May days

well, hello there! i know i am still trying to catch up, but this update is jam-packed full of fun photos and great stories. a lot happened in May for sure. i honestly can't believe it has passed already. time sure is flying. so, here you can see my attempt to be creative for my students at the flight attendant school where i am teaching English. many of my students have never even been to an airport, let alone on an airplane, so i realized as were were going over some sentences that many of my students didn't even understand what a boarding looks like or what information is actually on them. so, i found a template online, got the right kind of paper just down the street and whipped up these babies. i even let their destination be what they wrote on our first day of class together as what their dream destination is. many of them were over-joyed. it was a fun day and i look forward to using them more in class.

May came with a set of friends coming in from AR. i was so happy to welcome mary and rachel to my part of the world these days. they made it here with all their luggage and totally brought us so many goodies! thanks to all those that helped provide for me and the other students here. it was like Christmas with all the yummy food, candy, and fun stuff. thanks guys!

the first weekend the girls were here, we traveled to one of the imperial cities. the King is actually living there at the moment, so all the fountains were running and the place was all spiffed up, too! the ladies were very happy to travel and see a new place. check out the size of the door-knocker to this palace!

here's a shot from a roof-top cafe' we stopped at to grab a drink. we really hit the timing right as it wasn't too hot at all. we got to look around much of the new city and the old city. this city just celebrated its 1200 year anniversary and also holds the oldest university on the African continent. lots of amazing history and stories for sure.

this is also the spiritual capitol of our country and offers many leather goods. mary got a great deal on a really sweet leather bag! she stuck to her price and the dealer slashed his initial price by close to 50%--wow!

here you can see my local friend teaching rachel and mary how to make mint tea. rachel was extra excited as she fell in love with the stuff while she was here!

i was so happy to have mary and rachel come to the school in which i teach to provide some practice time for my students to have speaking English. it went over really well and i think the girls learned a lot about the culture here. it was a win/win for sure! they got all their phones out to take photos with their new American friends:)

so, finally came the Alicia Keys concert! we stood in the free section, which really wasn't too far away. it was a great show, but we stood for like 3+ hours. it was fun. you can see Alicia there onstage in the white top.

so the girls' last weekend here was quite the finale' as we went to the concert, went surfing and had a great meal out with friends. i am a lot shorter in my words than i had planned as my blogger thing is being totally high maintenance. so, i am having to try and keep my patience in the midst of typing, uploading photos, and keeping a somewhat clean layout.

surfing northern Africa! i was so happy to even have this chance to go as i have been wanting to for a year now. i was even more excited that i even got up more than once! thankfully one of my friend's husband was on the beach taking photos. i had a blast and can't wait to go again this summer. i could get into it totally. so, come on over here and hang loose with me!

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.