Sunday, Monday, Happy Days, Tuesday, Wednesday........

In one week, I'll be waking up in PA.  Probably at the crack of dawn due to jet lag, but I don't mind it going west as the consequences are just waking up early.  It's so much harder to go east and will definitely be harder to go back to work the next day.  You can barely pull yourself out of bed and you feel so strange for a few days.  Jet lag does weird things.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to going to Target, Costco and the Christmas Tree Shop!   I want to go out for good breakfast and eat pork.  We can get it here but just a little bit more of a pain in the butt so I rarely buy it.

Anyway, onto another subject.  I love reading this New England food blog called Fresh.  It makes me think about dreamy New England (although, it's not usually so dreamy in March) and I'm excited that we'll be there in a few weeks. 

She had some nice summer recipes in the link that I just gave: Pink Lemonade from the Barefoot Contessa who I love from the Food Network and homemade fudgesicles.  Enjoy.

Also, I found the website of a guy who teaches cooking classes-- Syrian Food.  Syrian Food is very much like Palestinian food and so good. He would do private parties or you could participate in one of his already planned classes.  He's in Watertown, Massachusetts.  Go to Yasin Culinary.

I'm so excited.....

I'm excited for 3 reasons right now:

A)  Tonight was the first night that I could just go home, relax and do what I wanted.  I probably should have put a few things away, but I didn't and I'm not going to.  I'm tired and am going to read the newspaper and watch the Food Network. 

B) I leave for vacation next Wednesday night--Trey comes a week later than me.   During that week, I'll visit with family and friends in PA.  So happy to have a break even thought it's only been 6 months.  But we haven't had a day off since starting in 6 months.  Usually we get at least 1 holiday weekend every so often at home.  We haven't used our holidays that we get nor our vacation yet, so maybe towards the end of the year we'll be using a bunch.

C) This girl is moving here!  This is Trey's sister Min.  She got a job here at Oasis Hospital, too.  Should be fun. We'll be spending lots of time together exploring this country and this part of the world.  Min is the one in black. I'm sure you figured that out.

Sudanese friends....

On Friday, a translator who works at the hospital, took us out to his sisters house for lunch.  They are Sudanese and speak arabic so it's nice to talk with them...their arabic is actually closer to what we learned to speak than the arabic here in the Gulf. 

We ate lunch by gathering around communal bowls of food --I can't identify everything but it was good.  We eat with our hands using the bread.  Then for dessert they bring out a big bowl of fruit that is cut up and soaked in mango juice. That was so refreshing and tasted great on a super hot day and after a big lunch.

I left towards the end but Trey went out to the desert with them and took some pictures. 

Celebrate Good Times....

Yesterday Trey and I celebrated our 6th anniversary.  We meant to watch our wedding video and cook a nice dinner...but didn't!  Ikea came to deliver more furniture and then we were busy putting stuff away all day.  We had to go out and buy a few things to set up the tv's and we ended up so tired last night that we ditched dinner. I made quacamole and went to bed! I'm still tired this morning.  But my clothing is put away:) 

Maybe I'll try to make a nice dinner tonight...but Trey has a really long day so I'm pretty sure by the time he gets home tonight, he'll be wiped.

I'll get pictures up of the house. I promise. It's coming along.  We still have a few more things to buy but it's okay. We'll do that later.

Feelin' hot, hot, hot....

So I'm gonna complain a bit today.  It's hot.  It's the middle of July and I knew this time of year was bound to come.  Most days have been rather hot, but you could still be outside for 5 minutes and still feel okay when walking back indoors.  But not today! It's about 120 today--my coworker said the gage in his car said 48 degrees celcius which is about 118.5.  The problem is that the humidity is high today, too.  You feel like a limp noodle when you walk back inside. I can't wait to come home in 2 weeks for a break.

On a side note: my right eye has been twitching...I'm wondering if it is from the heat?!  I'm nuts.  But I'm not going to look it up on WebMD like I did a few weeks ago.  When I self diagnose myself from WebMD, it's always a bad day.  I think I'm a horrible doctor.  None of my diagnoses have been right so far. I'm glad!

Date Cake with Caramel Sauce.....

For my birthday, we went out with some friends to this little restaurant that I love for date cake and ice cream.  I love this recipe and how they make it with a warm caramel sauce.  I'm determined to learn to make it just as well as they do, but without the price tag!  The restaurant has an enjoyable ambiance but they charge a tad bit too much for everything so I think if I can learn to make it at home, it would be better.

So I've found a few recipes that might be good.

I found this one that seems pretty close to the recipe that we have been eating.

I'll get pictures up of the house...just as soon as I take some....it's not really perfect yet, but we're getting there!

I'm a Chiquita Banana and I'm here to say....

