team time

This evening, after a long day of language learning, we got to enjoy some time with our team mates, that is all the people who came here in July.

We had some really nice bbq-ed meat skewers , an amazing pasta salad, the best homemade bread in a 500 km radius, delicious sweet potatoes and for dessert some snickers cake. On top of that we had encouraging talks and great fellowship - very thankful!

Sorry about the quality of the pictures, it was quite dark already...

 Thanks S and K for hosting

 first bonfire here 

some s'mores would have been the icing on the cake - oh well, next time (if we can find marshmallows)

Alia's new favorite place to sit 

(can you tell that she is up past her bed time? :-))

Stolen!

WARNING:  this post is 100% stolen from our friend Kristine's blog because I am just too tired to write one myself and we did go to the same event.... so sorry to all who usually read her blog too and thank you Kristine :-).

Horse dance

Today there was (and is still going on) a "horse dance" in my neighborhood. This time around it is arranged because a guy in the neighborhood got injured and now has become well again. Other times it can be arranged because of a circumcision or birthday.
This is a traditional type of dance-ceremony (if you can call it that) where a bunch of guys dance around with pretend horses and machetes. Some of them go into some kind of trance (or pretend to do so) where they either start running around like crazy or eat weird stuff like glass. Really loud traditional music is played in the background (percussion instruments and a lady singing) and everyone is there, kids, grown-ups, elderly, men and women. Lost of people take the opportunity to set up a little stands to sell food or toys for the audience.

 Picture taken in the evening

 The kids

 Two girls did a dance

 The orchestra, gotta love the double-tasking, playing instruments and smoking at the same time!

all about bikes

Just when we had mastered the skill of using public transport here...

(Alia as a total pro even sitting by herself)

... now we have to learn lots of new things about bikes.

Things like... 

 Where and how to get your bike washed?

 What do they mean with a snow wash? :-)

 Where to go to get gas?

 Where does the fuel go?

How many kids fit on a bike?

 after so much learning, we felt like we deserved a yummy smoothie

finally!

We have been so excited for the last two days, because finally we are allowed to drive on our scooter/motorbike!

It is so nice to have a little bit more flexibility! Erlend is already a pro at driving and I am getting slowly used to it. Alia loves it and usually falls asleep on the bike at the end of the trip.

 don't worry, Mama, when we are out in traffic we are wearing helmets!

This is where we spend most of our mornings and some time in the afternoon for language study so a bike ride is always a welcome distraction

fake tattoos

On Saturday I got to go to a ladies night were the host had arranged for a henna artist to come.

 This is what I got and if you look really closely you might find the name of somebody special on there

I am not sure if the guys were inspired by my fake tattoo or if there was a concentration problem during our language session this morning, but after spending two hours learning the names of different tools they ended up writing their names in both of their native scripts on each others arms... those guys...

don't worry Papa and pappa - none of these are real tattoos

coffee and fish

Today our whole team went out with another one of our amazing language helpers and we visited first a coffee plantation and then went out to a restaurant afterwards where you have to option of catching your food yourself before you eat it - it was an awesome trip!

 we got to drive in one of these 

 looking at coffee in it's original form

 driving up seriously steep hills

 amazing view from the mountain top

 then on to fishing at the restaurant

 this one was too small to be worth frying up

 I caught that one!

 which ended up looking like this - sooooo much yummier than it looks like

As always Alia got lots of attention

 but she prefers one on one time with her special friends like our driver

and our language helper

Batik

One of the things that the people of this country are proud of is Batik which is a cloth that is traditionally made using a manual wax-resist dyeing technique.

They make bottom down shirts, long skirts and pretty much any shape of women's top out of it (also purses and other things) out of the material. There seem to be different levels of fanciness in Batik, but people wear it as office uniforms, school uniforms, to any official engagement and also at weddings. You can almost never go wrong wearing Batik here.

Today our language helper was kind enough to take us to a batik factory to see how they produce these pretty fabrics.

 first we watch this man stamping the wax on the fabric

the stamps get dipped into a bowl with hot wax, then you have to shake them 

(hence the splatter pattern on the wall in the previous picture)

and then press them down on the fabric

 we even got to make our own piece of batik,

it is harder than it looks

 Here is where to fabric gets dyed afterwards, and when it is dry, the wax gets taken off

and vòila, you have something like this

 Erlend prefered observing to batiking himself

group picture at the end

burger anybody?

On Saturday we went to a bigger city about 1,5 hours away and Erlend thought it was a good idea to get some KFC (das is ein Hühnchen-Fast-Food-Restaurant, Mama :-)) for breakfast.

He got this with his chicken pieces and I was all excited that he got a burger "for free" on the side.

 looks like a burger, right?

but my joy was short lived - because, of course, it was rice...

our house

I was wondering if I should even blog about our house. I was contemplating whether it was maybe a better idea to make you all think that we were already living in a hut with dirt floors and no plumbing.

But the truth is far from it, our house here is actually the biggest one we have lived in since we got married and it is the first one that we have all to ourselves. (did I just say, to ourselves? Scratch that, we are sharing this house with about 10 lizards and and uncountable amount of ants)

This is our 6th home in our 4th country and we love it!

front view (zoom in and you will see something cute)

view from our porch

 where Alia sleeps

where we sleep

 where we eat

 where we cook (wondering where the oven is? look closely!)

where we sit with guests

 where we study

 where we shower

 where we... well, you know