Random life stuff lately

-Isaak recently started making beef jerky with his dehydrator. It's been a raging hit here among our friends. Apparently people from all countries like beef jerky....not just Americans. =) He's been super into it, experimenting with different flavors and bringing his batches to church to hand out for "testing", to which all the men give grunts of approval.

-Me and Isaak had a date night last Friday. First time in a while! The girls went home with some friends after school and I was told to pick them up late...so we went to a new Turkish restaurant that opened up recently. And it was fantastic! You felt that you were in another country. This is easily the nicest restaurant we have been to here. We sat around eating and talking for two hours before we left. We got to talk and dream and make fun future plans that may or may not ever happen, but it's always fun to dream together!

And then on Sunday we went to another new restaurant that opened with Mike and Amy called Chic, which was also very nice and the workers were all wearing hot dog hats! I felt like I walked into a Mr. Hot Dog, or Waffle House, even though they don't wear hot dog hats at Waffle House, it still reminded me of that somehow. And not that I really care about this, being the vegetarian that I am...but they had "American" fried chicken on the menu (as the waiter said) which some with us said was pretty good!

-This week we received the first bit of encouraging news concerning our adoption in six months! A tiny bit of progress was made and we are rejoicing over it. Still a ways to go...but this bit of news has given us some much needed encouragement. Glory!

-It is currently strawberry season again in Burkina. I bought my first two kilos a couple weeks ago and we have all been relishing the joy of eating such a short lived food here. Even Sydaleigh has come to enjoy strawberries. They are quite expensive but after they've been on the market for a few weeks, the prices are much more reasonable, well, reasonable for us. I paid $6 for a kilo this week, down from $10 the week before. After we wash, bleach, rewash, and cut each one open to make sure no worms are present we freeze half for later and use the rest to eat. I hope to freeze a bit to hold us over for a little while after the season is done. Because, once they're gone, they're gone, and you have to wait another year before you see them again. So we make sure to freeze as much as we can.

-It rained today. I woke up at 6am to the sound of thunder and then rain shortly following. For much of the day it has rained. It is very out of the ordinary to have rain this time of year and when it happens the people call it "Mango rains". It was such a welcome relief. All the doors and windows have been opened today and the house is currently filled with one of my favorite things....humidity. Ah, I love humidity, it feels so good. I might be the only person in the world who feels this way, and that's okay!

-The harmattan season this year has been particularly bad. This time of year in Burkina is called Harmattan. The harmattan is a very dry warm wind that blows down from the Sahara Desert from December through February. In December the wind is cool, but it gradually gets warmer and warmer as the hot season creeps closer. But always, always, during the harmattan season it is horribly dusty.

(They nickname this time of year meningitis season, because meningitis blows in on the wind here too, and this is the time of year that people contract that sickness. In the U.S. we have flu season, here they have meningitis season. Both pas bon.)

Anyways, the harmattan makes it incredibly dusty because it hasn't rained in months, so everything is dry and because there are very few paved roads here there is a lot of dust that gets blown around. I go outside and instantly inhale dust. I can't go out without sunglasses because the wind is blowing so much and picking up so much dust, it can make it hard to see. We were driving back from Yako before Christmas and drove past a couple dust tornadoes. We could see all the people in the little villages running away from them, to no avail. I will be grateful when this season passes, even if it does mean that the hot season is here instead. I'd rather deal with the intense heat than the dust.

And this is why the rains are such a welcome relief....they help bring the dust down from the sky and everything it's sitting on to clean the air for a bit. 

-I started going to women's bible study again. I wasn't able to go last semester because we were visiting the States when the groups started meeting and I didn't want to start a study late. But, I'm back in it now. My group is doing B.M.'s Patriarch study, and I LOVE it. I love this time period in scripture, it's one of my favorites. But I particularly love the ladies I get to study with. They are some very godly women that I respect and look up to very much.

And out from our first meeting, two women (one new to living in Burkina and the other has lived here almost 20 years) inquired about serving in orphanages, and they were put in touch with me.

-I dented my toe nail. Kinda big too. I'm not sure how one goes about denting their toe nail and not remember how it happened, but since I have major toe issues, I'm not that surprised.

And the reason that my toes are even painted is because I had some friends over for a girl's morning last week.

And we did our nails....in mixing bowls, buckets and pots. =) A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do!


I could keep going, but the girls just went to bed and a bowl of ice cream is calling my name along with the movie The Butler that we downloaded for this weekend. Ready to sit down with Isaak and relax....even though that's pretty much what we've been doing all day.