Spring Flowers

 
One of the development projects going on around here is a tulip farm! I took a road trip to visit the farm and got some great shots.

Newroz: Kurdish New Year March 2011

The line of people on the hill are dancing

Kurdish New Year starts on March 21 every year (coinciding with the spring equinox). 

My Kurdish friends tell met his celebration began thousands of years ago when they were freed from an evil oppressive king. The legend states that the man who went to kill this king said he would light a fire on the mountain if he was successful.

Musicians make a living by traveling between
groups of picnickers to provide live dancing music

So, it's a celebration of freedom and light and new things. Every year on the eve of Newroz the Kurds light fires to commemorate the evil king's downfall and then they gather for three days of picnics, wearing brightly colored and sparkly traditional Kurdish clothes, and dancing. 

This year I eagerly put on my traditional Kurdish dress and went on 4 different picnics with 4 different families. And I couldn't get enough!

 Day 1 it rained, but that didn't stop us from dancing or eating the yummy food.

Iprax is vegetables (zucchini, tomato, onion, eggplant, bell pepper)
stuffed with a mixture of rice and minced lamb and boiled in oil, water, and sumac (a sour seed).

 Day 2 we went up into the mountains where there was still snow. 

  
Day 3 and 4 the weather was sunny and beautiful. On Day 3 I drove and we even stopped to dance on the side of the road on the way to this beautiful picnic spot pictured below.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Peymanga Huneri Cwan (Art Institute) hosted a Valentine's Day party to which my friend who works there invited me. A good time was had by all!

Peymanga Huneri Cwan

The above title is Kurdish for "Art Institute." I have a friend in town who does good work there as a teacher of young Kurdish people. In a culture that tends to value uniformity and even tends to see creative forms of expression as shameful, I really respect the people here who have the courage to express themselves through the arts.

Peymanga Huneri Cwan (Rough translation: "Institute for Pretty Things"). Cwan in Kurdish means beautiful.

Since moving to Kstan I've begun to appreciate beauty more. Most of the buildings are concrete, half-way built, and not even painted. Very few trees remain due to years of war. But the Art Institute building in town is refreshingly different.

The Boot Whisperer

 

So! This month I'm back in Texas! My extended family spent some time together in Wimberley, a quaint little retirement town located in the Texas Hill Country. While there I was almost convinced to buy some boots from a German lady known as "the boot whisperer." Apparently she can look at a person's foot and correctly guess his boot size. She and her husband own and operate a successful second-hand boot store in town. Check out the ones I wanted... too bad they didn't come in my size ;-) just kidding!

Pumpkin

It's fall and I'm missing Bonnie and Russ and friends back home carving pumpkins and roasting the seeds. There are some pumpkins that are grown here in Kstan, but they aren't quite the same as pumpkins back home.

Fortunately, my roomies and I share a love of pumpkin products. Every time someone from the states comes to visit and asks "what can I bring?" we say; "canned pumpkin!" Recently we helped our neighbors "gut" and boil some pumpkins. Then we introduced them to eating the boiled pumpkin with brown sugar and butter, mmm! As they were about to throw out the seeds I asked if I could have them. The first batch I burned to a crips, darn propane oven without any temperature control. But the second batch turned out really good.

Masha'Allah

Beautiful country-side. The mountains of Kstan in the fall! Masha'Allah!

Masha'Allah is an Arabic phrase that expresses appreciation, joy, praise or thankfulness for an event or person that was just mentioned (definition from Wikipedia). It is used to remind people that all things come from God. People also say it superstitiously to ward off the "evil eye," believing that admiring something about another person in an envious or covetous way could cause something bad to happen to that person. So if you compliment a person or their things, always tack on a "Masha'Allah" afterwards so they know you're not saying anything out of jealousy or envy.