A Regular Weekend in Myanmar

Saturday the 20th we walked to Hledan to meet up with some friends.  While we were waiting for them we saw the puppies of the street dog that some of our friends feed.  So cute!

 

Beyond the puppies a little boy was playing in his house:

 

Then we walked around and tried to find a tailor shop that one of the brothers had told me about.  We did find it, and found that they also wanted to charge way too much.  On the way though we saw an interesting street food snack:

Fried jumpy bugs. Yes, that is what I call them.

I gave that one a miss.  Even if I was craving some deep fried winged delight, I still wouldn't eat it.  And neither should you.  Unless you want to experience your stomach instigating some sort of full on mutiny, skip the street food here.  We walked over to the blissfully air conditioned mall and had a (non insect) snack and a chat.

Sunday after meeting Matt and I walked over to the market area because we had heard that there was a store where you could buy cheap computer programs.  Matt wanted to take this picture for Andy, we know it would a spot he would want to check out:

Each Sunday the market is crowded with men sitting on stools sipping tea while they sell and trade gems.  It's a genuine Myanmar experience to walk through the Gem Traders Sunday Market (that is the name I gave it).

 On the way to get a taxi there is always someone painting.  You can buy one for 1000 kyats.  Which is about $1.30.  It's fun to watch them work.

That's all for now!

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!

Strange Sights

The week  of 10/1 started with Kelvin coming for housekeeping training.  I didn't make him clean the bathrooms. I thought that was noble..;)  We got alot accomplished!  In the evening we had some friends over for chocolate and popcorn. Yum!  Later in the week I spent the day with a sister who doesn't speak English but she taught me the chorus for Listen, Obey and Be Blessed in Myanmar.  I'm working on learning the rest of it, so far I'm halfway through the first verse. Hmm.  Maybe if I can at least get the first verse before we go that will be good.  Friday Kylie came for her training.  No bathrooms that day either.  Super noble. Saturday was a day that some friends came in and lent their support.  I got to spend the day with Matt!  Later I went up on the roof and witnessed first hand the incessant cutting up of that dumb tree. Every day.  All day. Saw, saw, saw.

They do it old style.  You have to admire their work ethic!!!

Saturday evening we went out to eat with Brian and Allison.  We went to a place we heard had good beer.  We ordered the small.

That is not an optical illusion.  Matt and I shared the small.  Ahem.  It was good!  They have large too.  That is like a family sized glass.  You need lots of pals for that one!

The next day we walked to Oishi Sushi.  On the way we saw some of the older buildings.

So pretty!

Then we saw something truly awesome:

Can you read the sign? Public Mobile Urination Room.  SO much more exotic than a portapotty I have to say.

On that note, we close this post.

We're Talking and Walking! Are You Talking and Walking?;)

Recognize that (paraphrased) quote?

The week of 9/24 I had my first talk here.  Lydia was my householder, and thanks to her it went without a hitch.

 

Mid-Gesture

Thursday Brother and Sister Raj left for New York where they will be until January.  We miss them so much, but know that they are having a wonderful time! They have even met our friends at Patterson:)  We miss you guys so much too!

Saturday morning we had a special talk given by a missionary serving at Bethel.  Afterwards we went to a teashop.  Where we tried the sweet tea and had a very suspicious desert.  I honestly couldn't decide if I liked it or not.

Mel was perplexed too!

 It was a custard eggy type pudding.  Very different.  Matt liked it though! Then we took our new friends Kelvin and Kylie around.  We had to show them the Market, very important dontchaknow!

The Market

The view of the street across from the market.  Asia in all it's amazingly crazy glory!

A sign for all you electricians out there!

Although we wore them out with shopping, we got some good bargains and one annoying guy ripped me off by 50 cents.  Grr.  You may be thinking, um, 50 cents?  Girl, get a grip!! All I can say about that is it IS a big deal and after you are here for awhile you realize that.  So there.  :)  Well, the heat pretty much wore us out and it was time for some lunch!

We went to a restaurant near the market.  Air conditioned.  Oh yeah.

Upstairs there is a shop!  But what I wanted to take home was not for sale.  One of Gypsy's cousins.

Made me miss Gypsy and her wonderful parents:)

In the evening we made dinner and visited some more with Kelvin and Kylie.

Sumday we went out and about in the morning.  We walked to tennis courts.  Then we walked to Junction Square.  We like to window shop, and found a shop for our golfer friends:

Come visit guys, we'll take you shopping!

There was a talent show going on in the mall.  It was actually funny, but you have to give them credit for their willingness to put themselves out there!

 

 We walked towards Hledan to pick up something before we headed to meeting.   We got a good picture of bamboo scaffolding. Very strong!

After walking all morning we were hot.  Then we had a hot taxi ride to meeting.  And the hall wasn't cool because of AC issues.  So we were overheated all meeting. It was actually cooler outside. Most days are just plain hot here. However, we did enjoy the special talk from our visiting Bethel Speaker.  The second visit I have had like that in my life.  Its such a privilege to hear such good speakers drawing on their considerable experience to encourage us!

Just Fine

Many of you have probably heard about the 6.8 earthquake here in Myanmar this weekend.  We just wanted to assure everyone that the quake did not affect the area we live in and so we are just fine.  However, we very much appreciated the emails and messages of our friends and family that were concerned we might have been affected.   Myanmar is apparently prone to earthquakes and they are fairly common.   We have not heard of any brothers or sisters being hurt so we are glad of that as well.

