Wedding Bells

by Jason

Aren't they cute, all dressed up?

Today we went to a wedding. It was a lot like a bunch of American weddings you and I have attended through the years. But there were a few subtle differences, and that’s really what made this event interesting. So, I’m going to write about those.

The wedding in question was for the brother of a good friend of mine. We didn’t really know anyone involved other than the brother of the groom. My friend Adam told us about the wedding a few weeks ago, and gave us a printed invitation last week. The invitation said the ceremony would start at 1:30, and that’s where we started asking questions.

So I called Adam last night and asked what they meant by “1:30.” Like, is it really going to start at 1:30, or was that just a suggestion? He said really they call it 1:30 but it would probably be 2:00 before it started. This was helpful, because many weddings here don't start until two or three hours after the announced time, so we at least knew what time frame to shoot for.

We got dressed up in the early afternoon and headed to the church. The groom’s family is Roman Catholic, and the church was Episcopal, but the preacher today was Presbyterian.

I kept a timeline in my phone so we could keep up with what was happening when.

At 1:30, when the wedding was advertised as starting, we arrived at the church. We met the groom’s father out in the courtyard. We met his mother inside before we sat down. There were 20-25 other people already sitting in the church.
1:39, the musicians started practicing in the sanctuary. There was a keyboard and guitar, and both players were singing.
1:40, mother of the groom is walking down the aisle visiting with family and friends.
1:55, mother of the groom walks back up the aisle, talking on her mobile phone, giving someone directions to the church. For a wedding that was supposed to start 25 minutes ago.
2:00, the musicians do a sound check with the microphones.
2:05, mother of the groom gives her phone to brother of the groom so he could try to explain how to get there.
2:13, brother of the groom takes Sarah Claire out to the reception area to get some chocolate candies.
2:22, we heard people saying “wassalu” meaning “they arrived.” I think they were talking about the bride and groom. 52 minutes after the service was to start. You see, usually the couple will visit a photo studio before the ceremony to have portraits made. I guess they did that about 1:30.
When they arrived, the musicians started singing “How Great is Our God,” while the groom walked up the aisle greeting people. Now this looks like a fairly formal affair: the groom and his brother are wearing tuxedos; the ladies are all wearing black dresses and the men are wearing coats and ties; the preacher is wearing a long black robe. And the groom is just walking around greeting his relatives while the musicians sing!
2:27, the musicians start a second song.
2:29, the bride and her father walk in. At the back end of the aisle, he hands her off to the groom who escorts her to the front of the room.
2:30, a full hour after the announced start time, the brother reads from Ephesians 5 and prays.

Now the rest of the ceremony was pretty familiar. Well, except that there was this double throne thing for the bride and groom to sit on. They sat down for a little, but then while the preacher was preaching, they decided to stand up. He paused to ask what they were doing, but they just said they wanted to stand up. Also while the preacher was preaching, the groom’s father walked up and asked the groom something. And the photographer was wandering around the room taking pictures of everyone, and even walking up on the stage between the preacher and the couple if he wanted a better angle. I don’t think that was allowed the day we got married. Actually, our photographer wasn’t allowed to get any closer than the front edge of the balcony! Oh, and the bridesmaid walked out and back in down the central aisle during the first song.

When it was over, there was a brief, small reception in the courtyard area of the church. There were cupcakes and fancy chocolate candies. Because the wedding was during Lent, there was a separate table of cupcakes and candies for those who were fasting. Adam told us they were made without butter or some other products they can’t have while they’re fasting. I guess at a Catholic/Presbyterian wedding at the Episcopal church, you can eat cupcakes while you’re fasting.

Overall, it was a lovely affair. Our kids mostly played games on our phones, but Sarah Claire also kept a careful lookout for the bride the whole time. She was quite disappointed that there was no flower girl (or "petal girl," as she calls it) in this wedding.

Afterward, we celebrated Arab Mother’s day (21 March) by taking Beth to Outback Steakhouse.

It was a great day!

Fully Furnished...and then some!

While we've been hunting for a permanent home this month, we're staying in a furnished apartment that a friend found for us before our arrival. We were so grateful to have a place to land after the long trip that got us here, and the place he found for us is great, with plenty of room and all the basic things we need...but it does have some quirks that we thought it would be fun to show you.

