Food!

I'd like to show you some of the food that I eat here in K land.  You've already heard about the lamb brains and intestines, but that was an exceptional case.  I'd like to start off from the beginning:

First of all, almost all of our fruits and vegetables are fresh and they have no preservatives added.  That also means they go bad quickly, as in the case with these green beans:

 

I bought these green beans less than 24 hours before I took this picture.  The white stuff in the green beans in the bag almost looks like cotton, but it's mold that grew overnight.  Fun stuff.  They were probably grown in a garden that looks a lot like this one that's down the (dirt) road in my neighborhood:

Notice how the "fence" is made out of any lengthy piece of trash and left-over construction materials they could find.  But hey, I've eaten some decent tasting green onions from this garden.

The fruit here can be very tasty, but I love pretty much any fruit I've ever eaten  (and hate any vegetable I've ever tasted, but more on that in a minute).  We ate this yummy watermelon while on a picnic. 

 When I sit down to a meal with nationals in K land, most of them tend to look a lot like this:

 In the picture above, tershik is the dish that has the yellow patties of wheat in the tomato sauce (the patties have meat in them), iprok is the dish with rice wrapped in grape leaves and other vegetables, and briany is the rice dish in the pot (it includes rice, chicken, almonds, raisins, and spices.)  All of these foods were probably cooked with a bottle of sunflower seed oil each.  Sometimes that's tasty, but ohhhhh, how horrible it is for you.

I love the briany, and tershik is pretty good as long as the spices aren't too bitter.  Iprok is boring but edible, but notice just how many plates of vegetables there are on this picnic blanket!  Tomatoes and cucumbers galore!  The iprok is normally in grape leaves and cabbage leaves, but they also stuff it into peppers, potatoes, cucumbers, zuccini, eggplant, and tomatoes.  And as I said before, I hate most vegetables.  My teammates love watching me when I eat with nationals because they love to see my face when I eat something they know I don't like.  K especially enjoys cooking things at home that are chock full of vegetables, and basically is like my mom when it comes to food: "Eat it, it's good for you!"  Actually, she's very accommodating when she knows I don't like something, but she's good at cooking vegetables in a way that I'll eat them.  I think Dad is having a laugh with me here in K land.  Every time I eat a cucumber slice, I think he must be saying to me "Eat it, I made it, it's good for you!"

Bread is one food I really like here in K land and it's nothing like regular loaf bread.  It's flat bread, kind of like pita bread, and it's normally made in one of the many bread ovens here in our city.  We often make pizza on it.  (FYI, I made my own pizza sauce the other day.  It turned out pretty good too!)

The local families also make their own flat bread but it has a different name, and it is super duper flat, like a crepe.

This is Jy making some of it:

 This is Mw cooking it on their stove top.

 This is me eating some of it with teheen.

Teheen is something like peanut butter.  It's made from sesame seeds.  It's more liquid-like than peanut butter, but similar in taste.  We mix ours with a little bit of date syrup to make it sweeter and then dip our bread in it.  I think it's pretty good!  (By the way, the reason I'm so dressed up in that picture is that teheen and bread were our quick dinner before we went to a wedding.  This is akin to getting all dressed up to go out to a party and then scarfing down a PBJ in the US.  Our K family probably thought: those poor US girls, eating nothing but bread and teheen for dinner?  They don't know how to take care of themselves.  Ha, little do they know, I know how to make pizza sauce!)

My K family

I'd like to show you all some pictures of my family here in K land:

 From left to right:

Mary(age 17), Life, Belinda(4), Erin(21), K (from the US), Brianna(11), L (from the US), Me (from the US), and Esther(7)

This is Ellen, who took the first picture.

Here in K land, K, L, and I live with a national K family that includes the mother (Life) and father (Edmund), and 6 daughters.  They are very kind people and have even taken us with them on their picnics, one of which included over 500 people.  The younger children are often up in our part of the house, just wanting to hang out and see what we are doing.  Ew, the 7 year old, helped me write a children's song the other day in K-ish.

They are all very sweet and kind to us, although we sometimes get a little frustrated that they don't seem to understand or care that we live a different way of life, even though we live in their house. Even though Mary is one of the younger ones, she seems a little more understanding and more willing to talk to us about this with us.  I think maybe she's kind of bored and lonely.  L has been able to have some good conversations with her recently.  We especially like talking about the history of this region, because we've read a particular ancient story about this area that's pretty cool.  You've probably read it too.  I mean, a story about someone who survives being swallowed whole is pretty cool.  His story was even a lesson for later generations of people.  I really hope that the people of this land learn about all the cool things that have happened here in history, because it seems like a lot of them just don't care to know anything outside of what they do in daily life.

On a completely different topic, I would like to leave you all with a picture my language teacher drew me.  She saw pictures of a prank pulled on my mom for my mom's 50th birthday and wanted to know what "Over the hill" meant.  This picture is what resulted:

Mom, you are the stick figure on the right.

