Two Friends

Elijah was born two weeks before Noah and they are best buds. Well, I think they are. They aren't really at that stage of choosing friends I guess, but they do get along great. Here is a story in pictures from our last visit over at Elijah's parents house.

Two friends enjoying time on the couch.....

Two friends, slowly starting to lean......

Two friends, on their way down......

Two friends, this is beyond repair.....

Two friends, one trying to rip out the others' eye....

Two Whiteys and the Bear

Yesterday we headed down to the downtown area to hunt down a few odd and ends we needed to get. The joke among foriegners here is that you can find everything downtown. It's about a mile to two miles of side streets of shops and markets full of anything you need. It is one of the few places here that is untouched by Western restaraunts and shopping malls. Its great. Well, at least we love it. Many Westerners won't go down there, but any time you ask an Arab, "Where can you find [whatever you want]?" the answer is always..."downtown."
But it's only a quick walk down the hill from our house, so we go at least to eat once a week.
You may be wondering about how this ties in with Noah dressed up in a bear coat. Well the explanation of this picture goes something like this:

This will be one of those pictures in 18 years that Noah will look back and ask, "why did you dress me up in that?" We will not have any good answers though. We will just smile and lie and say, "well, son, that is what everybody wore back in the 00s." The truth is that no one puts there kids in full body bear coats (we know it is actually a dog, but dogs are unclean animals here, so we say its a bear). His bear coat is the warmest thing he owns so to fight off the freezing cold, we wrapped up in our wool coats and put him in the bear.

The Arabs had a hard time with it. We got a lot of second looks. Two whiteys and a bear walking through downtown was something they weren't expecting to see when they got up that morning!

I love living here. If for nothing else than the culture shock we put the Arabs around us in.

Key Ring Query

Tonight C and I got to go on a date. Some friends of ours have offered over and over to babysit (they have a ten and a seven year old, who think the concept of babysitting is fun) so we finally found a night to leave Noah for awhile. We dropped him off and headed to Applebee's. While we were there, the guy who was in a nice collared shirt and dress pants and had the big key ring on his belt walked by, and C said, "Hey, he is important, he has all the keys." So then I asked him, "I wonder what key ring would be the most important key ring in the world?" He said, "Fort Knox..."

So, that is my question to you as well. What do you think the most important set of keys or the most valuable key ring in the world is? I think my answer is the Louvre. What do you think?

-B

A car....

Today, as I was walking through a parking lot, a car backing out of its parking space hit me.

Oh yes, it hit me....

go figure.

Cat Problem

Does any body know of any remedies, either home or commercial, to get rid of cats and/or keep them out of your flowerbeds and off your property?

Please comment with your remedies.

The Holy Grail

This isn't about the cup of Christ, or for you psycho DaVinci Code people that can't tell reality from something you read in a book, this isn't about Mary Magdalene either.

It is about the things that elude us the most, and what is eluding me most right now is all the university's paperwork to get a Residency Visa.

And sadly enough, like most of my outings that have anything to do with visas or permits or registering for anything, it takes weeks to get anything done.

So today's account is basically very simple. I went to the office and waited, got a paper, delivered it to the office only to find that this said paper wasn't enough and I need a proof of registration and so on so forth and copies of my passports.

All things boiling down, it comes to this: there was not a single place open that I could make copies, soo....

tomorrow I head back with the copies and everything I need for the university to make a packet for me to take to the Ministry of the Interior where this whole thing really starts.

So in preparation for this fine expedition I have packed my "Holy Grail Survival Kit" to take with me, which includes...

• All of our passports
• Copies of all of our passports
• Marriage License
• Copy of Marriage License
• A Book (it may take a while)
• Noah's Birth Record, Certificate, and Hospital Record (all in both Arabic & English)
• Registration at the University
• 2 passport photos for each of us
• iPOD (did I mention it might take a while?)
• Copies of everything official looking about Noah we own.
• Rent Contract in both Arabic & English
• A Roll of Camper's Toilet Paper (Government buildings never have tp)
• Shot Records for the whole family
• and a Partridge in a Pear Tree!

