Africa breeds creativity, right? 

So as we sat around their large table, water pooling underneath our seats as we shivered it off and warming ourselves with hot spiced apple cider, tea, or hot chocolate, we each thanked the Father for the rain and his beautiful provision. If they hadn't accidentally been locked out of the house, they wouldn't have known til morning about the flooding problem. And how funny is it that it all happened less than an hour before a number of people we expected to come over. With their phones and keys locked in the house, it could've been a much longer night for them. So this week instead of listening to a Beth Moore video, we had the chance to live in community and left with bucket loads of memories to carry out with us. 

"Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!" Ps. 133:1


*I think someone snapped a few pictures, so I'll try to add them when I get them.

Grandpa's beard

Sometimes the adventure of learning a new language gives you a beautiful nugget of joy to treasure. For me it generally comes by the way of watching myself or someone else making a funny mistake, but then you sometimes you stumble upon a word that is just great all on it's own. Recently, while visiting friends in another city, we went to an amusement park kind of place (the word for this 'fair' is funny in it's own right because it sounds like the word for worm...kinda. Well, if you add a few consonants it does.) that had cotton candy. Here we learned that the word/phrase for cotton candy is  لحية متى جد (leHya mtaa jed) which literally translated means, "My grandfather's beard." For the first time ever, I enjoyed the language lesson more than the actual sweets! haha!

Enjoying 'my grandfather's beard" and ice cream with friends!

It was quite odd but the cotton candy was melting nearly as quick as the ice cream.

"Friends Night Out!"