An Empty Plate

At the end of Ramadan there is a holiday here called Eid ul Fitr, which roughly translated means "holiday to break the fast".  But it is a joyous occasion and people are celebrating all over the place and it lasts for three days. ( I don't know why we don't catch on to some of these other holidays in other countries that go for a couple days?)  Anyhow, one of the things that they do here is give sweets to each other.  (In some ways there are similarities to Christmas for us, the giving of sweets, people buy new clothes and wear them to visit family and friends).  

The first day of the Eid, we went for a walk and almost every car that passed us you could see the people dressed in their best.  Men in nice new suits and women in nice new clothes, colorful head scarves and so on.  We really felt like strangers in a foreign land looking into a bubble, especially since we have moved to a new area and don't know anyone yet.  Although two of our neighbors did come and bring us a plate of sweets.  That was very nice!  The one man, Mike has spoken with on a couple of occasions and he has come and sat with him on our porch and talked and the other man, I think Mike met for the first time then.  

So, the tradition or culture here when you have received a plate of something here is to return the plate with something on it.  It would be considered rude to just give the clean plate back.  So what a perfect occasion to make some chocolate chip cookies.  We brought the one plate back with some cookies on it, but we don't know where the other man lives.  So, two days have gone by now and we are not really sure how to find the man, other then to knock on every door in the building, but then when it's the wrong door how do we explain, "oh sorry, these cookies are not for you"(in our broken arabic...)  In the meantime, my sweet tooth has gotten the best of me and so I have started to eat the cookies.  Oops....I guess I will just have to make some more.  Those are starting to get stale anyway.  :-)  Hopefully we will find him soon, before I make another batch and have to eat those too.

Settling

Ahh.....the whirlwind seems to be dying down now a bit and I feel like I can breathe.  This past month has been crazy to say the least.  I am not sure why I wasn't really expecting it to be this way, but maybe it was due to the fact that the new apartment we moved in to was an absolute disaster.  I cannot even begin to describe how bad it was.  On September 1st, we took all of our earthly belongings, loaded them up in 3 trucks and made our trek across the city of Amman, to our new house.  (Sidenote: moving in the middle of Ramadan is not the best idea, as you are dealing with hungry grumpy people a lot.  The truck drivers were ready to get shovels and push our stuff out onto the sidewalks so they could get everything out in time to get home to eat, when the time came to break the fast)

Ok, so anyway, back to our moving.  The landlord told us not to come to the new house until around 2 because they were CLEANING!  

Whew, I was so relieved to hear that they were cleaning for us.  One less thing to have to do.   

...Um, did he say cleaning?  

...What exactly did he mean by cleaning?  

...What is this man's definition of cleaning?

We pulled up to the house and there was a huge pile of garbage and junk on the sidewalk in front.  Then when I entered the apartment there was just junk everywhere.  It was like the landlord had someone come in the apartment with a rake that was missing like 5 teeth and rake all the stuff out of the apartment into the front on the sidewalk.  I mean there were hats, brushes, bobby pins, food in the kitchen cabinets, about 15 bars of soap in the bathroom, and on and on. You get the idea, right?  

Then in one of the bedrooms, there is this big poster on one of the walls with a white board posted up crookedly over it, and we take it off and there is all this mold on the walls and the paint just falls off.  Lovely!  What have we gotten ourselves into.  Ugh!

So, that night we all slept in one bedroom and our house is a disaster, and I feel like I can't unpack yet, because have to majorly clean first, and I can't put Mason down on the floor because there is SO much crud....what a stressful time.  And the day after we move in I have to go back to school.  My friend Victoria said that when I would get into class it was just like I was spinning.  It was all I could do to make myself go to class and then pay attention.  

But anyway, it is now almost the end of the month and we have cleaned, scraped, repainted, carpeted, sewed curtains, and it is starting to feel like home.  We still have some issue of moisture in our walls, so the same day we had painted, the paint started bubbling and looks horrible, but it is better then it was.  

Anyone know anything about getting the moisture out of cement walls?  We could use some help or advice.

But we are really enjoying our place and have met a few of the neighbors so far and we are not too far from a park, so we have been going there in the evenings to try and meet people and so far that has been good. 

I will try and get some pictures up soon.  It seems that the story of my life lately is that I go to get my camera to take some pics and the batteries are dead.  I think I need to buy some new rechargeable batteries, who knows how old mine are.  That has got to be why I fly through them.  So anyway, I will get some pics up as soon as I can remember to charge my  batteries and take some pics.    It is coming together quite nicely and I cannot wait to share.

Overwhelmed

I would have to say that this is the one word that describes how I have been feeling this last month.  Ugh.....so many things have been happening since we have moved into a new place and our new place needed SO much work to make it livable that it has felt like I am trying to constantly keep my head above water.  So, along with taking care of three kids, trying to study arabic and go to school, we have been painting, cleaning, sewing, and getting things done for our new place.  I am happy to say that I can see light at the end of the tunnel and my life is starting to feel a little more normal.  So hopefully I will be back here with some pictures to post and some new stories to tell.  In the meantime, stay posted......