Truth being what it is about the culture and Murphy's Law being what it is. This will not be enough tomorrow. You never know. :)

Noah Pics

Above: Noah sporting his Pinochio overalls.
Below: Where there is Blue's Clues, there is happiness

The Center to Pay Tuition

Those of you wondering about me ever finding the right building to pay my tuition can rest easy today. I found it.
Here is the quick sum up.

Went to the Admin Building, they said its in the School of Humanities.

Went to the School of Humanities, someone said, "no, its behind us, in the next building"

Went there, the guy said, "no it's towards the School of Humanities."

...........(this is me shaking my head)

.............

Head back out the door and low and behold what do I see? A little munchkin building. (Similiar to the Stuart Little House, you know, one little one between two big ones)

On the little munchin building it reads in Arabic, "The Center to Pay Tuition"

So now I am square with the uni and know where to pay my tuition.

Noah's Christmas on Flickr

We've updated and loaded some of Noah's Christmas pictures. There are not alot in that set, but check them out anyway. Click on the pictures below "Our Photos" on the panel to your right.

I really am a small town fellow.

Today I went to register at the university. This is the 3rd largest university in the Middle East. Isn't that nice. It is so easy to say. "The 3rd largest university in the Middle East." You see how nice that rolls off your tongue. But saying it and seeing it are two completely different things.

Now let us recap on my life. I grew up in a town of 18,000 people. I went to that high school and then went to the university in my little small town. You could run around my alma mater and you would have only have traveled 1.3 miles. Get the picture. Small town university. Small town guy.

Today, I walked on campus and I was overwhelmed. Sure, we live in a city of 5 million people, but it doesn't feel like that. We usually just stay in our little borough and shop at our little supermarkets and visit our neighbors and so on. BUT THIS!!! Whoa, no, this was big! Really pretty, but really big. It has cedars lining all the streets and was hilly. It reminded me of Ruidoso, New Mexico, with people every where.

I went in what I thought was the main gate. Turns out that it wasn't, so I quickly got lost and roamed around the campus looking for the language building. In my aimless wandering I passed the fuutball stadium. It was huge! But like I said, small town. Easily impressed. All you folks that went to somewhere like UT or Texas A&M or any other college with more than 10 people in it are probably laughing at me....

Well, try being on campus the first time and doing everything in another language. I have so much more sympathy for international students in the States now.

I searched and I walked. You could have changed my name to Moses, because I wandered around for years. Finally, I found the building. Found the right office and signed up. Now all I had to do was go to this one office and pay my registration fee and then go to the financial building and pay my tuition. That was easy. I saw a map, figured it out and took off.

Found the office, paid the fee.
Now on to the financial building which was two buildings down.

Passed the first building...

Stopped at the second building....

I am stuck standing in front of the second building that is completely empty. Nothing inside. Only a sign saying, "we have moved."

I went back and asked someone, "Where's the financial building?" This bright, young mind replied, "Oh, they've moved........

.........

.............

"Sooooo, where did they move to?"

............

(more akward silence)

..............

"ummm...I am not sure"

This same conversation happened over and over.

Finally, I gave up and came home. I will fight this battle of the missing finance office tomorrow, if God wills it.

Dying Plants, Jet Lag, and Those Dang Birds

I've had something to post everyday this week and never got around to it, so I apologize for the eclecticness of this post.

Dying Plants
We came home to find that the one plant we've managed to keep alive is in fact dying. I wouldn't say that this plant had a particularly high place of honor in the family considering I didn't really notice it was dying til yesterday, a mere four days after arriving back home. But that's menial compared the fact that going for 3 weeks without water, has in fact, left our poor, beloved houseplant shriveled.
I noticed the houseplant after a conversation with a semi-angry Arab landlord. I hung up the phone and sat looking at my poor semi-green friend and realized that we are truly in the same boat. My Arabic, like this plant, had been starving over the past 3 weeks and went from a small, but growing thing, to hardly nothing at all. Nothing but a shadow of its former glory.
So houseplant, hang in there buddy. water is on the way! While my Arabic, sadly enough, may never recover....

Jet Lag
Noah has successfully gone to bed at 9 o'clock the past several nights and has successfully woken back up and stayed awake til 3am every night except last night. Last night, Noah slept, and I woke up at 3am. I sat around the house and ate the left over pizza from the night before and then went back to bed at 4 and didn't go to sleep til 5. Jet lag, you ain't no friend of mine.