The living room area is decidedly Arab in several ways. It's a nice-sized room, but way too crammed full of furniture! In addition to the dining table, there are not one, not two, but three entire sets of living room furniture--all in one room! You can see one set directly behind the table in the photo above...

then another orange floral set to the left...

and a third 80s-looking set on the right. None of the sets matches any of the others, and the large curtains on the wall don't match any of the three! However, on the positive side, we're ready if 40 of our closest friends come over and need to sit down! You can see that we've designated the 80s living room area as our "laundry room." The washing machine is in the bathroom, and the dryer is, well, you're looking at it. Our dryer is still in storage until we move into our apartment, so until then we're drying all our clothes in the living room.

If you scroll back up to the first photo, you'll also notice one other common decorating feature from this part of the world--chandeliers! Our living room is home to FIVE crystal chandeliers. Pretty impressive, huh?

And this is the kitchen we're working with this month. We don't have a dish drying rack, so we've been spreading the dried dishes out on a towel on top of the stove (stoves here all have a fold-down lid that makes them flat on top). It's a great spot for drying dishes, but a big pain anytime we want to actually use the stove.

The kitchen is also very sparsely equipped, so we've had to improvise when making meals at home. I cooked garlic bread in a skillet that had lost its handle one night, and another day we made cookies in these little foil pans. We've also eaten out or ordered in A LOT. Thank goodness for cheap delivery and restaurants in walking distance!

Finally, we wanted to show you one other room in the house--the bathroom. We're all five using this one bathroom for bathing because the water heater in the other one has a short and won't stay on. We tried turning it on a few times, but it always ended with a loud POP and a blown fuse. So we finally gave up.

The water heater in the bathroom pictures works ok, so we've all been bathing in there, but we wanted you to see one glaring omission in this bathroom that makes it different from any we've ever seen in the states: No shower curtain. Shower curtains are entirely optional and not really that common here. In fact, bathtubs themselves are also a luxury. However, every bathroom has a tile floor and a drain somewhere in the floor. What millions of people do here is simply stand in the middle of the bathroom, turn on the shower head attached to the bathroom wall, take their shower, and then squeegee the water into the drain when they're done.

Now if you did that in Florida, your floor might be wet the rest of the day, but when you combine our desert heat and lack of humidity, it's not really a problem here. We do have a bathtub, so our floor doesn't get too, too wet, but the lack of shower curtain does mean a fair amount of splashing onto the floor. So you can add "shower curtain" to the list of things we'll be excited to unpack when we move into our new apartment next week. Stay tuned for new house pics soon!

Adventures in Paint

by Jason

We set a new family record today. We got our whole house painted in 11 hours! They started working at 9:30 this morning and at 8:30 tonight I turned off the lights and closed the door behind them. It would have taken us weeks to paint all that. But it wasn’t quite as simple as it sounds…

It started earlier in the week. I called our painter—the same guy who painted our last two apartments—and asked if he was available. He said he was, so on Wednesday he came to see the place and tell us how much paint to buy. We explained the color schemes a little and he told us how many gallons of each color he would need. In the past, he’s preferred to mix the colors himself—by hand, on location—but we wanted to pick some colors from a paint store and have the computer mix it.

We learned today why our painter “doesn’t trust the computers” to mix paint. You see these two lids? The numbers on them are the same! They’re supposed to be the same color, the teal one. Somehow, the computer didn’t put enough green in the second one, I guess. But my painter was able to add some tint to it and make them both the same.

Today started with a wake-up call, followed by several hours of running errands. Ahab the Painter called at 8:15 to tell me they were on the way, and would be here in “about half an hour.” At 9:15 he called again and said they were here. I walked over to our new place (just a block from our temporary place) and let them in. I showed them the paints we had bought. They started setting things up and then asked me if I had any masking tape! “Wait a minute,” thought I to myself, “aren’t they the professional painters here?” I told them I’d go look for some tape and some light bulbs, since several were missing in the new flat.

They also asked about a ladder. I have one, but it was at a friend’s house, so I told them I could bring it a little later. They started asking the doorman at the building if there was a ladder around, but there wasn’t, so he asked if he had an old barrel they could stand on to paint! (No barrel, either).

I walked to the nearest light bulb shop and got some bulbs, and that guy happened to have a few rolls of masking tape, too. Walked back to the new house and delivered that, then came back home for breakfast. After about an hour, he called back and asked about a broom and squeegee for the floor. So, I headed back down and bought those and delivered them. And came back home. Again.

I was about ready to go get the ladder when the doorman at this building brought a couple by who are thinking about buying this flat, so we spent 10 minutes showing our house. After that I did go get the ladder and delivered it to them.

