Sno Cones and a Lost Shoe

We usually make pizza on Thursday nights (equivalent to your Friday).  However, the dough that we use isn't being made during the day anymore.  They start baking around midnight.  So, we decided to buy the dough on Wednesday, so we could actually have some for our earlier dinner on Thursday.

On this particular Wednesday, we had a single lady over for dinner, and we talked until around 11pm.  That was also the time we knew that the bread ovens around the neighborhood were getting fired up.  So she, Kylie, and I went to the bread shop at 11, and asked for dough and some bread.

The dough was ready, but the bread hadn't started to be cooked yet.

The locals here go get their bread late at night so they can have it for their 3am breakfast.  Bread spread with a type of thick butterish-yogurt is a very common breakfast.

We took the dough, said goodbye to our guest, and went home to roll out and cook four pizza crusts.  If we had let the dough sit in our fridge, it would have grown and spilled out like a science experiment gone wrong.

When Kylie finished baking the crusts, it was close to 2am, and then everyone went to bed (don't worry, Keira had already been asleep for awhile).

About that time, I sat down to study language, and I realized the street was a little noisy.

The kids come out to play around 6-7pm, and they stay out until around 1 or 2am.  Granted, they go in at 7:30ish to break fast with their families, and then they return to the streets.

At around 8pm, 9pm, and 11pm, the sno cone man comes down the street yelling about his wares.  Kids treat him as if it's actually a blazing, hot afternoon, and they flock to get their sno cones as usual. 

We're so used to hearing the sno cone seller's voice yelling throughout the day, that the first few nights, we didn't even realize how strange it was that he was advertising his product in the middle of the night.

But this particular night, it was a little louder at 2am than the normal kid-play I hear as I fall asleep.

I went to the gate to peek into the street, and about 4 boys were having a fight in front of my gate.  Hitting and wrestling.  Very normal in this culture, but it just seemed louder.

I turned to go inside, and I saw a man's sandal on my porch.

Remember when someone threw a shoe at George Bush, Jr., in 2008?

It was to insult.  Someone was angry.

I'm guessing some neighborhood gentleman had had enough of something (maybe the boys???), and he had tossed his shoe, and it had flown over my wall.

I didn't want to put it outside my gate for fear that the boys might take it or play a trick with it, but I knew someone needed it.

So, I opened the "chicken gate" (as I call the one we don't use that is buy the chicken butchery), and I quietly set it down.  A young boy saw me do this and started yelling something.  I hope he was telling the gentleman where his shoe was, but I will never know.

The Very First Day

Our first "day" of Ramazan I knew would be quiet, so I had bought ingredients to make salsa the night before when we crossed the foot bridge.

My neighbors had told me they would stay up until the 3am call to prayer and then go to sleep to start training their body for the month-long fast and switching of nights and days.  However, I don't think the smaller kids did too well staying up this first night.  After our two hour language session, my 9-year old neighbor must have been bored with her family all sleeping while she was awake, so she and another friend knocked on our gate.

I invited them in.  I was making salsa, and they wanted to know if they could do "Just Dance" like her sisters had the night before.

They had fun, but they insisted they could only do 3 dances because it made them so hot and they couldn't drink anything.

(Note: Parents decide when their children are old enough to begin the fasting process during Ramazan.  It's different for every child and family.  These girls did fast the first day, but I don't think they did it too many days.  I'm writing this on Day 20, and I have seen them consuming a lot of different things during daylight hours).

They then became very interested in the salsa-making process.  They especially enjoyed watching the blender mix it all together.

Eventually, two more girls showed up at the gate.  I couldn't serve them anything, but they did have a "tea party" with Keira.

My girls had dance class from 7-9pm this night, but they were the only two girls who showed up.  The time for breaking fast this first night, happened to be 7:22pm.  With the change of schedule (even in the work environment), the dance teacher changed the time (and day) to earlier for this month, and even then, only the dancers who were German, Japanese, British, or American came.

When we got home at 9pm, the girls ate quickly.  I put Keira to bed, and then we went to an American friends' house who had invited us and our neighbors over for a game of Ticket to Ride.

Our girls and the other American girls talked mostly in their language.  I'm so proud of how far they've come.

Only one of the older girls came because the other was still in school, and she needed to study!!

Can you imagine staying up all night, and still trying to get up for school in the morning?  Not only that, but it's hot during the day, and these students can't eat or drink, and they are expected to pay attention and perform.

I'm writing this on Day 20 of Ramazan, and I know of SEVERAL secondary schools that JUST finished their school year YESTERDAY!

A few members of our family fasted this first day as we prayed for our neighbors during their fast.

As my American neighbor (Jennifer*) and I talked to our national neighbor (Jasmine*), Jasmine asked me if I had fasted that day.  I told her, "Yes."  But then I added that I was a follower of Isa, and I had fasted that day specifically to pray for her and her family to draw closer to God during their time of Ramazan.