Last night I was trying to decide what to make for dinner.   Sometimes I get sick of regular old dinner so I thought French Toast sounded good.  Sweet instead of savory.  As we were making it,  I put out a banana to cut on top of mine since I love banana on my french toast.   Trey saw the banana and said "How do you make those caramelized bananas on top of french toast?"  Really, I don't know but I figured I could guess and try.  We threw a good bunch of butter in the hot pan, some brown sugar and chucked in the bananas.  Wa..la!  It tasted great and just like you get at a little breakfast restaurant.  I think I'm getting closer and closer to my dream of opening up a B & B!  I know that I'll have something good to serve my guests.

Drivin', Drivin' in your car.....

I just realized that for the first time in 6 years, I actually had to drive to work today.  

This weekend we fully shifted to our new apartment so today we DROVE to work.  It doesn't matter if you drive, take the train or ride a bike, but the part I'm trying to get at is that I left my house and didn't walk a matter of 3 feet to get to my desk.

In NC when I worked for Saddleback and even at the end of my time in Massachusetts, I worked from home and traveled around the US.  Then in B-town, we worked out of house but went out on field visits.  And since arriving here, we have lived on campus and I walked about 50 steps to get to my desk. 

Today I actually had to get in the car, put on my seatbelt and drive 5 minutes!  It felt like the first day of school again.

I loved it.

Do you like crystal gel for your nail?

A few weeks ago a friend and I went to a shady ladies shop for a pedicure....it was really cheap so no complaining here, but it was a funny experience.

The experience was sort of like this video.

Take a look, it's in a book.....

Today I was thinking about the photo books that I made from our life in B-town.   I'm curious to go look at them again this summer.  It is great to have them to think back and remember our last 3 years.  We had some great times and really have some great photos.  Some of the experiences and things we saw, I could have never imagined but am so glad they happened.  We just were talking about the time that estrogenized (i'm not sure that is a word) a goat!  Remember that video. Ha ha.  Anyway,  I made our books at My Publisher. 

Then at the end of our 3 years, I turned my blog posts from our time there into another book but compiled all 3 years into 1, where with my photo books we did one after each year.   I love how that book turned out, too.  That book I made through Blurb.com and I was super happy with them.

No matter what you're doing, if you keep a blog about your job, kids, travels, whatever, compile it every so often because no matter how much we love technology, it's great to have this for 20 years down the road.  Looking through a book about the past seems much more enjoyable than scrolling through a screen. 

I think back on these books as I think about our life here and future.  There are some things that I want record and remember here, but there are sometimes that a camera isn't as appropriate.  We've been to a few weddings but the camera is a big no-no in the Women-Only party.  If I bust it out, I'll definitely get a talking to....so we won't be getting any footage of that except maybe Trey can get something with the men. 

Anyway, it gives me a desire to want to experience and tell you about interesting things that we see on this side of the world.  We can experience much more than just Gulf culture here.  We're learning about Indian, Sudanese, Pakistani, Afghani, etc. so hopefully as we continue to meet people and experience new things, we'll post some more interesting topics. 

Last week on Thursday night, Social Activities Committee from the hospital hosted a fun night of Ice Skating.  It's nice to think about something "cool-ish" when it's 110-120 degrees outside.  Don't you love the cartoon guy in the above picture. 

Beautiful Joby. She works in HR.  

Cool Ahed.  This guy is from Syria and a lot of fun.  But he was a baby and wouldn't leave the side of the wall and never really ice skated.

Really almost none of us knew how to ice skate ( I think I've only been like 3 times in my life) except Trey and a few others...but we all got more comfortable as the night went on.....EXCEPT Ahed...Trey was trying to get him to hold his arm but it didn't work.

You see Ruel in the background? He works in HR.  Even he took his arms off the wall and ventured out to the middle.  Trey is still trying to convince Ahed to skate. 

We had a great time.  It will be nice when we can plan fun events outside but for now, we're stuck with things inside but this was pretty fun!

We started opening the boxes!  I'm seeing things that I haven't seen in 3 years.  Almost all of this was packed in Trey's sisters basement.

I totally forgot we had some of these things. It's fun to think about where we got them, who gave them to us.  Like those pomegranates I have from our last home.  The yellow vase was given to me by my friend Betsy back when I turned 23 for my birthday.  It's fun to think about those things!  I found a few other things that we bought in our travels or wedding gifts.  

I realized that most of the stuff we shipped was either for our kitchen, bedroom or a few decorations. 

It's definitely coming along. We put our bed together and started to open some things up so that we could get rid of the boxes and paper.  

We're down to only a few things left to unpack.  

Trey and I were talking about how glad we were to have our stuff.  It doesn't define us, but I think tells a lot about us. It will be nice to have some of those things with as we make our home our 'haven' here and host co-workers and friends from all around the world.

