Yes, we are still here!

Well, you may have noticed it's been awhile since I blogged.  This is due to a variety of reasons, such as painfully slow internet, sickness and laziness.  When the internet has been fast enough I was either sick or exhausted.  When I have had the motivation, the internet has chosen to thwart my creative spirit.  Then there was the awful sickness.  I won't go into the gory details but it was gory.  It's funny, here we all talk about our bodily functions freely.  Everyone gets sick at some point, and so we compare notes and confirm if what we had or currently  have is a new thing going around or due to something else.  You have to be here to understand this show and tell atmosphere (mostly tell, because showing would be way gross not to mention extremely weird), but I have to remind myself that all you folks back home are really not interested in the particulars.  Even now I am restraining my fingers from typing them to you.

Anyways, my point being, it's been awhile.  I am now about 2 months behind in the relating of our adventures and there is a better than even chance that I will never catch up.  Ever.  I will try to address the highlights from here on out but that may or may not be successful.  I tend to think not, but hey, miracles can happen! Right????  Now, back to the story.

Once upon a time (lets say in Mid-October 2012), in a land extremely far away, like on the other side of the globe from our parents houses, there were two adventurers.  We resume the relating of the adventures on 10/13 which was a Saturday.  On this Saturday we found ourselves on site and not alone!  Our congregation was invited for the day to lend us their enthusiastic support!  It was a very hot day but that did not dampen the zeal, not one bit!

Matt was smiling despite the heat!

 We have a yummy lunch of Indian rice and chicken on Saturdays (you can see the boxes on the tables behind Matt). That's actual authentic Indian food my friends.  (Did you know that Myanmar actually touches India???  I can barely believe I'm in a place with such an exotic geographical location.)  The great thing about the Saturdays in October is that I got to help out a little bit!

Me and my gal pals!

Later that evening we went out to Onyx with some of our friends for a steak.  Yumo!  

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't as good as let's say, Cowfish in Lander, or anywhere near as fabulous as an Andy's Grill Special. (Hint hint) However, it's the best 5 dollar steak I've ever ordered at a restaurant.  In fact, it's the first time I've ever paid 5 bucks for a steak dinner. 

Sunday I went shopping in the morning with Hkatom to buy some Kachin material for a dress.  Kachin is the name of a group of people in Myanmar.  Each tribe has certain patterns they wear.  Kachin is my favorite, partly because it's lovely and partly because my friends are Kachin and I'm sentimental about it.  Once you have been here for awhile, (several months to several years) you can see the difference in styles and can identify which tribe certain material belongs to.  I am pretty good about the girl's styles but the boy's patterns I don't really recognize.

The week of the 15th there was a deadline to meet (which was met) but it did require extra focus from everybody.  Everyone pitched in and got things looking amazing.  Here is the hallway on level 2 on Friday that week.

So pretty!

Offices just ready to be worked in!  Almost anyways!  Even some from the home department were invited to lend their support!   Here is one of my friends giving a cleaning demonstration:

Can't you tell how nice she is?

This sister doesn't speak much English and I don't speak much Myanmar but we do the best we can and sign language comes in handy!  It's amazing what you can understand even though you don't know the words.  She always talks to me like I know what she is saying and I pick up some words and get the gist!  It helps if she repeats it 5 or 6 times.  Slowly.

Ok, I'm going to publish this post and I will work on some more soon.  I want to post it before it deletes itself and something happens to all this brilliant writing.  That would be truly tragic.  More to come, hopefully!