We had company coming for lunch at 1:00, but at 12:30 the painter called again to tell me about the non-matching paints in the girls’ room. So I went to see it and see what to do. That’s when he volunteered to just fix it himself rather than sending me to the store to try to explain that they’re not the same color.

He thought it was going to take 2-3 days to paint all those rooms, but he ended up with 5 guys working on it rather than 2. The three extras had planned to work at another site today, but weren’t able to work there, so they all came to our house. The other reason it’s so much faster here than in the States is because the floors are all ceramic tile. So where we’d spend hours taping plastic to the floor to keep paint off the carpet, these guys just let it drip and then wipe it with a wet rag. It also dries pretty darn fast with so little humidity in the air!

I went over to see it a couple more times this afternoon. Things were progressing quickly. About 8:00 he called and said come see. We went on over and found a beautifully painted house! See for yourself...

Here are Sawyer & Sarah Claire with one of the men who worked so hard on our house all day.
He asked to get in the picture with them!:) 

Another shot so you can see the green walls better.

It's definitely teal! Perhaps a bit brighter than her mom would have chosen,
but Lee Anna knew just what she wanted.

No more red and yellow for our bedroom. Hooray!

And the hallway and living room (not pictured) are a lovely beige. 

Now it's time to fill up those rooms with some furniture! If the movers will work as quickly as the painters, we'll be ready to move in in no time!

Out on the Town

A few nights ago, we ate dinner out and took a little after-dinner walk. Here are a few pics I took while we were out...

It's that time of year again. In less than two weeks, most of the folks in this part of the world will begin fasting from sunrise to sunset for 30 days. Several weeks before Ramadan, these little lantern shops start popping up all over the city. The folks in our country use them to decorate for the month, usually hanging them outside their flat or at the entrance to their building, although you can also buy a mini lantern on a keychain, or one as large as a small automobile.

Sarah Claire befriended this donkey on our walk. She really wanted to pet and hug him, but thankfully was content to have her picture taken with him.

Speaking of hugging, she has also gotten into the habit of stopping to hug most of the trees we pass. I'm not sure where this comes from, but I am sure that it makes for a dirty little girl by the time we get back home. 

And check out my fancy new shades! They were purchased on the same walk. We passed by the entrance to the metro (our subway) station, where there is always an amusing assortment of goods for sale on the street. That night we saw fruits, vegetables, sunglasses, Ramadan lanterns, shoes, shorts, t-shirts, kitchen bowls, pots & pans, blenders and other small appliances, and popcorn. We resisted most everything, but I did come away with this high quality pair of sunglasses. They may resemble a brand you've seen before, but if you look closely, you'll see that they are quite unique! 

You may be wondering where our older two munchkins have been lately. Well, they've been off having adventures without us for the past few weeks. I'll post more about what they've been up to soon!

Don't Try This at Home

Imagine my surprise when I found this view outside our front window this morning! Nevermind the fact that we're on the third floor. The A/C in the flat next door to us needed to be worked on, so this guy just crawled out the window and had a seat on top of it for a while. He had a lot more confidence in whatever was holding that A/C up than I would have! A few minutes later, he crawled back inside, and another guy climbed out and did the same thing.

I've never considered air conditioner installation a particularly perilous job...until today. Thankfully, all of them made it safely back inside without incident.

Eating Out

When people move from one country to another, they usually have to make major adjustments in what they eat. Usually. We have had to make some minor adjustments to our eating out fare, but overall we have it pretty good! We don't have Taco Bell, Moe's, or any other Tex-Mex fast food, but we get all the McDonald's, Burger King, Hardee's and KFC that we need.We've taken a few pics lately to demonstrate the similarities and a few subtle differences. 

Here's Sawyer holding the Hot Wheels cars he got in his kids' meal at Hardee's.That's pretty normal, but ...

Lee Anna is standing in that same Hardee's. We're the only customers at 12:45 on a Saturday afternoon! The work crew was still coming in when we got there, and there were no other customers. Not one. The locals have a little different eating schedule. They were packed out by 4:00, and probably stayed busy until the wee hours of Sunday morning, but noon:45 was too early for lunch!

Most of the fast food joints have play places like they would in the states...

And the burgers and fries are pretty similar to the American originals.

