you may not believe it...but i really do appear in some pictures. see if you can figure out which white face is mine. the other white face belongs to my neighbor and new friend, Bevin. they live upstairs...and have been SO helpful! we are all working on tearing apart an old sweater. we unstrung it string by string and the woman in the center in the yellow is making a blanket with it for her 6th baby that is due in 2 months. her eldest daughter who is 18 is getting married in two weeks..she is the one is pink holding a boy, Aram...who is 18 months or so and has a deformed arm that was broken at birth. but i love him and am believing he will get healed by the Doctor soon. Leila is getting married to someone she knows and has chosen, but he is a family friend and she will have to move an hour away. she will not see her family for a LONG time. she teared up as she told me this. she will go and live in her mother in law's home. wow...this is astounding to me. Cawjal is sitting next to me on my right. i have been able to sit outside this gate many evenings now. i cannot wait until i can understand everything that is going on. Jacow is wrapped around my legs. she is a funny girl...i love her too, but she loves to pinch Jesse. anymore Jesse runs and screams when he sees her coming. today i tried to explain to her and another hard pincher that it scares them to be pinched so hard and that they should try being more gentle. not sure they really get it. they probably think i have no idea what i am talking about.
this is Annie with Erin and Bevin having a tea party...next time we will attempt it with the Kurds around us, but we weren't sure who to invite and how to not offend anyone, so we just did the foreigners. this is a little tea set we found in the storage pile...from one of the teachers from last year...thanks! annie loves it! annie is all decked out in her jili kurdi that was a gift from her new friend Reggie. we seem to be in a giving war with them. the girls started out giving each other random trinkets and it has now escalated to clothes. some of these outfits can get very pricey. the neighbors love to bring us food and the custom is after they bring you food, you take the plate back to them with food as well. so i have been getting food and trying to take it back within a couple of days, but today i got two plates, so i happened to be making cookies for the tea party, so we returned the plates and not 10 minutes later they came back with MORE food for us! ahhhh...i can't keep up! my theory is that they love the sweets that we make them and so they just keep bringing us random food of theirs, like a bowl of rice today or some fruit, in hopes that it will come back full of cookies!
this is a picture of our street. you can't really tell how steep the hill is here, but i am just waiting for one of my kids to roll down it. you also can't see that annie is walking back up the hill, her new favorite afternoon activity is to take 250 dinar and walk to the little shop and buy an ice cream! she feels so grown up and it is SO safe here to let her do it. i love it! when the boys get a little older, we can send them to the bread shop every day for fresh bread! the first wall you see is part of our yard....still void of anything green, but mostly empty of trash now...the next house you see is my new friend Cawjal...she is very sweet. she doesn't speak a lick of english, but we really click. she has 2 sweet girls who LOVE me. the one little girl is always hiding out in our yard when it is time to leave. she wants to stay with me. =)
here are the kids in their little pool we found at the bazaar. they love it and it is so dry here...it doesn't grow algae in it in 2 hours.
here is annie reading a new story book that has Kurdish and English in it. it's a great story about our friend who lived a long time ago and did lots of great things. annie couldn't wait to tell her new friend all about this wonderful Story...annie would read the page in English and Reggie would read the page in Kurdish to her. a great way for annie to learn Kurdish too.
you may not believe it...but i really do appear in some pictures. see if you can figure out which white face is mine. the other white face belongs to my neighbor and new friend, Bevin. they live upstairs...and have been SO helpful! we are all working on tearing apart an old sweater. we unstrung it string by string and the woman in the center in the yellow is making a blanket with it for her 6th baby that is due in 2 months. her eldest daughter who is 18 is getting married in two weeks..she is the one is pink holding a boy, Aram...who is 18 months or so and has a deformed arm that was broken at birth. but i love him and am believing he will get healed by the Doctor soon. Leila is getting married to someone she knows and has chosen, but he is a family friend and she will have to move an hour away. she will not see her family for a LONG time. she teared up as she told me this. she will go and live in her mother in law's home. wow...this is astounding to me. Cawjal is sitting next to me on my right. i have been able to sit outside this gate many evenings now. i cannot wait until i can understand everything that is going on. Jacow is wrapped around my legs. she is a funny girl...i love her too, but she loves to pinch Jesse. anymore Jesse runs and screams when he sees her coming. today i tried to explain to her and another hard pincher that it scares them to be pinched so hard and that they should try being more gentle. not sure they really get it. they probably think i have no idea what i am talking about.
this is Annie with Erin and Bevin having a tea party...next time we will attempt it with the Kurds around us, but we weren't sure who to invite and how to not offend anyone, so we just did the foreigners. this is a little tea set we found in the storage pile...from one of the teachers from last year...thanks! annie loves it! annie is all decked out in her jili kurdi that was a gift from her new friend Reggie. we seem to be in a giving war with them. the girls started out giving each other random trinkets and it has now escalated to clothes. some of these outfits can get very pricey. the neighbors love to bring us food and the custom is after they bring you food, you take the plate back to them with food as well. so i have been getting food and trying to take it back within a couple of days, but today i got two plates, so i happened to be making cookies for the tea party, so we returned the plates and not 10 minutes later they came back with MORE food for us! ahhhh...i can't keep up! my theory is that they love the sweets that we make them and so they just keep bringing us random food of theirs, like a bowl of rice today or some fruit, in hopes that it will come back full of cookies!
this is a picture of our street. you can't really tell how steep the hill is here, but i am just waiting for one of my kids to roll down it. you also can't see that annie is walking back up the hill, her new favorite afternoon activity is to take 250 dinar and walk to the little shop and buy an ice cream! she feels so grown up and it is SO safe here to let her do it. i love it! when the boys get a little older, we can send them to the bread shop every day for fresh bread! the first wall you see is part of our yard....still void of anything green, but mostly empty of trash now...the next house you see is my new friend Cawjal...she is very sweet. she doesn't speak a lick of english, but we really click. she has 2 sweet girls who LOVE me. the one little girl is always hiding out in our yard when it is time to leave. she wants to stay with me. =)
here are the kids in their little pool we found at the bazaar. they love it and it is so dry here...it doesn't grow algae in it in 2 hours.
here is annie reading a new story book that has Kurdish and English in it. it's a great story about our friend who lived a long time ago and did lots of great things. annie couldn't wait to tell her new friend all about this wonderful Story...annie would read the page in English and Reggie would read the page in Kurdish to her. a great way for annie to learn Kurdish too.
I wish I could explain how much I LOVE reading about your life :-) but it might scare you and make you think I'm a stalker or something! :-) haha
ReplyDeleteI am SOOOOOO glad that you are jumping in with both feet!! I love your boldness and how you trust the neighborhood!
ReplyDeleteLoved the tooth video (as did the girls, they wanted to watch it over and over :)
We miss you, but are glad you are doing well..... How can we be praying for you??
What an adventure you are having! Knitting and tea parties are two of my favorite things!
ReplyDeletei LOVE this post! it really lets us in to your day-to-day life! is annie allowed to wear a bathing suit in the pool? maybe she was behind a fence? hey, what's the skype situation?
ReplyDeleteit's like you've been there forever.....up to your old tricks already--glad the kurds love cookies. wish I had thought of that when you lived here, dropped off a plate of gruel and then had you send it back to me full of yummy kristi cookies. :) miss you.
ReplyDeleteRan across your blog while looking at other people's - so glad to get to catch up on your life. You guys are amazing!! I miss doing the Journey with you.
ReplyDelete