This was such a blessing, because it opened up a spiritual conversation that lasted about an hour.  Granted, my friend Jennifer did most of the talking, but it was a good beginning of other conversations that continued to happen during this special month of prayer.

At 12:30am, we left the house, and as we were walking home with Jasmine and her girls, her girls asked if we wanted to go downtown for ice cream.  I did not, but my girls did.

They got in the car with Jasmine's older son, his wife, and the two teenage girls.  They returned about an hour later, but they stayed outside talking in the street.  They did all of this in the local language!   They came in around 2am, we heard their stories, and then we all went to bed.

Day 1 done.

There have been many long (but good) nights like this one.

Perhaps that is why I haven't blogged in over a week.

*names changed

The Day Before

The day before Ramazan (June 5) was quite interesting to observe. 

Our neighbor 's girls were in a relaxed mode.  My girls and a couple of other American girls were playing "Just Dance" in our living room.  When the neighbor girls knocked on the gate to visit, we invited them in, and they joined in the fun.

The other neighbor is beside Karis, and that's their younger sister on the couch.  It's a bad picture because I'm trying to hide their faces :)

Nevertheless, they had a great time giggling.

While the teenagers were relaxed, not everyone else was.

Traffic was crazy, and everyone seemed to be on a spending spree.

Everyone was busy stocking up and buying what they needed during the remaining daylight hours before their days and nights became flip-flopped.

I've shown you this road before on a Friday, their Holy day.  And it's pretty dead, in contrast.

Sometimes, I might venture crossing this street without using the foot bridge, but today, Doug and I definitely took the foot bridge.

We crossed over to a large fruit and vegetable stand to also stock up on food we might need for the next couple of days, because I wasn't sure I'd be up late enough to shop.

I was wrong.

"Rapunzel"

The girls' dance studio recently had their recital, themed "Rapunzel." 

Since the girls joined late in the year, they didn't dance, but they were asked to help with two days of rehearsals and back stage on the night of the performance, helping girls with makeup and dress and cues and props. 

They went a couple of mornings, took their lunch, and stayed all day.  They worked hard, but I think they had a good time.

I didn't know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised.  The tickets were kind of costly, but all the proceeds went to help refugees, which was nice.

First of all, the theater was pretty amazing.  I took this from the stage, after the performance.

And this was what Karis and I could see before the performance started.

Kylie was even given a small part of bringing in a sign that said "The Snuggly Duckling."

Waiting in the wings.

Ta-da!

The show incorporated all of the studios classes:  kung fu, break dancing, Zumba, and ballet, and it flowed very nicely in the framework of the story.

There were no restrictions on camera/iphone usage like there are in America.

Look at this.

Iphones, Ipads, cameras, tripods everywhere!

I loved that they dressed the king and queen in the national dress of this country, like we wear to picnics.

Several countries were represented in the recital, which was presented in English!

Rapunzel is from a neighboring country.  Her family had to flee, and I'm so glad she is getting to use her gifts here.  She did a fabulous job!

And instead of the dance teacher getting all the flowers, the studio owner did.

People from the audience would walk down front and hand her bouquet after bouquet.

She got so many she started handing them to other people on stage.

 I have a ton more pictures, but I'm sure you get the gist. 

They did a great job!  I look forward to the girls being in "Lion King" next year!

Samoon Dough

Well, I told you before about samoon bread that we like to eat.

The last time I went, I asked the baker if I could take some pictures, and he said, "yes."

He has helpers that put the samoon dough laid close together down the length of these boards.

You can see the many sacks of flour in the back.

The store makes bread twice a day. 

At lunch and at night.

So since the locals eat this for breakfast, they buy a double portion at night.

The way this works is that when the bread is gone, they close.

Simple.




The baker works by the fire taking the dough out of the tray, putting it on a long wooden paddle, shoving the dough into the oven, and then scooping it up again with the same paddle.  Another worker then scoops them off into a large tub where they are bagged by boys who work the order windows for the different genders I told you about in an earlier post.

All the parts work together like a well-written symphony.

This particular samoon shop is next to the laffa shop where we buy the samoon sandwiches.

This man cuts open the bread, scoops in the meat (chicken, beef, or falafel),

and then you can put on whatever toppings you want.

Another favorite way we like samoon is to order just the dough.

Yep...the dough.

In a bag...

and then knead it.

 

Then roll it and put it on a pizza pan.

We bake the crusts and chop onions, garlic, and jalapenos, and also add pepperoni that some amazing people in Texas sent us, and then we put it all together.

Before we had pepperoni and even now, we make buffalo ranch chicken pizza, and it's pretty good.

Then, the leftover dough is a gift that keeps on giving. 

As it grows in my fridge each night and spills out over the container, I can decide whether to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast or rolls for lunch

That's a good problem to have.