One thing we see more of on this side of the ocean is sleeping children. Like eating schedules, sleeping schedules are also very different here. Families don't typically have a set nap time or bed time, but they just assume that if their child is sleepy enough, they'll fall asleep--which they do, all over town! And this week, Sarah Claire acted just like a local. On the way to Burger King for supper yesterday (at about 5:30) she fell fast asleep in the car. She snoozed for about 20 minutes before waking up to eat with us. No one who saw us even batted an eye at the sleeping toddler, though, since we see kids sleeping like this everywhere we go.

We are so grateful to have all these places to go and eat. (When we don't feel like just having them deliver!)

Widespread Dust

When you live in the desert, there's gonna be a lot of dust in your life. When you consider how much sand is out there in the desert to be blown our way, it's really not surprising. So we deal with it by having our car washed daily and our floors cleaned several times a week, and by keeping things sealed and covered. And it's just common knowledge that anything left out in the open is going to get very, very dusty if you don't clean it regularly.

Sometimes we have real live dust storms, where the dust is so thick it stings your eyes and makes your teeth feel gritty. On days like that, it's painfully obvious how very dusty our city can be. But the fact is that even on clear days, there's still a tremendous amount of sandy junk in our air.

That's what we got a reminder of this week.

The weather has been really nice and springy lately, so last Thursday I decided to leave our windows open. We have two large windows directly opposite each other in our living and dining areas, so it creates a nice cross breeze to have them both open. Here's one of the open windows:

Now Thursday is one of our much-anticipated "housekeeper days," so she showed up around 10 a.m. After cleaning the kitchen, she moved to the dining area and thoroughly wiped down the table. It was still sparkling clean when we sat down for lunch at 1:00 p.m., which is why I was so incredibly shocked to find this... 

just four hours later! Around 5:00, I was standing in the kitchen looking into the dining room when I noticed that the setting sun shining through the window was illuminating every single speck of dust on the table...and there were LOTS of specks to illuminate! I was seriously floored to see how much dust had accumulated on my table in one afternoon. And here's the kicker--it wasn't a dusty day! If it were, I never would have dreamed of leaving the windows open. But since it was a nice, normal day outside, I thought it might be ok. The kids graciously agreed to draw some pictures in the dust, just so that you could see how bad it was.

Like I said, that wasn't a terribly dusty day. However, today we had one of those days, so I kept our windows shut tight. I also took a picture, so you can see the difference. The first photo is from March 15, a cloudy but clear day.

This second photo is from today, April 1. It's like putting on a pair of beige-tinted glasses. This is one of those days when you might get on weather.com and find that the forecast for our city is "widespread dust."

Thankfully, we have many more clear days than dusty days, and you can be sure that when the breezes are blowing and the temps are agreeable, I'm going to keep opening our windows, even if it means we have to wipe the table down before dinner!

Back to School

We have a new student in our family this week, but thankfully I'm not the one having to teach him. Daddy has gone back to school--to learn to read and write!

One of the (many!) challenging things about Arabic is that the written and spoken languages are not the same. We speak colloquial Arabic just fine, meaning we can communicate with our friends and neighbors and understand your average person on the street. However, the classical Arabic language is a different animal altogether. That means that when we pick up a newspaper or book, or try to watch the news on TV, we're basically clueless. We can usually pick out a word here and there, but can't come close to understanding it all. We have often compared it to the difference between English and Spanish--that's how far apart the spoken and written Arabic languages are!

So, Jason is taking a course this month that's going to help him learn to read the newspaper. In the photo above, he's eating his lunch on the "special plate" since it was his first day of class.

In addition to the "student" hat he's wearing now, he's also been wearing some other hats this week, like the "nurse" hat and the "home school substitute teacher" hat. I have been very sick with a throat infection, so he's pretty much handling everything! He took me to the doctor today, and when the doctor saw my throat, he just said, "Wooooow." I'm so grateful to be taken care of, and for all the hats my amazing husband wears. 

From the Passenger Seat

Riding as a passenger in a vehicle here is definitely more of an adventure than it is in the states. You just never know what you might see! These are all photos I've snapped recently while we were out and about around the city, and while they're all just average, everyday sights here, I know there was a time when I would have done a double take at any of these.

Just your average garbage collection truck.

Just your average pickup truck hauling cardboard...in the rain
(ok, so the rain part is NOT an everyday sight).

Just your average truck load of animal skins.

Just your average truck load of, um, food scraps.

Just your average truck full of cabbage. Yes, cabbage.

Just your average donkey cart riding down a major highway.

Just your average guy sitting 12 feet off the ground on top of a large, fast-moving vehicle.

