the last days

I just realized that I have not blogged in a few days so here just some pictures off of Erlend's phone from the last days

 our little biker girl

 This little friend of Alia is about 3 months older but she is quite a bit heavier and taller than him

(notice she is wearing shoes? she has started walking (of course we still need to hold her))

 grass patch at the side of the road? lets keep it there and just paint around it

 meeting new people who find whities very interesting

snuggles for pappa

 private snuggles for Mama

a crazy lady and duck

Today our wee family went to town to get a new charger for my cellphone which had gone bust, possibly due to a few uncoordinated attempt on my part to connect the charger to the phone. Oops.

We were so proud that we found what we needed, all by ourselves, without anybody who knows the language better than us - so naturally we felt invincible and wanted to take it to the next level - going to the market by ourselves!!!

As we walked around looking at the different stalls, a lady came up to Alia (she (Alia, not the lady!) was strapped to me in her carrier) and "kissed" her face.
They don't really give babies kisses here, they just sniff their face.... Anyways, that was not weird in and off itself, Alia gets loads of sniffs here, she does not usually mind.
She has excepted that she is a cute, white baby in a culture that likes cute, white babies, so she just rolls with the sniffs.

The lady asked for Alia's name and I told her, no harm in that right?
We just kept on strolling through the market when I heard someone shouting Alia's name.
Sure enough the lady was following us and saying something I did not understand (happens all the time these days) plus Alia. It kinda freaked me out so we decided to get out of there.

Our motorbike was parked a little ways up the street so we walked in that direction and the lady was still following us. Not strolling anymore, but walking fast, we got to our motorbike, jumped on and as we were about to pull out of the parking space, the lady came at Alia with an open safety pin and tried to poke her with it.
Erlend and I realized about the same time what was going on (Alia never did, thankfully). We both stretched out our arms to keep the lady from poking Alia and screamed NO and we drove off as fast as we could.

Hm, written down it might not sound as dramatic, but I for my part, do not have a huge desire to go back to the market any time soon.

After such an 'eventful' afternoon we needed some chill time, so dinner with friends at a duck restaurant sounded like a good idea. They have the best duck in town and Alia is already a fan.

the duck restaurant comes with live music

 who would not wanna sniff some of that cuteness? :-)

This concludes another day in our lives which all the good, the bad and the crazy!

normal life

Just a little post to make sure you all don't think that our life only consists of awesome trips and special occasions :-).

This is what many hours every day look like...

waterfall picnic

Today our "July-Team" went on an awesome trip together. We drove for about an hour through breathtaking scenery and then had a picnic at a beautiful waterfall, enjoying food, fellowship and playing in the river. We had so much fun!

living dangerous - walking over a bamboo bridge :-)

beautiful creation

of course we had to get a bit touristy and take some staged pictures

 she is getting so big and loves to stand as long as somebody is holding her

our teammates  - we are so thankful for all of them

picture dump

Enjoy some pictures that our talented friend Daniel took recently, mostly pictures of different trips he has been on with Erlend.

 rainy season

 bird market

 not sure if he was trying to mimic the expression on the dead fish faces in front of him?

 Aisa loves babies, Alia loves attention - good mix :-)

 The story I heard was that this luwak (the thing that poops the most expensive coffee in the world) was so cute, Erlend and Daniel wanted to buy it, until it 'emptied' itself on Daniel's shirt - well done, luwak! 

 

 buying stickers at the market (the loooove stickers here)

If you had to take a wild guess, what do you think is the most common mode of transportation here?

buzzing and pouring

Today we went to town and Erlend was feeling especially brave so he decided to have his hair cut by a guy with a buzzer and a straight razor. 

 The place was not quite a salon, more like a stall

 this is not all Erlend's hair, just in case you where wondering

looking just a liiiiittle bit skeptical

When we got ready to drive home on our scooter it started pouring so we had to wait for about half an hour for the rain to stop. 

 can you see how the rain is flowing through the rims? 

that is why they call this rainy season

relaxing

This past weekend we got to go to a bigger city with two other families and spend some time recharging and relaxing. It was so nice to have some time with out thinking about vocabulary, tutor sessions and time sheets (not that all of those things aren't WONDERFUL :-)).

For some reason I did not take a lot of pictures but here the ones I found on Erlend's phone.

on the way there Alia fell asleep in my arms, 

that does not happen too often anymore so I enjoyed every second of it

 Alia showing of her new 'drinking from a staw'-skills

 Erlend's highlight of the trip was a steak dinner

(he says it was one of his top 5 steaks he has had in his life)

Alia has decided to support "movember" (moustache + november = movember) to the best of her ability