Actually, she told me that you are really beautiful (hence the "gelek can" written on the right) and that you and I look a lot alike.

P.S. Prz Gd, my name is no longer Mud.  Now, I have a forecast for warm (sometimes hot) weather, sunny skies, and occasional dust.

P.P.S.  The meal in the first picture was rice wrapped in lamb brains and lamb intestines.  I kid you not!

Dust + Water = Mud

This being K-land and all, dust wasn't too surprising to me, but the reality is that the dust in K-land isn't always from here.  It gets blown here from the south of us.  The following picture is of a very abnormal dust storm:

That's not a sunset.  That's allllllll dust.

Dust in K-land is not orange, it's tan.  This was definitely from the south of us.  It was pretty gross.  But Dad has actually created a unique way to take care of the dust in K-land.  It's called rain.  BUT rain can also lead to some gross stuff.  You see, when you have the air filled with dust and it rains, what do you get?

Answer: Raining Mud!

I truly didn't understand mud until I moved here.  Mud, what can i say?  I never knew you until now.  You now fill my life with so many new experiences.

When it rains mud, you make sure to wear dark colored clothes so your light colored stuff doesn't get tie-dyed in dirt swirls.  It's incredibly ironic, but cleanliness is truly next to gdliness for this culture.  One must be clean in order to be close to Dad.  Also, it is very inappropriate to have a dirty car if you are offering a ride to any acquaintance.  So that means you should try to find a way to clean your car after it gets all muddy.  Unfortunately for me, it's culturally inappropriate for girls to wash cars, or even to take them to the car wash.  We have to get a guy to do it.  Also, our neighborhood isn't paved and our street never dries out, so our car is always dirty.  Because our street is nearly always muddy, it leads to our beautiful feet sometimes looking like this:

(However, this was an extreme circumstance.)

Normally, mud would never be this bad in our neighborhood, but we thought we knew mud well enough and chose to drive through some in a nearby area.  This is what resulted:

L and I and our little red Kia spent almost 2 hours in that mud pit, until finally the police came with a large truck and pulled us out (our friend in the green truck would have pulled us out, but his 4-wheel drive wasn't working that day.)

Recently, I've been conversing with a new acquaintance (that we picked up for lunch in our dirty car, by the way).  K and I talked a lot with this receptive lady, but one thing we ended up talking about is that it's more important to clean the inside of a cup and a dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also. (Mt 23)  I mean, I can't drink out of a water bottle filled with muddy water, but if the water inside is clean, and there's some dirt on the outside, I can still drink it.  Plus, it's a heck of a lot easier to wipe off the outside once the inside is already clean.  Cleaning the inside of a water bottle is a heck of a lot harder than the outside.  Well, for many people here, they seem to care much more about their reputations and their outward cleanliness than what they are really like on the inside.  I really hope they can see that what's on the inside is what truly matters in the long run.

Anyways, at least until summertime, my name is mud.

Sincerely yours,

Mud

Beauty is Pain

This would be one of my coworkers and a new national I've met.  We were hanging out at her house, and I decided to ask questions about beauty, especially related to what I've learned about in a book I recently read called The Beauty School of Kabul.  Although I am nowhere near Kabul, I learned a lot about women there, their beauty techniques based on what is available to them, but also their life stories. These people have a lot of life stories to tell, and sometimes they will really open up and educate us about themselves while they participate in beautification techniques.  My coworker and I learned that almost all of the beauty techniques practiced in Kabul are also regularly practiced here, especially when it comes to brides and grooms and their guests at wedding events.

I loved this national's local dress.  They call it a kras and I have recently had 2 kras made but I will hopefully pick them up from the seamstress in a couple of days.  I hope to post a picture of them in the near future.

Hair removal here is a big deal, especially for the face.  Many people here tend to be on the hairy side.  Many girls have some significant unibrowsn and some of the women's hairlines extend almost all the way down to their eyebrows.  They often get threading (called hefaf) done to remove the hair, although when it is being removed from large areas, they will use different types of wax to get it done.  My coworker, S, and I got demonstrations of both hefaf and waxing on our arms this particular day.  Kind of painful.

In a town two hours southeast of us, it is considered stylishly unacceptable if you do not wax your arms.  In our town it is common to have it done, but not 100% unacceptable, so I plan to avoid it if I can.  However, I could not avoid my new friend, Z, threading my face.  I told her "Okay, but I'm going to cry."  She said, "Okay, cry."  So now, after I did indeed shed tears, I have a "clean" face.  And then afterwards, we talked about her own pain, as she has premature arthritis and back problems, and I remembered her pain for her.  Would you also remember Z, that she would find healing?

