April snapshot III

more shots of just life here. this is the view from one of our peeps' house. this scaffolding was a bit shaky-seeming. they are totally old school here, which sometimes seems risky or unsafe to us, but they seem to know what they are doing and know what works for them.

so, we got an influx in mosquitos and over the course of a few nights i was being feasted upon by these blood-suckas!

i got a nice bite on my eyelid which caused my eyelid to swell nicely. it was so weird. and then i got bit on the cheek, why not? oh, and i got bit on my arms, too. they had no mercy on me.

thankfully someone here had benadryl i could take to help with the swelling as i that day was my first day to actually go and sit in on a class at my school. i think my roommate was concerned as she didn't want people to think that she socked me. ha!

speaking of my roommate: she invited me to go to the city across the river and check out some old sites there. i was happy to go as i had never been over to that part of the city there. it was really beautiful, yet haunting as it was a graveyard also. here is looking through one of the openings looking at the ocean--awh

i finally got to go meet up with a friend that i met when i flew here over a year ago! we spent Friday night and Saturday together. it was a really fun time. we went to go get tea and i just like this set up! the litte guy mit and it is just cool that you get your own teapot and everything. very fun.

yeah! her and i having lunch on Saturday. it was so great to be with her! very, very cool time her indeed. we had some fun conversations as i was trying to practice my Arabic and she wanted to practice her English, so i bet we looked pretty funny to people:)

April snapshot II

later in April, our Int'l ch decided to take a trip to a children's home here in country. i decided to ask Sally if she would like to join me and she decided to come along. it was a great day to volunteer and just be outside. we were on the weeding crew and were assigned to the playground area.

here is the sign to the village of hope! this is a really incredible group of folks. it isn't so much an orphannage, but a place where families take in children to raise them from whatever age until they are old enough to be out on their own...totally a commitment! it is a cool deal.

here is an action of me:)

another day the younger folks in our group here were taken out to the local American club for some yummy food. we totally chowed down on burgers and such. it was really good for sure.

this was a thank you lunch for our participationg in the youth weekend. what a great thank you! :)

so, here is a photo of the simulator on our campus. this allows the students to have some hands on practice, which is great as many of them have never been in an airplane before. i totally got excited when i saw this the first time! "Tommyboy" anyone?

April snapshot I

this dish was really delicious. it was a mixture of sweet and savory as there is actually a chicken hidden inside of that mound of pasta and sugar and raisins. my friend is a fabulous cook! she even made the delicious salad in the background--super yummy!

finally we heard whether or not my friend would get the scholarship to the States and she did! we met up to celebrate this exciting news and later we went for a really fun sunset boat-ride on the river here. the city scene here is my favorite view of the city--this is the second oldest part of the city. it was really pretty and our rower was nice.

here is Sally opening up her congratulations gift for getting the scholarship! i knew she would get it!

here is a great new friend that i got to hang with for the month she was here. she was so sweet to take me out for one year anniversary here in NA! i really enjoyed getting spend time with this lovely lady.

another fun thing i got to go do is have a jellaba made for bonnie, my dad's lady-friend. i was so happy to get to go back to the tailor in the city across the river. he is a really nice man and does an incredible job. he was so thorough and wanted to make sure i was getting what i wanted. i really, really, really appreciated that! i think it turned out really nice! i hope she likes it.

celebrating Life everlasting

i was excited to celebrate R-day and decided to make up another round of sweets to hand out to friends in honor of this special day. i found a couple of recipes i wanted to try and both turned out pretty well i think. here are the lemony sugar cookies i made and i also made some cocoa-chocolate chip merengues (not pictured). i think they went over pretty well.

so, our Int'l fellowship had a sunrise service at the local Roman ruins. it was so beautiful and really neat. it felt like a scene or two out of the film, Pride & Prejudice. it was really neat to see the sunrise and sing together. mmmm. i also got to share a little about my story later that day with the group. that was a really great experience, too.

i was really excited as earlier that week i went to a friend's house and she gave me this gift bag full of goodies you see pictured here. i was so excited to get the bunny as it felt like an E basket! it is also funny to say that i got a set of unmentionables and some exciting perfume as well in the bag. i just love NA'cans:)

we were asked to bring flowers with us on E morning in order to put them on the cross to celebrate new Life. i had picked out the bouquet to the left and after i told the guys at the flower place why i was buying them, one guy insisted on giving me a "gift" bouquet you see there to the right. it was cool. a very beautiful day indeed.

later that day i got to spend the afternoon with a very fabulous NA friend. it was so great to see her as i hadn't seen her in quite some time. she is a gal that i met like my first month here, so it has been so amazing to get to the point to be able to communicate much, much better with her. and i just really appreciate that she makes a concious effort, i know, to speak slower and to even use words that i know:)

so, needless to say, this day celebrating new Life was an incredible one. wow. yeah.

march into april

so, i got to experience a weekend like i never have before. growing up, i didn't participate in youth stuff really, so it was a really neat opportunity for me to get to hang out with some youth from our Int'l fellowship here. i think the kids had a great time and it was fun to have this weekend to build a relationship with them that will continue to grow. here is just one moment from the weekend below. i chose this photo as i feel like it captured a lot of movement as that was something that was happening all through-out the weekend: these kids love to have fun! we did some good times of study, chatting, a scavenger hunt around the old city here (which they did an incredible job at), ate well, and just spent time getting to know one another better. cool.

so, later i had the great opp to go back and visit this beautiful city here in NA. i went to this place back in 2005 when i was here before and was curious of how it would play out this time as now i am able to communicate and exist here. i went with a new friend and we enjoyed taking a fun day-trip there. above is the cistern in the old city. it was more magnificent than i remembered. there was this great layer of water to provide for some really beautiful shots. wow! totally amazing.

we had a great day of mozying around this small vacay spot and timed it just right as we went during pre-tourist season. it was beautiful to walk about the ramparts and take in the breeze. it was definitely a great day away from the big city. one thing that was really cool though: was that i totally had many opps to practice my language. it was cool to be able to be there and communicate with people. i felt like it was a great trip to sorta come to a peace about my trip here in 2005. check out the great view here to the left.

so, going to this city also provided for amazing seafood! we were excited to grub down on all this deliciousness. we had sole, calamari, sardines, shrimp, scallops, and our favorite: eel! yes, the eel was amazing, with great flavor and so much meat suprisingly.

we also had this great spread of veggies. yummy!

so, yeah. it was a really neat day to be somewhere else and just explore. like i mentioned a little before: it was cool to be able to kind of see how far i have come in the last several years. i guess we are always growing and moving and developing. thankfully.

thanks for trekking with me and i hope you had a great March into April, too.