*Tuesday and Wednesday were holidays here. It really reminded us of Tet in Vietnam. Everything shuts down, people leave the city and go back to their parents homes. The major difference has been the call to prayer. On Tuesday night, it was an all night call to prayer. Yeah, thats right. An all nighter of chanting and reading/singing the holy book. The kids only woke up once. I remember it getting quiet around 4am...but Wednesday mornings prayers would have started soon after that. Even though we dont know what they are saying (other than that they are reading/singing their holy book), it can sort of get a bit dreary and creeping and all that stuff after awhile. We really find it good to keep our own uplifting music playing a lot....a lot...whenever we are home. We always have our fans going and that helps drown out some sounds. You know how people talk about subliminal messages? Is that the right word? You know how things just sort of sink into your mind? Maybe that doesnt make sense to you. It is hard to put it into words. We are just aware I guess that we need to protect our minds as much as possible and we need people praying for us all the time.
*Dave has no school all week and Noah had holidays on Tuesday and Wednesday. He went back today and did great again. His teacher was really positive. He brought home a bunch of phonics sheets that he had done in class today, and he had done really well. Makes me happy for him...since I spent the time to teach him phonics. Maybe I'm not so bad after all? hahahaha! We are so thankful he is doing great, making friends, and loving this school experience. He got to go to the library today. He loved it. It made me smile to see the books he checked out. He checked out books that we use to have before we moved. I guess he remembered them!
*Language is going well. I still need to update you all on that, but another post...another post! It has been a bit hard this week because Dave has been home from school. Routine? We will get there someday. Hopefully, next week when they both start back, we will establish a permanent routine for them and for our language. With the boys in school (Dave till 11 and Noah till 2:30), it is going to allow both of us to really hit the language hard...about 6 hours of hard study a day. More on that later...
*I have started driving here. Oh yeah...you heard right! I drove for the 3rd time yesterday. It has been great driving here the past few days because no one is here because of the end of Ramadan! On Tuesday, I struggled a bit and the car kept stalling. Today, when I finished driving, Dave told me that I did a good job. Teacher Shane still wont let me drive on the main roads yet.....just around our neighborhood. He says that we are driving hills next!
*We had some good meetings yesterday with our mentors here. They are great. So wonderful to be guided by those with experience! It made us realize that we have almost been here 2 months now! I found myself wanting to debrief a bit with some things that we are living with...just life in general. We are going so well but it is good to just chat about things regularly.
*My quiet time has never been so good. I've started getting up at 5:30 every morning and I love it. Peace and Quiet...a nice coffee...and my favorite book. So nice. I've had so many problems with my alarm though. I did 2 alarms for this morning and none went off....but I have just been praying the Lord would wake me up and that is what happened. I got me a new alarm today!!!
*Last...our hot water. Remember me telling you about our hot water? It was either scalding hot or cold. Then during the shower it would often go real cold and we would have to relight the gas. Hard to do that with shampoo in my hair! The kids were starting to be real scared of the hot water so....for safety sake (and my peace of mind) we got an electric hot water heater. Our handyman fixed it so that we can actually take it with us when we go in another year so that is great. It give us a total of 15 minutes of hot water...we are just so thankful. Our bathroom may not look clean to you, but let me just say that it is clean and we are just thankful that we dont have to have bucket showers like friends of ours (because their water pressure is so bad). We lose hot water if anyone flushes the toilet or turns on any other tap, but we are getting use to how things go around here! Enjoy!
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