Just your average Google snacks delivery truck. What? Google doesn't
make snacks where you live? I guess we're just ahead of the times!

Getting Connected

After visiting the states in November and getting spoiled by fast internet speeds, we were determined to get something better in our house. So on Nov. 17—the day we got back—I went to the internet company we had been with before, and asked them to hook us up. They checked our number and said we had the wrong kind of wires (fiber optic instead of copper) so they couldn’t do it.

So the next day I went to Vodafone, the mobile phone people who also do DSL. I asked them about it, and at first glance the guy thought they could, but they needed two weeks to run the tests or something. Well, after ten days I started trying to call them back, but no one seemed to know yet. Finally, several weeks later, I talked to someone who knew, and he said the same thing—can’t do it now. But, he said if I go to the phone company, they can change the wires and then we can hook up DSL. So I went to the phone company Central Office in our neighborhood. The customer service lady there said I had to go to the other “Central Office” over by the satellite station. So the next day I went there. The guy there told me I really needed to go to “Central #2” and gave some vague directions to it. I've been living in this neighborhood for 6 years and never even heard of Central #2! But I wandered around and asked some people and found it. It said "Central #4" on the sign, but the security guy told me it was really #2. This place was amazingly calm and peaceful—probably because no customers know it’s there. Well, the guy there took down my address and phone number, then called the service guy who works in our neighborhood. He told him the phone number, and the guy told him that none of the numbers that start with our prefix can connect to DSL. So our whole neighborhood is out. And that meant he couldn’t just come change the wires at my house.

Then I went back to Vodafone, because their website offers a wireless router that we can connect to our USB modem and share with the whole flat (and the Vonage phone). But the Vodafone store didn’t have any routers today. I asked if the other store might have them and she said “No, but you can call customer service on 888 and maybe they can help.”

I came home and told Beth we’re pretty much stuck like this for now. Then the phone repairman called me back with another possible solution. He said all we have to do is get the phone number for this house changed, and then they can connect it. (Why didn’t someone else suggest this???) The catch is that I can’t get it changed—the landlord will have to do that. I asked the landlord if he would get the number changed. We were afraid it might involve everyone in the building changing, and I didn’t think they’re going to go for that.

It's been three months now since this saga started. The landlord has been working on getting the number changed. He's called me twice in the past two weeks to tell me he was at the phone company signing the papers. I'd imagine he's been sent from one office to another more than once in this process, too. 

So, next time you talk to us on a bad connection, remember we’re working on it. But we’re still in the 3^rd World working on 1^st World problems. 

Turkey Day!

Just a week after we returned, it was time for Thanksgiving. The cool thing about traveling to America right before Thanksgiving was that it meant we could bring back some typical Thanksgiving items (like canned pumpkin, pecans and mini marshmallows) that are pretty hard--or very expensive--for us to get around here. We had several families join us for the day, and we had a great time eating, relaxing, and watching the news. Yes, the news. Since we're half a day ahead of American time, it was too early for football. And besides, there was more excitement in the streets that week, so we needed to keep tabs on what was going on in other parts of the city. 

Here's some of our delicious feast. Funny story about the turkey: Our friend called about a week before Thanksgiving to say that he had seen a butcher near his house selling turkeys. Since they can be really hard to find, he offered to buy it for us, and then Jason arranged to meet him and pick it up the day before Thanksgiving so that I could cook it before lunch on Thursday. I've never cooked a turkey, but I read up on it all that week and was ready to try it.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Jason got another call from our friend. As scheduled, he had gone by to pick up the turkey that afternoon, but when he got there, there was a little surprise. The turkey was already cooked! Apparently there was a bit of Arabic miscommunication (it happens from time to time!), and the butcher thought we wanted it cooked, so they had taken it to a nearby restaurant and borrowed their oven for a few hours! Thankfully, it was delicious, and it made Thanksgiving Day even easier for me!  

Lee Anna had fun overseeing the creation of our "Thanksgiving tree". The kids cut out the leaves, and then on each one we listed something we were thankful for. When our friends arrived, they also helped us add to the tree. I took the pic below the next morning before we took it down. Next year (assuming we're not traveling all month), we'll do this all month long.

The kids also did a cute little Build-a-Turkey craft after we ate. Another mom had printed and cut out all the Mr.-Potato-Head style pieces, and the kids got to choose which ones they wanted for their turkeys. They loved it!

We sat around and visited, laughed a lot, sang together, and thoroughly enjoyed having a day to reflect on all that we have to be thankful for.