public notice

the heat is on

While we were in the US this summer, Rey and I gave the keys to our apartment to Rey's dad and a good friend of ours. Both those people came over regularly to make sure everything was ok. Rey's dad usually switched the AC on for a few hours (pretty much every day) to keep some air moving in the house. Despite his best efforts, the inside temps must have reached insane highs because this is what we found when we got back

our candles had begun to melt!

Ramadan

Once again we are in the month of Ramadan, the time when Muslims fast from sun up to sun down. Most restaurants are closed in observance of this month and pace of the country pretty much slows to a crawl. Considering that the outside temperature is still well above the 100 mark and everything is closed, this also makes for the most boring month of the year.

no eating, no alcohol, no smoking, no sex, no medication/pills, no ice cream

paper beads

My new favorite hobby is making paper beads. My friend, Morgan, brought me a necklace from Uganda made of paper beads. I really love it and decided that I would go about making some of my own. Here are the results of the first batch:

strings of beads hanging in the bathroom while the varnish dries

first batch of finished beads

first necklace

home improvement

With all my time at home these days, Rey and I decided to do a little redecorating.

our sitting room BEFORE

Rey hard at work

AFTER: our new RED wall :)

summer

Well, we are back in Bahrain after a much needed vacation. Our trip to the States was wonderful. It passed much too quickly, but we enjoyed every moment. Here are a few highlights:

a warm welcome at the airport

exploring Chicago

weekend at the lake

trip to San Diego

hanging with the fam

Dordt friends reunion

lost in translation

I've taken up a job in the afternoons and evenings. I'm teaching at an English language school. A British school. They don't mind having Americans, but they ask that we (ok, I) emphasize the British over the American, which normally isn't a problem. (Most of the kids don't even realize I'm not British, which also tells you how much they are speaking English if they can't hear a difference!) Then one day I came to the lesson on the short "a" sound. The page had a box in the middle with various words in it, and on each side there was a column. One said "bag" and one said "bath". The kids were supposed to separate the words into the bag and bath column based on the short a sounds. Are you confused? Don't worry, I was too.

When Americans pronounce the words bag and bath, they sound the same. They both have a short a sound. So how are you supposed to separate the words when they have the same sound???? Then it hit me. In England, it's not bath, it's baaaath. With a stretched out a! So it's a different sound! Normally there is a CD with this book, but of course, today the CD wasn't working, so I was stuck trying to put on a British accent to distinguish between the a sounds for the kids. You can probably imagine how awful this lesson was going. I have no clue what the right answers are, I'm putting on a horrible fake accent, and all the 9 year-old kids are looking at me with blank or confused expressions. I tried in vain for about 5 minutes to get the point across, but when the frowns of confusion got worse instead of better, I decided I was doing more damage than good. I guess you can't win them all.