Christmas...

It is really wierd to drive down the street or talk to people around town and so many people have no idea what Christmas is. It is real eye opener when you think about it. It is not just that they do not celbrate, but a lot of people do not even know what the reason is for the season. I hope they come to the understanding of what the holiday is for...

Supermarkets

After school today I had to go run errands to get some food for our flat. I will never take shopping markets for granted again. It was awesome when I first got here that we had to go to the market to get our fruits and vegitables. I love going and negotiating in another language for the price I know the food is supposed to be. I really do I think it is a lot of fun. The only problem being when you have to go to the market, then the "grocery store," then the bread store, then another store. All before you can come home and put the groceries away. It looses the luster and remember it is winter now so we only sweated a little bit :). Yes it is nice that at the market we hire a guy to follow us around with a wheel barrow and he takes all of our stuff out to the car for us. Then he even loads the food into the car which is awesome! Getting proposed to and having people find us in the market because are white so they can sell things to us however is not always the most appealing. Another day another adventure in the land of sand. Hoping for snow soon ;)

Stoplights.

What do you think about when you are sitting at a red light? What you are going to do later? What errands you have left to run? How late you are for work? How annoying the traffic is? Well when we sit at traffic lights here we are offered anything from chewing gum to a car wash. Sometimes the children that are offering are so persistent that they lay on your car so that you can not move. Not to mention you have cars coming from every direction regardless of what color the light is. So my mind does not wander much while I am sitting at stop lights, even though I am not driving. All the kids really want is a bottle of water, which we give them whenever we have one in the car. Can you blame them is it hot!

Happy Thankgiving humility...

Happy Thankgiving to all! I learned a lesson in humilty this year. As we were headed to Thankgiving dinner for our team there were children asking for money or food when we have so much. Right there as we were headed to dinner. It is one thing when you see these kids on tv, or in some sort of comerical. However when they are walking along side you as you are celebrating a time to be thankful, it is heartbreaking to see these people that have nothing. As Americans we are truly blessed in so many countless ways. The hard thing being we could not give the kids all of our food, because then they would be ringing the doorbell unendingly of the place we were at and it is someones house. We give the kids candy most of the time or our leftovers, or we order extra food at the places we go to eat. There are always more children though that have absolutly nothing. How can we say no to children and watch them suffer I do not know. I was so proud of one of my students though for giving to a child that was begging for money when I went out with her. I guess the best way is to remember these people and children and continue to love them in any way that we are able. It was a definite lesson in humilty seeing the children each day and on thanksgiving it meant even more...

Cultural Differences in a good way :)

Today we were driving back from another persons house and we got to an intersection. Everyone at the intersection was looking out of their cars and just stopped. We could not see what was going on and tried to see around the cars eventually we saw that three cars had gotten into an accident. The amazing and awesome thing was that people were coming from everywhere out of their cars their little stands on the side of the street. Just leaving whatever they were doing to go and help the people that had just gotten into an accident. Part of the reason for this is that the ambulances are well not that effective or quick and you would rather not go to the doctors in this country. So what you have is the people around you. I was completely amazed at how many people there were enough people at each of the three cars to probably pick each car up and then some. The people are not affraid of getting sued or being late to some meeting, they just want to help in any way possible. This does not help in the whole traffic area, because everyone just jumps out of their cars and leaves them in the middle of intersections. I have never seen a better example of helping your neighbors though.

The Importance of Soccer...

I get to school today and hear that the phone has been ringing off the hook, because there is a holiday and all the parents want to know if there is school or not. I am completely confused as to what the holiday is. Can you guess? It is a soccer or football game Egypt vs Albania. About 10 of my kids were not in class today and we had to cancel conferences and go home early because the bridges were closing and it was going to be impossible to get anywhere. It is a new one I have had school cancelled for snow, ice, possibility of ice, but never for a soccer match. You learn something new every day :)

Something I did not mention before is that this game was the last qualifying game to get into the world cup and the winner being Algeria gets to go to the world cup! The airport was trashed and there was about 12,000 riot police out defending the country from being attacked. The traffic was ridiculous!

Laundry?

Attempting to do laundry here is quite entertaining. Yes your clothes smell clean, for about 5 minutes and then everything is dirty again. There is so much dirt and sand that even when you do wash things they still look dirty. This place sure is hard on clothing :) I mean we do have a washing machine and laundry detergent. We are not completely out in the boonies, it is just more difficult to think something is clean for a longer period of time when it has sweat stains after you have had it on for about 5 minutes.