Looks can be deceiving

Let me show you some pictures of my girls' rooms.

And if you look closely, you can see that the bottom of this room has tile on the wall, so my daughter was able to write scriptures all over it with a wipe-off marker.

Ahhh...but looks can be deceiving.  As comfy and homey as these rooms look, they are very hot!

If your kids have trouble learning the principle that heat rises, it wouldn't take long in our house to cement that truth in their brain.

So...Doug spent a week cleaning and fixing the "swamp coolers" on the roof so that some air circulation would blow into their rooms.

This one blows into that cement shaft, down to Kylie's room, the living room, and the front sitting room.

This one blows into the shaft, down to Caleb's room, Karis/Keira's room, the kitchen, and our bedroom.

But don't be deceived.  They do not FEEL like air conditioners, even though they may LOOK like air conditioners.

I've been in some homes where these feel VERY cool.

Cold, in fact.

But ours is not as cool for a couple of reasons.

The big reason, is that they sit in the sun, and so the water pouring into them through those hoses you see, gets heated up quickly in the sun.

The water runs continually over the hay which is under these vents, making the hay wet, and then the motor pulls air through the hay (at least that is my un-scientific explanation of things).  Doug could tell you much better.

The second reason is that we chose to put filters on our vents, which is pretty unheard of here.  The air usually flows straight into rooms, with all the dust, hay, etc. that the machine picks up on the roof.

I've heard of bedcovers, etc. having to be brushed off at night before you can crawl into bed.  And since one of the vents is over my stove, I just don't want a lot of foreign objects in our food.  Plus, the filters cut down on the amount of cleaning we have to do, which is always a good thing!

Usually these swamp coolers go straight into a room, like some of my neighbors (see below), and that makes it a lot colder, and when they are protected by a porch like this, they get less "junk" flowing into their homes.

But, thankfully, with a shaft built in, we don't have to have a swamp cooler for every room.



While I was on the roof, I was admiring Doug's handiwork with the tarps.  He blocked all the holes on this "sun roof" so that rain and dust don't come into our make-shift bathroom below.

But I discovered something else on the roof as well.


I told Doug once that our neighbors took our watermelon rinds out of our trashcan, and Doug told me it was to feed his chickens, but I thought he was talking about the ones they butcher.
 
Doug had always joked about taking our leftovers up to the roof and throwing them over the side for our neighbors chickens, but I seriously had no idea what he was talking about until today.  I had never seen this!

We seriously have chickens (and pigeons) living on the roof next to us.  There is even a pen built for them!

          































So, basically, we're surrounded by chickens.

Next door and up floor.

Looks can definitely be deceiving (and maybe I WILL throw my leftovers off the roof)!

The Heat of the Day

There aren't many people here that move around during the heat of the day, so when we left our house at 1pm, we were hoping that our local "Office Depot" would be open (I use the term VERY loosely).

The girls and I had to walk over a mile, but it wasn't bad.  We didn't have to fight any crowds.

We walked straight through the bazaar where we nearly lost each other last time.

Empty.

Closed.

No shoppers.

 Just a couple of ladies, visiting.

Open, shaded terrain.

We finally made it to "Stationary Row." 

 
That's what we call it.

It's store after store of office products (which they call stationary stores here).

I'm so sorry I forgot to take pictures of the insides.  If you remember the pictures of glasses stacked higher than my head, just replace the glasses with pens, journals, staples, sticky notes, etc.

Office stores are my weakness, and I think I was so enthralled that I never even thought of my camera when I was inside.  It's definitely no Office Depot, but it will do.

The girls looked for journals and pens, and I looked for a stamp and a stamp pad that would make a document I was creating look more official. 

Found it!

The girls had been down here with another lady, so they pointed out the local water fountain to me.  I had never seen one here before.

Just use the cup and leave it for the next person.

Karis also wanted a picture printed off of her ipod, so we found a guy who said he could do it.

He then said, "Follow me."

We walked two stores down to another photo developer, and he gave THEM the ipod.

He bid us farewell, and then he left.

Confused, we waited.

Ten minutes later, we had a good photo, so I offered to pay, and the man said I would need to go back to the first guy two doors back.

At least I think that's what he said.  He wouldn't take my money, and he spoke and pointed back toward the other man's store.

We left, and headed back down the street to ask the man how much we owed him for what he "didn't do." 

He said it was free because we were Americans.

I coudn't accept that, so I paid him the equivalent of $1.50 for the picture.  He was very happy and went back to smoking his cigarette.

It had been two hours since we left, so foot traffic had picked up a little.

Oh wait!  Those are my girls.

But when we got back inside the bazaar, it was a little busier.

Lemon juice, right in my way!

When the intense heat starts ebbing, the crowds really do come out. 

Wait until I write about Ramazan, where night is day and day is night.