We have been on holiday for almost one week now.we are staying at the orderthe brother of one of our friends while they are on holiday. we are loving Holland because it is so green we have bikes to ride and a lovely home to stayin. now we need to figure out how to cook and eat differently since the food here is much more experience than at home! Today tom came home with a 4 pound bag of potatoes and said "this is our new rice!" At home we usually eat rice everyday for lunch but potatoes are much much cheaper here so I am looking recipes up on the computer. I have never really cooked potatoes!

please excuse the lack of punctuation! I am doing this on my phone and it is tedious ! I will include a few photos and update a bit later but we are all well and enjoying the reduced responsibilities. Tom still has to check in at work and stay on top of all sorts of things but it is still a holiday!

gorgeous gardens!!

bikes!! This is elsbeth our friend from home. We are dtaying I

 in her hrother in law's house. The kids had so luch fun playing together all day!! They missed each other for sure.

Enjoying european breakfast pastries!!

I would not survive without my packing cubes!! Keeps all our stuff in order!

ordru

Family Holiday!!

We are taking off in a few hours! We need to be in Germany for a work things for Tom in August and we are SUPER excited. Our last trip to Germany two years was fantastic. It was hands-down the best holiday/work trip we've ever had....green everywhere, walking trails, cheap place to stay, great food etc etc.

We are excited to spend a few days in Paris before taking the train to Holland to stay in the home of a relative of one of our friends here in town! They are on family holiday themselves so we are again VERY privileged to be able to have a free place to stay for THREE weeks! We are looking forward to just walking and biking around Holland and trying all the food.

Can I also say that just about everything in Paris and Holland is free for kids under 18? How COOL is that. My amazing deal-hunter of a husband found teeny tiny hotel that will let the kids sleep on the floor for free! I thought Paris would be too expensive but apparently, the hotels are much cheaper than other international cities because they are older and smaller and more...uh...European in their amenities as opposed to flashy American.

So anyway - I doubt I'll be posting as much for the next few weeks but we'll have PLENTY of pictures to upload afterwards!!

Summer VBS

This summer....just before Ramadan started last week, a friend of mine wanted to run a VBS style thing for her kids and the children of some neighbors of hers. We were all grateful for someone organizing something for so many kids!

Her theme for this day was learning to forgive and learning to give good gifts to each other. So she pulled together some play kitchens, plastic food and kitchen items, lots of playdough, pretend menus and such we sat and ordered food while the kids made it.

She is very talented as a script writer and so she told a story which was translated by Elsbeth. I was furiously cleaning all the playdough off the floor before our next activity (= She told the story of Joseph told over the three days of activities.

     Someone donated some VBS-type stuff to her and she is happy to create different "modules" and to help others to implement them. What we can help her with is the translation into Arabic so Elsbeth and I feel like it is a great trade off!

And here you can see my two redheads playing kitchen (=

Perfect Example of the 1st World/3rd World dynamic

 
I've been dying to take a photo of this at the right moment. That means I'm not driving quickly, I have my phone, I can actually make it work and click without wiggling too much. Not an easy task (=

So I was thrilled when I got this right outside our front door the other day. This is what I mean by the clash of 1st and 3rd world in this previous post. Here is a perfectly modern garbage truck so you make some assumptions about garbage collecting being familiar to you.  And yet what actually happens is that there are large, metal, square containers with no bottoms to them and folks just throw stuff in or near or close by. You can find furniture, tree branches, cow carcasses, goat heads, community donations of working toys and clothes set a bit farther away from the pile.

So the modern garbage truck pulls up to the pile/container, 5 or 6 guys get out and flip the container on its side and then proceed to put the stuff in the garbage truck by hand. Hmmm. The first time I saw this I thought the container had slipped off the truck so all those guys were having to clean up the mess. Then I realized that was the SYSTEM. hmmm.

Do you see what I mean?.....one of the stressors of living here is seeing one thing and making assumptions only to realize it isn't the case. Once in awhile it isn't a bit deal.....but multiple times a day it can happen so often it gets draining.

Pool Time!

Living in a place that is SO HOT for so many months of the year, you realize that you have to figure out ways to entertain your kids other than just TV....unless you are okay with that.....
So we do the following:
Bedtime is now 930 or 10pm
Going to the park is from about 730 to 930pm
We build elaborate forts and let the house get SUPER messy
We cook all sorts of things
and Pool Time is ANY time because it is shaded!

 

I can't get the comments to work again. SO IRRITATING.
The pool is in the back corner of our house so Tom decided to cover an L-shaped portion which gives us enough space to sit next to the pool.
It was SO COLD the first few days because we didn't have a cover for the pool. We just had to make ourselves sit down in the freezing water. It was wild to have 120 degree wind blowing your hair and have your legs FREEZING in the water!
     

