Wednesday, February 18, 2009

We love food

I recently decided to start learning again how to make some of the delicious dishes over here. When we return to the States, I want to be able to continue eating all of this yummy food! Last week I learned how to make "djaj mhmr" which just means red chicken. Tasty! I can confidently say that this may be my favorite way to eat chicken - but then again it has been a while sense I had Chick-Fil-A! Karl likes it, but the olives are a bit much for him.




We went back for more... We took our friends to the camel market this week, and enjoyed our meal once again! Here's Karl ordering a variety of camel: ground meat, brochettes and sausage.


Here we are posing with a new camel head. This one was pretty decorative!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Half Marathon!

This weekend, we traveled to a southern city for the annual half marathon. I (Angela) ran with another friend, and Karl was our official stuff holder. This race was much more organized than the 5k race we ran about 2 months ago!



Here we are at about the half way mark.


The course was beautiful, with the lovely snow capped mountains!


I finished the race in just under 2 hours! We had our picture taken with these people from our city - Karl has coached the boy in the pic basketball! They gave us free t-shirts and hats, which was a nice gift, although I look super dorky with the hat on.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Bon Appetit!

Today we went with some friends to a local camel bucher (just a 20 minute walk from our house!). We picked the meat, and took it to a "restaurant" where they cooked it for us, and served mint tea, bread and veggies. It was actually really tasty!


The key to all of this was to not hang around too long in the meat section - hanging camel is not the most appetizing.




We were eating right next to a mosque, so we were watching the men pray. It was quite a cultural experience!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Its raining

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while! I just haven't taken any pictures. Its been raining a bunch, so I guess that's my excuse. I am including some pictures from the year that I never posted. I'll have some more updates later.

This cafe is close to where Karl coaches basketball. Good name, right!?


Saturday, December 27, 2008

Beach town


Today my friend and I traveled to a beach town just south of here for the day. We walked around, and enjoyed the scenery.



A long time ago, this city was a Portugese fort. Now, people live within the walls.





As you can see, I was pretty disgusted! I think this is the first time a bird has ever pooped directly on my head. We didn't have any napkins, so I walked around like this until I could find a bathroom!

Friday, December 26, 2008

Merry Christmas!!!


Merry Christmas!! We hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas this year. We started the day off with some BACON, eggs and muffins, the Christmas story, and then gifts. We miss being with family this time of year, but we have enjoyed making up some traditions of our own.




Karl got this new jacket for me!


We have been searching for an apartment for a new couple arriving in a few weeks. This is near where we are looking, and at first glance I almost thought there would be a Domino's Pizza close by. Such wishful thinking... this is Domicle's Pizza, and I am pretty confident in saying the quality won't compare with the real thing. I don't think there are copy right laws here...

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Holiday season

The holidays came earlier here, as today the people celebrated "Aid Kabeer," which translates as the big holiday. Each family buys, slaughters and eats a sheep on this day. They will continue to eat the meat for the next few days. Karl and I witnessed this from our window today. Needless to say, it was a smelly!


Our neighbors bought two sheep, and put them in our "shared" space, which happens to be right behind our kitchen door. Our kitchen smelled like a sheep barn for about 3 days! The smell is starting to go away (the sheep met their end this morning), but a stench of dead sheep is in the air, and probably will be for the next few days.


If you look closely, you can see the sheep sitting against the door. You can also see plastic bags around our door - this was our attempt to keep the smell out, but it really didn't do anything.


This was the view from our office window.


This is our street. The man below was going around collecting the sheep skins. I'm not sure if he was begging for them so that he could sell them for a bit of money, or taking them to fix for people. Some people like to display the sheep skins in their homes.


I went to a wedding on Sunday, and wore this traditional dress called a "tqsheda." The dress was nice, but was really long, which made walking challenging.