sacrifices, sightseeing and satay

Today was a long and full day in which we had the opportunity to learn a lot of new things about this culture.

In the morning we went to one of the mosques in our neighborhood because today is the day when they remember Abraham almost sacrificing his son...
From what I understood the amount of animals sacrificed is linked to how rich the neighborhood is.
I did not count but I am pretty sure we saw 3 cows and 7 goats being slaughtered, so I think that neighborhood is quite well of.

 the goats got hung up to be skinned

 believe me, this is one of the less gruesome pictures

Alia did not seem to mind the blood bath around her

the meat gets divided between everybody, especially the poor people get portions

We went straight on to drive to a Volcano center as they call it, which is pretty much a volcano museum and a view point of a volcano which erupted in 2010.

the clouds on top of the volcano are only partly clouds, some of it is smoke, I was told

 Alia did not care about the family picture, the fence was way to interesting

this cutie pie is our friends daughter and she came along for the trip. She behaved so well even though the windy roads did not agree with her stomach

 this guy and his family were the ones who took us on this trip

very cool replica of the volcano in the museum

here is the real thing

on the way there and back we got to enjoy amazing views like this

 on our way back we stopped at our friends friends house, 

much to Ariel and Samson's delight they had a cow living in their back room

our host was a lovely lady who offered us so much food 

even though they did not seem to have much themselves

She used to be a nanny, and I bet a good one - Alia liked her right away

 after 7 hours on the road we were invited to come to our friends house for some goat satay.

I got to watch how the women prepare it

and Erlend watched the guys as they bbq-ed it - yummy!

I am so impressed by how hospitable everybody is here!

So now we are full of new impressions, tired, stuffed

 and thankful for seeing and learning so much today