Ryan and Layla have gotten so much better in the water just in the last 2 weeks. It is amazing. We are so grateful for the pool.

 

Jael is our Dutch friend's son. He is the same age as Ryan and is SO CUTE. he makes this face all the time Wish you could see him dance. He and ryan are best buds. 

Wait a minute....is this a 1st world country or a 3rd world country??

We tell folks this is one of the random stressers of living where we do...you just never know if you are in walking into a third world or first world situation.

Ambiguity and unpredictability are supposedly some of the most difficult things for us to live with for long periods of time. hahahahahaha. This really makes me laugh when looking at our lives. I can't even tell you if there will bananas at the store let alone things that rank a bit higher than that. True, I can cross the border and go to the shiny French department store where they usually have everything in stock but that takes mores time and effort and it isn't where I live. And really, I can get what I need on a regular basis without crossing the border.....but you just never know and that is unpredictability part.

You might think the idea of "second world" would apply to our area, but I did a wee bit of research and found out that the term "second world" was for the centrally planned governments of the communist era. We definitely live in a country with that type of dynamic - central power that is sort of planning....hmm. never mind.

Anyway here goes for the things that tell you it is a third world country:

There are some very rich people and then everyone else....not tons of poverty (due to the government that gives lots of subsidies)
Kids don't wear shoes most of the time
Dirt roads are everywhere and even if you have paved roads they are optional
Road rules are very erratic...drive 10 miles an hour? no problem. See a friend by the side of the road? pull off...no problem. See a friend driving near you? Pull up next to them and block both lanes while driving and chatting. No problem. Well maybe if it is a two lane road.....but then everyone will figure out to just drive on the dirt.
Older generations of people (ahem....like mine!) have not gone to school past 4th or 5th grade
Gender segregation and roles are the bedrock of society and pretty inflexible
Houses are still sort of tents....doors, windows and gates are left open and unlocked and all manner of bugs and sand are considered normal inside the house
People often still sleep on the floor with maybe a pillow and blanket....girls in one room boys in another.

And the first world indicators:

They will have more than one cell phone
Often their cell phone is so nice I would never consider buying it
Often their cars are WAY nicer then ours - Lexus, Escalade, Mercedes
They have big flat screen TVs that are on all the time
and several Xboxes and other electronic toys
Differences in families are EXTREME - some members haven't finished high school while others may have done a masters degree overseas.


All of this adds up to some very funny situations at time because you just don't know what to expect. It also lends itself to an attitude of you just don't know what will happen so you need to really just relax and take it as it comes and see it all as an adventure!
We are still learning so many things about this Middle Eastern culture and find it fascinating and confusing and absorbing.

The Insurance Man

If you've read the recent post about our car issues, you'll remember that the bright spot was our car insurance man. When Tom explained to him what had gone on with our cars, he was so amazed at how well he was taking it.

This cracked me up because I knew how well Tom was NOT doing with it all! Amazingly, the Lord was gracious and they had a really really good conversation about life and how to survive the ups and downs.

This was really meaningful for Tom because he does not have many men his age to connect with at the moment. Most of the local friends are much younger and aren't really in the same place in life. This guy just a few years older and is a well-established business man here in town.

He and Tom have had some really good chats and times to hang out. The other day he took Tom to the original family house here in town. There are other people living in...sort of squatters...Tom wasn't sure. But it was in a section of town Tom had never been to before. It is part of the original oasis here and you don't see it from the road because there is a layer of stores and then a few layers of residences and then the oasis. It is not watered which is why the trees look SO WEIRD.

The #1 Energy Drain of life overseas....or when the mundane demands all your attention and makes you go crazy

House projects. The bain of every Westerner's existence over here.

One of the areas of hidden culture shock when moving overseas is how to take care of your stuff. And I don't mean in a greedy or self-focused way....just in a you-spent-money-on-it-and-it-needs-to-function sort of way.

In the US this process is almost glorified as a hobby and an identity - are you handy around the house? Do you have all the cool shiny tools and the gear? Do you spend your weekends at Lowes?

Here it is a battle for basic survival oftentimes....and I'm not being dramatic. Electricity is so random here that anytime Tom goes near a plug to fix yet another melted socket we all just sort of hold our breath. Even if you've turned off the electricity in the whole house....you just never know. Or the water suddenly dries up and you have to climb to the very tippy top of your house on a horrible rickety ladder to peek in the water tank (much less get IN tank and clean it out like Tom did earlier this year.....he took advantage of a bad situation and got so much gunk out of the empty tank that I don't even want to think about).

