Watch the Walk

This was my first Christmas away from home and I totally expected the worst: miserable homesickness, lame celebrations, loneliness, and maybe some food poisoning thrown in for good measure. I'm now here to say that it was far better than I asked or expected. But for your perusal, here's a bit of what Christmas looked like here: Christmas baking: as a team, we alternated which house with an oven to use for baking each day. I'll have you know that we successfully navigated many substitutions or alterations in the recipes to fit with the food items available here. One example would be peanut cookies-- we started by roasting and peeling the paper off several cups of peanuts! Jess even made lasagna, but she had to start by making ricotta cheese and lasagna noodles. Despite the challenges, we produced a lot of amazing food! Lessons in carols: on Christmas Eve we got together and sang carols, interspersed with Scripture readings. It was a beautiful time of remembering ...

I'm experimenting with a new form of blogging: handwritten. So here it goes:

Hi everyone, It's been awhile since I last updated, so here's a bit of news to start off with: -- homestay went well. I learned a lot of language bits and pieces then, but now have to assimilate it into my general vocabulary. The family I stayed with was super hospitable, and they made sure that I experienced a lot during my time there. We climbed a hill, had a picnic, visited a mineral spring, got water from a fresh water spring, cooked, made flower necklaces, visited a bakery and an aluminum pot making place, and a variety of other things. -- I'm now settled into my home with Jess. It's a second story suite, with rooftop access. We have water issues, which you can read more about on Jess' blog. -- language learning is now my full-time job. I'm working with language helpers to acquire phrases and vocabulary, then practicing in the community. It's a fun challenge, and some people have started greeting me by name. Now let me tell you about our burn barrel. Se...