Beautiful Day in the neighborhood......

Today was a good day.  I feel like we got a lot accomplished but also got some relaxation time in there so we don't have a horribly tired start to the week. You know those kind of weekends.  Yesterday and today we were at the house trying to unwrap things and gradually start to move things into place.

Why was it such a good day?

A)  Ikea came and put together the rest of our stuff.  They are so much quicker than we would ever be trying to find the right screws for the right hole.  To put together a few items would be fine, but we had about 20 items.

B)  We went to the gym and then went to the pool.  We've never actually been to the pool since it always seemed too hot out, but we went swimming at about 5:00pm and the sun wasn't blazing as much so it was actually pretty nice.

C)  The kitchen man finally called back and will be coming tomorrow to finish the kitchen supposedly.  They use this word INCHALLAH here after any promise to see you tomorrow or later or something along those lines.  It means God Willing.  Its true.  But after hearing it so much, it starts to just sound like "hopefully" to me.....so I'm not always convinced.  But I'm hopeful.

D) It's 7:45pm and Trey is already in bed so I can hog the computer to write some blog posts and catch up on emails.

Last night we went to a wedding.  I bought a 'local' Kandora and it has a lot of crazy heavy jewelry sewn onto the dress but I love it.  I'll take a picture up close for you some time.

Our Kitchen.....

It's coming along. The kitchen guy showed up on Tuesday with his men to start putting in the cabinets.  Then he hasn't showed up since....so what would typically be done, is still only halfway finished.  Welcome to the Middle East!  And you know, the standard just isn't exactly the same as mine, but who cares.  We're not living here forever, but why can't there be some standard of excellency or at least good work?  Instead there are a few knicks and dings on one of the cabinets already, the granite sticks out too far in one place and a few other things like that....but I'm happy that we'll have a clean, functioning kitchen!

We ended up switching to a wood cabinet since the white was more cream and looked odd next to the white tile that is in the kitchen.  It's normal to have a fully tiled kitchen here as many other cultures fry lots of their food or use a lot of oil, so it helps make the clean up a bit easier.

I found an island at Ikea that I liked but was double the price than what this man quoted to build it himself, so we went that avenue.  We'll put high stools here.  We put the stove in the island so we'll see how we like it. 

We made some of these decisions so quickly and with the thought that we aren't here forever, so some things aren't perfect or ideal but we're thankful and glad we could make this change rather inexpensively.  The kitchen is a very important room to me and I love hosting people in our home, so we'll get lots of use out of it!

Etsy....

I love Etsy.com.

I just went crazy on there.

I can't wait to see the things I bought.

I won't get to see them until August but I'm so excited!

You should buy from there, too.

Support a local artist.  

Browse, you'll find a lot of neat items.

Tonight is church for us, but I'm at home lying on the couch not feeling so good for a sinus and ear infection.  I went to the doctor yesterday (it's nice to work at a hospital) and she gave me antibiotic and ear drops.  As the evening went on, my body started to hurt more and more....and still does.  By the time Trey got home last evening from visiting with a man who is a customer at our hospital, I already had myself diagnosed, dead and buried.  The internet is really not a good thing sometimes.  I knew that self diagnosing myself would never be good.  But I have so much pain in all my joints and especially in my leg and arm.  I marched myself over to the doctor this morning determined to ask for blood work just to make myself feel better.  I got an appointment and went to see the doctor.  When I tell him how I'm feeling and my self diagnosis he just looks at me. He was trying to be as nice as possible but I knew he thought I lost a few cookies somewhere along the way.  So he proceeded to make me feel better--felt all my joints and where my pains where but he found nothing.  He did a bunch of blood tests to rule out anything which is what I really wanted so I was happy.  Tonight Trey comes home and says that he went to talk to the doctor.  He said to me "What do you think the doctor said."  Realizing that I might have overreacted just a tad, but still legitimately feeling pain all through my body, I sheepishly said "Nothing".  He said yes and that my blood work was excellent and that he specifically ruled out Lukemia.  I was happy and ate a bite of Twix.  Trey told him that maybe I needed to see a different type of doctor (he was pointing to his head as he mentioned this to the doctor).  It's funny how you feel better after you know that a test result came back clear.....but I still have pain (probably from the fever) but hope this goes away soon.

The internet can be good, though, too.....my sister just bought us a Netflix subscription so we can now watch movies on demand from the website. Pretty nice.

So days like this when I have lots of time to think when trying to rest, I dream of the nice summer weather back home and wish I owned a Bed and Breakfast.  I've been watching Gilmore Girls as I fall asleep at night and I love the Dragonfly Inn and it's a little New England town.  I would love that.  I have thought about it for years actually but then never think it will really come to be.