Thank you so much for keeping in touch! We miss you all!

A Busy Week

The week of 9-17 was crazy.  Everyone was in high spirits because it was convention week in Yangon.  Monday we had people over after the family WT study.  I did a different job every day because of people being gone for this and that.  We home workers got an official tour of the site:

Look, WALLS!!!!

Wednesday evening we didn't have meeting, due to the convention.  So some of us got together and went downtown for an evening out.  As we left our gate we saw the snails were out:

Told ya they were huge!  We went to the same place that we went to the previous week after meeting.  We had pizza and played pool.  I had a couple amazing shots, and the rest were something less than that..  I think Matt started out super impressed, and then it all went downhill.  He started saying things like, you are supposed to hit SOMEthing.  Hmm.  It was still fun!  Outside we spied a cat having a catnap.. What are the chances?!?

Friday was the first day of the convention and with most of the workers gone they used the opportunity to turn the water off and do some plumbing work.  In the laundry we got everything washed by 10 am. We started at 7 though and had to miss breakfast. We made up for it with a long tea time in our house after we had the washing done. The kitchen was mostly off duty but a few sisters had made plans for a special BBQ lunch for the workers that were left.  Rob manned the BBQ:

The results were YUM!

Matt was one happy camper!

We finished up a bit early, especially in laundry since we started early.  In the evening we prepped some food for dinner Saturday.

Saturday we met with some friends at J Doughnuts and had a nice visit.  In the afternoon I went secondhand shopping with Vynka in a very hot building.  We scored some good deals.  I was supposed to look for shirts for Matt but I ended up with 3 skirts, 3 tops and he got a tie.  That's how the cookie crumbles! Honestly I DID look for shirts for him, but the only one I found was in centimeters and I don't know how to size things in strange measurements like that!  Later I found that it would have been the right size.  Oops.  I was totally wiped by the end of it though and ended up heat-sick.  Which cut our dinner party short.  Matt had to finish making the food and I didn't feel better til long after the guests were gone.  On the upside though, the curry was good and at least they DID get to eat.  I still felt bad:(.  You have to pace yourself here, the heat just takes it out of you!

(Just a side note on how hot it is here.  I don't just get heat-sick all the time.  It takes alot.  The last time I remember getting heat-sick was 10 years ago when I hiked down and then back out of the canyon next to Twin Falls, Idaho with only one medium sized bottle of water in like 95 or so degree heat in the middle of the day.  So.  Compare that act of stupidity to simply shopping, inside I might add, a VERY HOT building.  That gives you some perspective on how hot it really is.  I'm just saying.)

The next day we slept in, I was still tired from the heat the day before.  We had intended to go to the whole day of the convention but ended up only going in the afternoon.  We only knew the name of the center but the taxi driver knew it too.  We only had 2500 kyat to our name, that was all our money and the driver took pity on us.  We rode to the convention in air conditioned comfort in a clean cab with an English speaking driver.  I'm telling you it was a gift from above.  Seriously.  Otherwise we wouldn't have made it.  We made it in time for the drama and the rest of the afternoon.  We didn't understand anything (except a few words) but it was thrilling to be there.  I have never been to an international convention and this is as close as it's going to get for me I think.  I loved it!

It was neat to see the drama again, even though we couldn't understand it this time around.

For the second part of the afternoon session we sat with the sign language section and were able to understand more!

After the convention we went home on the bus that was rented for those from Bethel, but not before we took some more pictures!

Me and Hkatom, one of my best friends here.

On the way home we sat in traffic for awhile and I got take a picture of a boy selling flowers.

When you are stopped in traffic here people walk amongst the cars selling things.  These flowers are very fragrant and  they use them as air fresheners in the cars.  They can be used to offer at the shrines but it's OK to buy them just for scent.  People sell other things too like betel nut, cigarettes, maps and books.  Sometimes beggars will come to the car and ask for money.  No matter where you are stuck in traffic there is always something to see around here.

A Full Weekend

Something that is a pretty regular feature here is the market.  We go frequently to visit with people and don't forget the shopping.  Saturday 9/15 we went to the market with Nuah to check out some places.

 Matt saw an interesting poster at the markets:

Don't know if you can see what it says, but it is a chart of foods that you shouldn't eat together.  They are rated according to the side effects.  Vomiting. Dead. Etc. The people here take them quite seriously.  In fact there used to be one in the kitchen.  Good things to know. ;)  Mentos and Coke isn't on there though.  I find that strange.

Our taxi had seen better days, although that is true for many taxi's here.  This taxi was quite unique with the driver's unusual seating arrangements.

On the way to the supermarket we passed the place that Matt and the guys get the electrical whatsits from:

So many have been hospitable to us here and after we had been here awhile, er 3 months, we finally tried to get it together and return some hospitality.   At first you are just so tired that it is just hard to organize anything.  Plus people invite you over all the time so there isn't time to plan.  Then after you settle down a bit you realize, hey, if I want to hang out with people, I'm going to have to step up!  So I splashed out with a new recipe, Thai Green Curry. It was pretty good!

My first one, so I had to take a picture!

Sunday I had arrangements to go with KitKit shopping.  We walked up to a shop and on the way saw a momma dog with her new pups:

Later we went to Hledan Market to drop off some material for dresses. It was my first time into the depths of this market.  Its very interesting to look around.

Mission accomplished, we returned home for another week!