365 Project Day 2: Lamb Chops

Just a regular day driving around Kstan and BAM you see someone's dinner riding in the back of the truck next to you.

365 Project Day 1: Mom's Chicken Enchilada's

I'm plagiarizing an idea for my blog. The 365 Project. A photo-a-day for a year. Since I love photography and I need blog material that's fast and easy to post...I thought I would give it a shot.

My roomies and I made lunch for friends today. Based on the fact that we miss Mexican food and there have been an abundance of imported tortillas in stores around town for a few months, we had decided earlier this week that we would make enchiladas. Wouldn't you know it, when we went to purchase said tortillas, they were all gone! Instead we substituted some really thin pastry bread "tortilla-equivalent" product. Surprisingly, they turned out better than the last time we made this recipe using real flour tortillas :-)

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

1) I walk, down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost…I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in…it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

Copyright Portia Nelson, 1980

T.I.K. #2 The Propane Man

Our stove is a gas stove, but unlike in the states, the gas doesn't magically appear from underground pipes. Nope, we have to purchase individual 20 pound propane canisters like people use for camping or grilling (check out exibit A on the right - our newly installed full propane canister that I successfully purchased last week). We purchase them from a couple of guys who drive a truck full of them through our neighborhood at least twice a day playing a repeating cheesy song like the ice-cream trucks in the states (but more melodramatic). When someone wants propane, they just come out their door as the truck drives by. One guy drives the truck and the other gets out into the back of the truck and slings the canisters over the side of the truck onto the ground. That part is the craziest part to me. When the tank hits the ground it sounds like the cement is breaking and I'm always afraid that the tank will burst. Usually my roomie takes care of buying the propane for our house. When I first moved in I couldn't figure out why sometimes she would just drop everything and run for the door. Now that she's been gone for the past 3 weeks and I've had to listen for the truck to come by, I understand. EVERY time I heard the song I wouldn't make it out of the house until the truck was already down the street. One time I called my neighbors to get them to make the truck turn around, but I didn't know the Kurdish word for propane. They will probably be giving me a hard time about that for a while :-) Here's a video of the truck and its song. I didn't catch them actually slinging the propane tanks off the truck, but you get the idea. Also, please enjoy my first try at video editing with my new Adobe Premier Elements program. More to come hopefully!

Planting Seeds

I enjoy the combined beauty and practicality of a garden filled with flowers, herbs, fruits, and veggies. For the past 6 years I've dreamed of having such a garden, but apartment life combined with the busyness that plagued me since junior high school just really wasn't conducive to that. Ah, so much has changed, thanks to God! Many Kurds have gardens. Like the picture above, roses and flowers and herbs and/or some kind of fruit-bearing tree can be found behind (and is some cases peeking over) many of the tall gates in this city. And many Kurds have grape vines which give them shade to sit under during the hot summer months like the pic below. We don't have a yard, but this past weekend I took the first steps toward a potted garden! A friend gave me some flowers for my birthday and I just planted some Marigolds, African Daisies, and Verbena. So here are my new babies! Maybe some day I'll have a garden like the one above.

T.I.K. #1

Starting a new life in a foreign culture comes with many good belly laughs along with many things that just make you go "hmm." Anything that falls under this category I lovingly label "T.I.K." which means "This is Kurdistan." The following picture adequately sums up driving in Kurdistan.

Birthday

a couple of friends have emailed me happy birthday early and it makes me smile. maybe i have been accidentally circulating the wrong bday date to my friends, lol. actually, the truth is i've never been very big on birthday celebrations for myself. the kurds themselves don't really celebrate bdays either. those who do have either lived abroad or have relatives who have lived abroad. in fact, most of the kurds that are my age or older don't even know what day they were born on - they only know the year. i've heard a theory that this is because of the oppression by sadaam - none of their bdays were written down so they couldn't have large gatherings for that because that could be a good mask for a meeting of conspirators.