Those Dang Birds
Why do dove have to mate for life and then sit around and tell each other how much they love each other? In our Hashmi House (the house we lived in before) we had these two dove that obviously loved each other and loved to tell each other they loved each other very early in the morning. They would do it on our window sill! One of us spent half the morning chasing the birds from window to window in our house trying to get some peace and quiet.
Two days ago, I hear them! They weren't on our window but one of our neighbors. It was like having the alarm go off on Saturday morning. That wretched beeping monster has found a way to get you even on your day off and you lay there in mortal shock trying to refrain from ripping out your hair, or flushing the alarm, or going to Wal-Mart and cleaning them out of guns and ammo and DESTROYING SOMETHING!!! (maybe that is a little over dramatic, but you get the point?)
So you dang birds had better find another place, where love is appreciated, because it ain't my home!!

We are back!

This is not a complaining post. Just wanted to put that out there. I'm just stating the facts, ma'am.

We arrived home after 24 hours of trains, planes and automobiles. Not so much the trains, but the rest is true. Definitely some automobiles and for sure there was alot of plane in that mixture.

Wednesday night around, oh..5ish we are out of the airport. Our flight arrived early, we zoomed through passport control, and our bags were waiting. We head to customs and the custom guys get us. They kept saying they saw sheets of metal in one of our bags. Sheets of metal? Well after they search the bag all they found was close to 40 containers of baby food.
So the freshness seal on the Gerber is aluminum, and when you lay them side by side across your bag, on the x-ray it looks like a sheet of metal. So....for speedy customs inspections, don't layer your 40+ baby food containers side by side.

We get home, walk in the door, and.....smell wet cat. mmm.....yummy. Well we look around, no dead, wet cat. Oh and by the way, the whole time we were gone it had been between 30-35 and rainy. So coming in our house was like walking into a smelly refrigerator. It was COLD!!!! Anyways, we flip on the heaters and begin moving bags back to the bedroom. I walk across the entry way carpet and its wet, hence the cat smell. I also noticed that the dining room floor didn't look right, so I followed the "didn't look right" into the kitchen where the floor has a thin layer of mud across half of it. Beautiful. We come home to a stinky refrigerator with a dirt floor! So the most recent theory is this: We had some torrential downpour with some wind and it blew it up under our back and front doors bringing with it mud, dirt, cat hair, and a variety of other gross things. It eventually dried. It dried everywhere except for our under our thick Turkish rug that soaked it all up.

All this was Wednesday. Wednesday night we all slept fairly okay, except for some random jet-lagged, anti-sleep moments. From about 2 to 4am all three of us were sitting in the living room staring at each other.
At 7am B and I dragged (dragged or drug?) we drug the 6x9 foot, dripping wet rug outside and flung it over our fence to hopefully let it dry. Shortly thereafter jet lag set in and we passed out until Noah woke at noon.

So Noah woke up at noon and B got hit with some psycho, woman-eating stomach virus. So I got Noah and B went to the bathroom and periodically came out to feed Noah and then would return to pay homage to the porcelain goddess of vomit. Around 6 we decided that she needed to go to the doctor. The only thing open on a Thursday evening in the Middle East is the ER. So B heads to the ER and they rehydrate her and send her home. This is all about 9 o'clock. At eleven she can't even walk because of the pain, so she goes back to the ER around midnight.

So Noah and I hang out on the couch waiting news of her. Why Noah and I? Because Noah's body is somewhere on the Eastern seaboard and he is wide awake! Finally around 2:30 B gets home and has been pumped full of all sorts of drugs and is feeling better. And again the entire family sits in the living room wide awake until about 3:30am until jet lag releases its hold on us.

So today, it's 2pm, B is up walking around feeling fine, Noah is pulling her hair, our carpet is still hanging outside drying, and the floors have been mopped and cleaned up. Life is good.

Coming back from vacation has never been so tiring.

Family Photo

Here is a photo of the family. Feel free to save it to your computer or print it out and stick it on your fridge.

Noah's Christmas

Noah had a great Christmas! He got many things, and very few of them make noise (thank you very much)

Check out his laughing Elmo. He doesn't really care about it, but we loved it.


He also got a bear coat. He wasn't a big fan of it either though.

But he WAS a really big fan of the squash baby food!