Life in these United States

Living in the States is different. For example, I find that I don’t need quite as many things. Like peanut butter. I no longer need peanut butter. There’s something about living abroad that causes an intrinsic need for peanut butter.

Spur-of-the-reunion (Conrad-style)

I have seen so many people this week, it’s been a little crazy. We had a family reunion of sorts on August 11th, which was fun. A lot of my cousins were in town, anyway, having an “immediate family” reunion so we decided to have a dinner with extended family to have a chance for everyone to visit. I’m so glad we did, though Andrew was dreading trying to keep everybody straight.

Our family likes to repeat names.

Ready to run

Last night I had a nightmare that I kept running and running but couldn’t find the finish line. I was completely lost so I started following this other girl who had a number on and we ended up running through some buildings with classrooms and things inside. We ran until it was dark and when we finally found the finish line there were only a few people left but I couldn’t see who they were because it was too dark. I asked them for my time but they just laughed at me and said that the race had finished hours ago. The man in charge said, “Why did you think you could do this?”

This morning I still had that thought running through my mind. It’s been years since I’ve run a race…or even gone running, for that matter, aside from the handful of times I’ve gone since we’ve moved here. But when the alarm clock went off this morning I dragged myself and Andrew and two little girls out of bed, anyway, and got ready to run.

Registration began at 7 AM. We never leave the house before 7 AM but we did this morning. And it was cold! I just can’t believe how cold it is already—I dressed the girls in long sleeves and pants and brought blankets for them to cuddle up with. It was that cold.

I originally was going to wear sweatpants but Andrew convinced me to change into shorts before the race. He wanted to take a picture of me in my “running pose.” I look much less apprehensive than I felt, especially after seeing dozens of runners suited up with their hydration packs and official-looking outfits. I’m quite sure I was the only one wearing their younger sister’s (or brother’s) gym shorts from junior high.

StarTalk Banquet/Happy Ramadan

Ramadan began yesterday at sundown. As happenstance allowed it was the closing banquet for Josie’s Arabic StarTalk program at BYU. Though the food was not quite Middle-Eastern we still enjoyed ourselves and it was fun to go support Josie.

Rachel wore her outfit from Morocco. She looked very cute and everyone was jealous of it. She was only sad because we had to go home which meant that bedtime was eminent. Naanii is wearing her shirt from Egypt.

Miriam wore an Egyptian shirt, too, though it was far too large for her since Grandma bought if for Rachel when she was about 15 months old. Unlike Rachel, Miriam was anxious to get home. My mom sat in the backseat between them and on one side a child was howling about not wanting to go to bed, while on the other side a child kept dozing off.

I wore an outfit I picked up in Jordan and Andrew just wore (boring) Western clothes. I tried to convince him to wear his gallabia, but he wouldn’t.

Kirk had us stand up so everyone could look at us—one of those “this could be you” moments for the students while he explained that we just got back from spending two years in Egypt.

All the kids went up to get their certificates and after one girl responded shukran when Kirk said mabrouk, he went on a tangent about God-wishes and how the correct response was Allah ya barak fik and made all the kids say that instead, though I have known real Arabic speakers to answer mabrouk with shukran. Still, I suppose it is a good phrase for the kids to know.

Josie was sad to say goodbye to all her friends. She stayed an extra night even though the camp is technically over because her roommate didn’t fly out until this morning and didn’t want to stay in the dorms alone.

We were worried when we didn’t see any native Arabic speakers that we recognized because that meant we were getting too old, but then Laila walked in (*phew*) so we still had a connection. We also ran into our friend Ibrahim—we knew his family in Jordan, though not him personally because he was in Ghana while we were in Jordan, but we later met him when he came down for a YSA conference in Cairo that we helped out with. It’s always fun to see old friends!

We enjoyed speaking a little bit of Arabic, a whole spread of food including pita bread and hummus, with baklava for dessert.

It was a great way to ring in the Ramadan Season.

كل سنة وانتو طيبين! رمضان كريم

Free Bowling Day

August 7th was the last day of National Bowling week and we proudly participated by claiming our free game of bowling. Or…almost free. It was free up to the amount of $6, not including shoe rental and other incidentals.

We went to BYU first because they were in the list of participating alleys but when we got there we saw a sign at the front desk with a picture of the coupon we were holding that had a big X through it. Apparently they didn’t ask to participate. Spoil sports.

