New Year's Eve

I figure since January is half over, I'd probably better post about New Year's Eve before it gets much later.

As you can tell, I'm no good at selfies but here we are...most of us.

Karis is on the other side of me.

We are up on the roof, sitting on doshaks, covered in several blankets, wearing several layers of clothes, eating snacks, and watching a movie while a nice fire burns at our feet.

This off-centered picture shows you our white shower curtain screen hanging on our third-floor wall.

We made great memories, had a fantastic time, and we love "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe," but after the movie was over, we high-tailed it downstairs to get warm in front of a heater.

We ate snacks, skyped some friends, and waited for midnight.

With five minutes to spare (and no Dick Clark to count us down), we took an iphone to the roof for proof of midnight, and we watched some pretty pitiful fireworks going off in the 360 degrees around our roof.

We face-timed both sets of grandparents from the roof and wished them a happy new year while it was still 3pm in Texas.

The fireworks weren't spectacular, but my kids had so much fun on this night that we've decided to keep the movie-watching on the roof as a yearly tradition.  Thanks, Doug, for making this night so much fun.

Books, Books, Books!

Look who has a store here.

Just kidding.  It's obviously not the store you are familiar with, but it has books, nonetheless.

The top floor had current top sellers, and the basement was full of classics, textbooks, educational, foreign, and more top sellers.

It even smelled like new books.

Ahhhh!

Doug and I took Kylie and another girl who needed readers for school this term.  Apparently, this is the store that the teachers asked to order The Great Gatsby and The Crucible so the students could buy them. 

I don't mind purchasing them, although it's a little different than America where everyone gets a copy checked out to them free from the school library.

It beats what Karis and Caleb had this last term.  They were given The Westing Game and Charlotte's Web copied on 11x17 paper and stapled together!

Each student!!

The entire book!!

That is a LOT of paper.

I guess it's no different than any other subject at their school.  Just like Africa, there are no textbooks at their school.  All information is written by the teacher on the board or lectured to the students, and they get whatever they can copy down in their notebooks.

They are also handed packets of paper which are copied out of textbooks that cover certain topics, but they never get the actual book itself.

I like books too much.  I want the real thing in my hand; however, I didn't bring any with me, so I have relied solely on my Kindle, which probably accounts for my worsening eyesight lately.

But NOW, I know about Amazon, and my husband knows how to get there, so I can get a good-smelling, new book anytime I want.

Joy!

Celebrating Outward

On Christmas Eve, we took cookies and homemade hot chocolate mix (with instructions written in their language) to all the neighbors we have relationships with.

In our limited language, we told them we were celebrating the birthday of Jesus the Messiah, and we wanted to share something with them.

 

Part of that sharing, included a notecard with Luke 2:10-11 written on it.

I'm so grateful for Kylie and Karis for doing all of those for me.

 

One bonus was that I had two dishes to return to a lady as well, so I stacked them inside each other, filled them up with "puppy chow," fudge, and cookies, and called it done.

During the last week of school, during exams, the kids also took their teachers homemade hot chocolate mix in zip lock bags they had decorated.  The ones below must have been for the neighbors though, because they are not written in English.

I'm "real" smart, huh?

And these are the instructions telling them how to mix it with hot water or add it to a cup of coffee.

I must say that when I moved here, I thought I would NEVER learn the alphabet or how to read, but I'm surprising myself every day.  I'm not as good as my kids, but I can read/recognize 90% of the alphabet now.

Older minds can still do a few things....

The Tree

The tree is mostly decorated with things we collected over the last 5 years; however, we added a few local touches from here.

The red blankets wrapped down the center of the tree and at the base of the tree are Massai blankets.

The acorns were collected on the mountains here that we camped on.

Krest was my favorite drink in Uganda.  You can see UGsh (Uganda Shilling) written after the price if you look hard.

The stars were from Africa, too, but the twisty ties and paper clips used to hang the decorations are new this year :)

Paper clips are hard to bend.  Ask Doug and his sore hands.

Dr. Pepper bottle caps were collected in America, Fanta Strawberry was from Uganda, and Freez is from here.  The small, red baskets are from Uganda, and our kids get a treat inside them on Christmas morning.  The zebra is made from banana leaves, and it's from Uganda, too.

The blue, green, and yellow beaded decoration is actually an earring bought in Kenya.

A shout out to my favorite drink again.

The Coca-Cola company makes this drink, and it is such a shame that it is not offered in America (or here)!

The bottle cap on the right is from a drink called "Stoney Tangawizi." 

I think it's downright awful, but I think you either love it or you hate it.  It is made from ginger, and it burns all the way down.

And the beads hanging down the sides of the tree are attached to this mock Massai necklace that we bought in Kenya.

(The cheap, silver star on top is complements of our current country :)

So there you have it.