Car problems are another story entirely. I'm not sure you remember, but last July the kids and I were in a pretty bad car wreck - we were fine but the car was NOT. It took a full month to get that repaired. The DAY AFTER we got it back, Tom's car - get this - was attacked by dogs and had the front bumper pulled off and the wiring yanked all over the place! No one had ever heard of such a crazy thing. The one bright spot was the insurance man that Tom is now friends with. More on him here....

THEN....when the car was almost ready for pick up after the repair, Tom called the guys and they hemmed and hawed and finally told him why the car was not ready for pick up. While they were working on the electrical system the car "somehow" popped into reverse, shot out of the repair shop, crossed a small street and crashed into two other cars. Oh yes.

So now the back bumper had to be repaired. And folks, it JUST got finished this week. That is EIGHT MONTHS and I've already subtracted the 3 months we were in the US. Eight months of having to bug this person or that person to just fix the crazy problem...calling and not being able to communicate with the staff..arranging drop off and pick up with me and my schedule...calling again and not being able to communicate about whether anything was done or whether it is time to pick it up again.

I say all this not to complain. Frankly we expect it from life here now, but I just felt like trying to explain it to someone back in the US. Quality work, quality materials and any shred of service-mindedness just is not common. Now don't get me wrong, there are many other WONDERFUL things about living here that I also love. One of the main ones being the "drive up and honk" culture where I can buy just about any food or household item from the comfort of the front seat of my car. Love.That.

End of the School Year

I have had a few things in mind to post, but it has been BUSY around here. Layla was very sick for an entire week and now Ryan has the same thing )= Just a high fever and no real secondary symptoms. So we've been close to home for about two weeks now.

The heat is really coming in now....it has been around 95-105F which really isn't summer weather but that is starting to change. I don't consider it really HOT (at least this is what I tell myself!) until it hits 110. This afternoon it was 114 which is hot but the worst thing is even at night in the total dark it is still 100 degrees (= We are hoping to get our pool set up! We need to get a shade put up though so the water doesn't just heat up....that is pretty icky.  Poor Tom has about 50 errands to do to get this accomplished.

Anyway, the other thing that happened this week is the Certificate Ceremony at Layla's school! She is finishing KG2 and is going into first grade this coming fall! We are very grateful for the school and how positive it is. The principal has a great perspective on trying to educate a whole community and not just the student.

The big push this year was to have SOME sort of order at the certificate ceremony. Typically at big functions like this (which, honestly, rarely happen because women and men don't often sit in the same room) is that the kids run around everywhere and everyone talks on their cell phones. Last year the girls were in AMAZINGLY elaborate dresses. Basically on par with what a NYC fancy wedding flower girl would wear....hair all done up, henna etc etc etc. It is super fun and way over the top. There are also families who bring tons of big balloons, gift bags large enough to hide a small child and many other distractions. 

This year, they INSISTED the children wear their uniforms, arrive early an wait separately in an air-conditioned tent outside (I cannot imagine being the teachers and having to entertain 200 kids in a tent a 8pm at night waiting for their three minutes on stage!) The end result was a much more efficient and streamlined event. 

The afterschool program I do is at this school and the highlight of the evening both last year and this year was the Tae Kwon Do demonstration! It is about the only time when the entire audience is quiet and not looking at cell phones or something (=

Just to give you a sense of the room. Not sure you can actually see anything but this is a cool function of Tom's phone!

Layla is walking on stage with her class. She is the last one in this picture.

Here they are getting lined up for their picture

Her teacher is on the left and I'm not sure of two of the men but I'm sure they are in charge somehow. The guy in the middle is the vice principal who is a very wonderful man. He was with our current principal at their their other school in Sohar. He commutes every week in order to work at this school! The gal on Layla's left is her best buddy.

There is always a small portion given to reading the Q'uran. When this poor kid stood up he dropped the Q'uran! Not sure what his parents must have said later but it is a big honor to be chosen to read.

End of term assembly

Last week was the end of Layla's school where we run the After School program. The school wanted to do one last assembly to wrap up the school year and we were the main event! We handed out the certificates to the kids and gifts to various people who helped out and we had a Tae Kwon Do demonstration. As usual, the demonstration was a huge hit!

This is the third year of the school. The pre school and kindergarten kid s wear the green  shirts and the older kids wear yellow. There are about 250 kids and next year there will be about 400. You can see Layla in the upper center part of the picture. She is sitting next to our friend's daughter, Rebecca.

The prinicpal and most of the staff are from South Africa and are quite experienced with schools in the Middle East.  95% of the student body are local kids and the rest are from ALL over the world.

We have run the after school program for a year and a half and the Tae Kwon Do is always the most popular. Several of the kids earned Yellow Belts this year.

....and everyone's favorite part...Breaking the pieces of wood!