So we went to Miracle Bowl, instead, which was surprisingly empty. I was imagining having to wait for a lane to open up but instead we just waltzed right in and got to play right away, which is a very good thing because when you’re bowling with a three-year-old (and the ball takes five minutes to get to the pins after leaving her hands) one game of bowling takes a lot more time than it used to.

It ended up costing us $8—and only Andrew and Rachel had to rent shoes because I have my own. I’m telling you, that’s the most expensive shoe rental I’ve heard of! Still, $8 for three of us to bowl isn’t bad and we had a lot of fun even though we all bowled rather pathetically. Andrew scored a 95. Rachel got an 85. I brought up the rear with a lousy 81. Seriously. I got beaten by a three-year-old using a plastic dinosaur ramp and bumpers. Although I didn’t use the ramp we couldn’t figure out how to turn off the bumpers so Andrew and I used them, too. And still bowled horribly. Oh, well. As I said, we still had fun.

Playground Peek-a-boo

The girls and I spent the entire afternoon at the park. In the past seven days we’ve been to the park about that many times—public spaces are so wonderful, especially when they have clean restrooms and cold drinking fountains on site. Just sayin’.

Today the girls were enamoured with a little tunnel/slide thing.

Sisterly “love”

This video shows about how well my girls get along. Miriam tolerates so much unkindness, both covert and overt, from Rachel. And while it isn’t atypical to find them tangled together in a wrestling pretzel, they do occasionally get along, as well. Miriam finds Rachel hilarious and likes to stroke her hair and face. Rachel loves to dote on Miriam, be the big helper, and sing her lullabies.

I’m sure Rachel will live to rue the day, though, because Miriam isn't always going to be a baby…and as my mom noticed this evening (yes, this is a post0script) Miriam is already eager to get her revenge. When I hold her on my hip it puts her foot on par with Rachel’s head and she takes careful aim and then coyly, slyly, repetitively kicks Rachel in the face. At times this is just reward. Other times it’s just because she can.

A complete transcription follows the clip.

There are no strings on me!

For the past few days Miriam has been experimenting with bipedalism. At first it was unconscious behaviour. She’d take a spoon out of the dishwasher or a toy from the toy box with both hands, stand for a second, and then slowly lower herself to the floor without using her arms for support.

Then a few nights ago Grandpa was playing with her in the basement. He brought her upstairs and proudly announced that she had stood, unsupported, for three whole seconds.

Tonight Daddy was playing with Miriam while I did the dishes and he started yelling for me to come quickly, so I did because usually when he yells like that it means someone is throwing up or bleeding. Instead of being met with a big mess, though, I saw this:

Little Memur-Lemur was balancing solidly on her own two legs, reaching for a pair of binoculars like a kitten batting at a string.

She hasn’t taken any steps yet, gratefully, though she is cruising the furniture, and she still isn’t too interested in walking while holding hands, though her interest in that is growing daily, so I don’t think she’ll be walking like 10 months like Rachel (thank goodness!).

It’s still just funny to see my little baby balancing like that—she’s not tied up to anyone, her arms are free, that’s the only way to go…there are no strings on her!

Apricot everything

Many people seem to have had a bumper crop of apricots this year—our backdoor neighbour’s tree is bowing down under the weight of its fruit and we’ve received a few emails from around the ward inviting us (and anyone else) to come and pick apricots. We don’t have an apricot tree, ourselves. My mom does—but I haven’t noticed if it has a lot of fruit or not this year.

I don’t really pay attention to that sort of thing because I don’t really enjoy apricots.

And tonight’s going to be a good night

The weather has been crazy the past few days. We’re not used to having weather at all so this is a bit of a change. I woke up early on Wednesday morning to a terrific clap of thunder. Shortly thereafter Miriam started crying and she and I spent quite a while snuggling in bed, watching the storm progress through the blinds: thunder, lightning, buckets of rain.

Wednesday evening was absolutely electric. Thunder was booming so powerfully that the windows were rattling and the lightning was nearly constant. I hear that in Salt Lake they got hail the size of marbles. All we got down here was rain, rain, and rain.

Needless to say my girls were feeling a little antsy, what with all the extra energy in the air and being locked up in the house, so this morning when we finally woke up (after being up until the wee hours of the morning with the storm and tearful children) and saw that it was bright and sunny outside we decided to head to the park. It was a little damp, but beautiful.

We didn’t spend a lot of time at the actual park because there was a group of punk kids doing things they ought not and they were making me nervous so we left to play in the field and later made our way to the elementary school.

Miriam was happy to crawl around in the grass while Rachel danced around finding sticks and flowers and going down the slide.