A personal tour of our Christmas tree, whether you wanted it or not :)  Actually, this blog is like a family scrapbook for me, so I know I include things that you might not always be interested in, but I appreciate you reading along anyway.

Decorating for the Holidays

Well, after Doug made us a TV stand, bookshelves, and a side table out of pallets, he had some wood left over and decided to put it to good use.

He made us a Christmas tree.

He measured, cut, sanded, and entertained the neighbors with their curiosity.

Each piece was lowered down the pole, situated, and then another was put on top of the last

until it looked like this.

And while we were decorating and eating snacks, Doug put on a video for Keira.

She LOVES Christmas lights!

So, last year, Doug videoed our hay ride through "Santa's Wonderland" in College Station, knowing that we wouldn't have the opportunity to see lights again in the upcoming years.

I think the video was a hit.

Here she is eating at the table, and she's completely turned around.

Thanks JD & L for the tickets to "Santa's Wonderland."  They are the gift that keeps on giving!

It took us 24 hours to figure out how we wanted to hang decorations on the tree, but after a little extra drilling, Doug had it all figured out.

And Doug to the rescue again...he hung a broom stick on the wall so that we had a place to hang our stockings.

Kylie painted a canvas to hang in the living room.

She also made snowflakes for the ceiling, and Karis made green and red Chinese lanterns.

I think our kids have gotten used to non-traditional ways of decorating, and everyone enjoys taking part and doing their own thing.

A good time was had by all.

It's Beginning to look a Little Like Christmas

The week we were going to decorate our Christmas tree, we saw these lights across from the bread shop where we get bread several times a week.

We got a little excited.

Then, I saw that our neighbors and the chicken shop both hung up flags on the outside of their buildings.

More excitement.

We thought there might be some people actually decorating for Christmas, but alas, it turned out to be decorations for Muhammad's birthday.

Oh, well.

We went about decorating, nevertheless, thinking we wouldn't see any Christmas decorations this year.

But then, I went across town to a large grocery store in a mall, and I saw this display!

And look!  They were selling Christmas trees!

There was even this speaker set up playing Christmas music, and at the time I was standing there, there was actually a Burl Ives-type voice telling the Christmas story.

The Christmas story! 

Granted, there was no one around but me, but I'm hoping the music played on a loop all day.

There were also decorations like this, which I loved, because they are made from magazines, just like the necklaces I used to buy in Uganda.

Now, this next part is even better.

These are Christmas balls.  Hundreds and hundreds of Christmas balls were ordered to sell to expats who might want them.

But the sweet person ordering them probably has no idea about decorating a tree and has never decorated a tree themselves, because nowhere in the entire store (or anywhere we looked) were Christmas ball hangers.

Kind of important.

This tree was outside the mall.

And this display was in ANOTHER mall.  

I couldn't believe the number of people lined up to take pictures of their kids with Santa.  And the ones that weren't lined up with kids, were just adults wanting to take selfies with him.

I thought it was pretty funny, so when the crowds cleared, I asked Kylie to be a model for me, so I could share a picture with you.

It turns out I didn't have to "force" her, because we returned a week later, and Caleb and Keira ASKED to take a picture with Santa.

And "Little People" Santa.

So, true, Christmas was not celebrated here by the masses, but some kind people put up some decorations to appease those of us who enjoy the decorations of the holidays.

Blood Test and Dabbing

Well, I guess that walk to the fruit stand wore me out, because I shut down the blog for a little while.  

Actually, I have been a little tired.

Living overseas, out of your normal element, makes a person tired anyway, but I have been abnormally tired, and trying to drag through each day has been a little difficult.

Since I've taken more naps in the past four months than I have in my entire life, I knew something must be wrong.  I talked to some of my friends in the States who have medical knowledge, and I got their advice on which blood tests I should have run.

Then, I talked to some friends here about where to go for blood tests.

Without a medical exam, I walked into a clinic with a piece of paper listing all the tests I wanted run, and they said, "Ok."

I had no idea where we were headed, but when we walked in to the clinic, it was very clean and organized (of course, I was the first patient of the day), and it had papers hanging on the wall declaring they had license to do what they were doing.

Legit, right?

I sneaked some photos of my patient room just for proof. 

I'm not sure what all this nice lady said to me or I said to her, but she got the job done.

And here's another cool part.  Hanging on the wall, across from where she took my blood, was this print.  I don't know about you, but that looks like Louisiana to me.

A picture of Louisiana, right here in the Middle East.

God has all sorts of ways of letting me know He's near.


The clinic emailed me the results 24 hours later, and it turns out I'm pretty anemic, but I'm thankful that the problem is fixable.

Now, to end on a brighter note, look at this cutie in her new pajamas she got for Christmas.  With two dancing sisters, I can't imagine where she learned to pose like that :)

 

For those of you cooler than me, who learned what "the Dab" was more than five minutes ago, here is Keira's attempt at "dabbing" and being "cool."