Sheva Henna

I'm learning a good bit about new culture here and one of the things I am learning about is weddings.  I find that weddings are simply a big deal no matter where you go around the world.  I had been in K-land all of 3 days when I got to go to a Sheva Henna.  This is an event (like a rehearsal dinner) that occurs the night before a wedding.  The bride's family have a party at her parent's home and the groom's family have a party at his home.  The Sheva Henna I went to was at the groom's home.  The men and women congregate in different rooms for the beginning and major duration of the night, eating apart from one another and spending time in conversation apart from one another.  The groom's family and guests then go to the bride's house, bringing a large platter/bowl of henna that is festively decorated.  The groom's family (unless they are extremely conservative) dances around the bride, puts special jewelry on her, wraps money around her fingers, and takes tons of pictures.  She poses with everyone, although no one smiles.  Most especially, the bride will not smile, no matter if it is for a picture or not.  Whether she is happy or not about getting married, her job is to look sad that she is leaving her family.  The groom's family then goes back to his home and everyone dances in a big circle.  For those who want, they can dip their pinky finger in the henna to show that they have been to a Sheva Henna.

This is a view from above when the groom's family dances around the bride, waving colorful handkerchiefs and carrying the platter of henna. (The bride is seated in the yellow arm chair.)

  

 However, this was MY view of the bride:

These people get a little crazy when it comes to dancing, especially for wedding events.  I definitely had my toes stepped on.  But it was fun, although I had no idea what I was doing.

I wonder about these brides and their hopes and dreams.  Their destiny after their marriage is to be a slave to their mother-in-law.  One or two brides may find they have a new family that welcomes them and lovingly helps them adjust.  However, most find they are immediately the cook and housekeeper for well over 10 people, with little to no assistance from the other family members.  They must also have children as soon as possible, hopefully to ensure that their husband won't take a second wife.  Please remember this bride as I am likely to encounter her weekly as I visit others at her new home.

The Mound

So, my city is pretty large (at least half a million people), but there are no road names or anything like that.  When people here give driving directions, they are always confused because they have to give landmarks instead of street names and no one seems to know the same landmarks.  In order for people to better navigate the city, large neighborhoods have mounds to designate that area.  Each mound is the Neighborhood Mound so you can just direct your taxi driver to which side of the mound you'd like to go.  The picture below shows a mound a mound near us, although not the one designating my neighborhood.

This picture was taken from my colleague's rooftop.

This is what the city looks like in the opposite direction:

 My city is in a valley and we are surrounded by mountains on either side.  It is incredibly beautiful (except when there's dust, but more on that later).

Later, I got to go up on top of the mound:

 The top of the mound is nice and windy and a great place to fly a kite.

There are so many people here living in a world of uncertainty.  Many of these buildings didn't exist more than 20 years ago (whatever was here 20 years ago was probably bulldozed to the ground by a dictator bent on genocide) and such is life for this people group.  They have to live each day not knowing how long they'll be allowed to live in peace.  From what I can see, they choose to not think about the "what ifs" and "maybes."  They just take what each day brings them because they know they may lose everything next week or next year.  But each time they have to run and hide in the mountains, they come back and pick up where they left off.  They are so resilient, but I hope they can learn that there is One that they can always rely on, that will always be there for them when all their material needs are gone.

At the end of our afternoon on the mound, we took a picture.

 

 I hope you excuse the pose and the face I'm making.  It was my first time taking a picture like a K.  There is no smiling allowed (and you all know how much I like to show off my pearly whites!)  As far as the distance between me and everyone else, I have no excuse.  I'm just awkward, I guess.

Hello from K-land!

Hello from K-land, everyone!  I am officially connected, internet-wise, although don't expect me to be online all the time, and probably not even every day.  Internet service here is like a 3G network and, from what I hear, I pay by the hour.  I'm gathering that it isn't a lot per hour, but they can add up quickly depending on how slow the internet is at the time I try to get things done.  Thanks to all who have been remembering me during the last couple of weeks as I traveled and as I got set up here.  I will eventually post pictures and reports on numerous things that I have been doing in the last 2 weeks, but for today, how about some info on my initial 2 days of travel?

 This would be my very last meal in the US for probably the next 2 years.

At the Dulles Airport: Cinnabon and some very delicious Juice that has no clothes on.

After I got stuck in Frankfurt, Germany for 24 hours, I had nothing to do so I went on a walk.  My hotel that the airport assigned to me was surrounded by the German equivalent of Interstates, so there was only one place to walk to and that was a historical area with 2 old German planes used to airlift supplies across the Berlin wall before it fell in 1989.

Also, I had to send out some emails from the hotel in Frankfurt, and I had to use the hotel's computer.  I swear it took almost 30 minutes to type out a 10 sentence email and it was all because of this keyboard:

It doesn't look like much but the simple switch between the Y and the Z was annoying beyond belief (plus, jet lag was hitting and I was crashing).

More pictures will come in the near future (which, for the next couple of years, I hope near future to mean "within a week or so").  I hope everyone is doing well, and I hope to schedule some much needed skype sessions with family and friends soon.  I love you all!