Merry Christmas!!!

We will be out of blog-o-sphere for the next two weeks traveling in Europe. Tune back in next year for pictures of the sheep sacrifice, vacation with fam, and retreat in Spain. To all our BFF's and fam so sorry we can't call you on Christmas, we'll talk when we get back! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

A Chronological Look at our 4th Anniversary

On December 13th we celebrated 4 happy years together. Because we just went to Barcelona last month for business and spent a lot of money we decided to count that as our anniversary trip and not travel this time. This is our third time to spend our anniversary here in this country. (I really keep trying to spell it "anniversery" this is NOT right and very annoying). Anyway, our day started out with some Classical Arabic class at 9:00 a.m. It was as romantic as it sounds. Nothing says "I love you" like perfecting your guttural stops.


Next we moved on to our school holiday party. We were celebrating Christmas and Eid Al Adha which is the festival of sacrifice in Islam and everyone who can afford to will a buy a sheep and sacrifice it. They are remembering when Abraham was going to sacrifice his son (the other one, not the one we believe) but God instead provided a sheep in his place. We are going to a friends house to watch the sacrificing of their sheep this week (more on that later). It was the joining of many cultures (we have least 12 represented in our school) to share food and stories of our holiday's.


Next, we did a little apartment hunting work. While waiting for the concierge I had a lovely chat with this adorable girl. I love talking to kids because I always understand their Arabic. She was telling me about these really hot peppers where she is from and you have to drink lots of water or milk because your mouth is on fire. I wonder if she'll be my language partner?


Next we had a light lunch because of all the food we ate at the party. This place is normally filled with hookah smoke in the evening but it's not too bad if you get there first for lunch. We had delicious falafel and hummus and fresh OJ. I didn't get photos of this, but in the afternoon we went to a Korean art show to support some friends from church.


For our evening out we went to a steak place. We had the best fried garlic calamari of our lives! It was very nice and the waiters had remembered us from when we were there once back in April! All in all, we had good anniversary (just misspelled it again!) and what a strange thought that next year we will be celebrating in America...weird!


On a completely different side note, the next day, Cody highlighted my hair and I am showing off my new spectacles. When choosing my glasses, I was going for something funky, not sure what they wear in terms of eyeglasses in America but people are pretty European with their choice of eye-wear here. Cody is such a good hair dyer. Every since we moved away from my usual hair dying girlfriends, Cody as taken over the role. He's very meticulous in everything he does so he's really good at it. He was little nervous b/c this was his first time to do highlights. Being that the instructions were in French I forgot to wet my hair first, but it still came out pretty good! I also spent the most I have every spent on a haircut here this week. Normally I spend about $5 but this time I spent over $20! Since I am growing my hair out I decided to add some bangs and layers to the front. Anyway that was super-girly explanation so sorry for any of you male readers...if you made this far!

Where have ya'll been?

Well two weeks have passed since our last post and I haven't taken that many great photos. Here is a lil bit of randomness from our lives.

First of all...meet Ghetto Claus. The Americans put on a Christmas bazaar and of course it wouldn't be Christmas without a skinny 5'5'' man handing out candy canes. This guy couldn't keep his beard or hat on to save his life and his dark hair and black 5 o'clock shadow kept showing.  At least he was a tri-lingual Santa right? I tried to get my photo taken with him, but you know how kids are. Besides, the guy was probably my age and it would have been weird to sit on his lap.


Next comes, Mexican Night! The food that is. I found these taco shells this week and upon closer inspection I see they are product of the USA, and not only is everything written in English it's also from El Paso, Texas, 45 minutes from where I am from! It was crazy! I paid no attention to the Arabic sticker on it, hoping it wouldn't be a warning of sorts. Have you guys heard of Casa Fiesta brand in America?


I also bought the beans. I love refried beans and these are quite tasty. Also from El Paso, TX. Now, if only we could start getting tortillas here!

The last couple of days we have had really low water pressure making it difficult to take warm showers because there isn't enough pressure to turn on the bhuta gas heater. Well today it was cut off altogether so we got a buzz from our concierge informing us we need to bring our buckets to fill up with water. Here is everyone frantically filling up their buckets as if we are in some sort of drought and there won't be enough water to go around. I wasn't sure if they knew something I didn't so I got our buckets and went downstairs too.

Cody carrying our water upstairs. Mostly, we wanted to be able to flush the toilets because, ewww, can't let that back up.

In other apartment news, this is the store that has opened since we moved in here. See the "Residence" sign, that's our door where we go in. As if a huge orange store wasn't enough they added this balloon too. Pretty huh?