Simple Pleasures of Life

Pools and A/C
Another of Joshua, Jorge and Jasmine from the other day!


It got to 49 Celcius here last Sunday! While most of us could barely function, I found that these trees bloomed amazing red blossoms!



And found a cat sleeping in the sun on top of the church canvas roof! ha! It was moving a bit, so I'm sure it wasn't dead (no worries!).


Praise be to the Lord that we live in such a "well kept" building! more on why later!

Colonization?
Living alongside the Middle Eastern Islamic peoples, I have become confused by educated people who have been here and think women here need "freedom."

What IS freedom? Is freedom to be lacking of boundaries? Well then shouldn't we be free to have intercourse with any person anytime without regard for age, gender, marriage, etc? Wouldn't I not then be free to kill you if your freedom allowed you to slap me?

Freedom comes with safety, wouldn't we all agree? There's a level of safety that gives us a level of freedom, right? They basically go hand in hand.

Why is America so set that Islamic women must live like American women? So you're all going "But the Q'uran says it's Ok for a man to beat his wife in order to subdue her"

I didn't say I was for the Q'uran! I don't follow a man, I follow THE GOD!

I also didn't say that I think when the Bible says "spare the rod, spoil the child" that it means you can beat your children either, thank you very much! We need freedom to think!

Do not women and men beat their children, their spouses, their entrusted in America?

Simple Pleasures of Life - is that the women here want to maintain their culture! The English and French - our American ancestors - worked VERY hard to take away the Native American culture...and now we scream "THAT WAS WRONG! THAT WAS TERRIBLE!"

and yet...are we of the mindset in the news media and discussion, generally, that Islamic women in Middle Eastern countries need to be FREE TO NOT BE FULLY COVERED?!

Why can we not respect their desire to keep an ancient tradition? Why must we colonize and look down upon or pity these women? They are proud in a healthy way, humble in a strong way.

Do some want to be like an American in the string bikini's? YEP!

Do I? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE! does that make me less American? Or just weird? Why can't it just mean I have my own FREEDOM to choose? Why can we only choose immodesty to seem "normal" ???

The news makes it seems like these poor women are abused and subdued and....you know what? SO ARE MANY WOMEN IN AMERICA! AND SO ARE MANY CHILDREN BECAUSE OF THEIR MOTHER'S IN AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!

But please, don't be blinded!! No longer pity these women as a whole. While I long to believe our troops are still keeping the terrorists busy in the Middle East instead of my beautiful homeland.....I have **no** desire to PUSH American "rules" upon them.

The Middle East should keep their simple pleasures of life and not be required to be colonized!

Ok nuff ranting, thanks for listening! No worries, I once believed the media too.

Feline Fancy

I will try to draw a picture to help bring things "smaller" of who's who!

Eye-Eee-Mon (Ieman) is the taxi driver, you've seen him in beginning posts. He is a safe driver and still treats me at hands-length and with respect. This is typically who drives us, tho sometimes I just grab a "new white cab" for short jaunts when it's too hot since I know it's less than $1 and has a/c! woo hoo!!

Yrene and John - John is the one who "introduced" Rob to the job here. They have 4 kids total. They are in an American academy here. Jorge and Joseph are too young. They have a nanny, but sometimes we go play together. I talk about them alot in seperate instances, but they all belong together! Wy-el is their driver, he has helped me in a pinch over the phone or whatnot ;)

Building Owner - the woman who owns the building where we live, also lives here. She occupies the entire top floor. She looks to be in her 80's tho she is VERY spry and agile. She has a maid, a helper, a driver, a shopper, a chef - that's all I've met so far. THEN she has people for the building itself. Whaleed does the gardens (you've met him via photos), Mohammed does the cleaning of the stairwells and entryway, Tuney is the night watchman and Said (sigh-eed) is the day doorman (boab). Obviously, she likes things nice - WE'RE IN A GREAT SPOT! woo hoo!

Her sister has 3/4 of the floor we live on - we are in 1/4 of it. This is the neighbor who feeds the neighborhood cats......now onto the feline fancy....

we're on the 4th floor......the SERVANTS can't use the elevator (this is a class society, it works for them, while it bothers me)....HOWEVER, she will send the cats DOWN and call the boab to let them out!!!!!!!!!!

Well...these fancy felines.....have become accustomed to riding UP with US now...yep....we ride in elevators with cats......the first time, the cat actually reached up towards the buttons, then sat in front of the door. Everytime, when we open the door, they look at us and meow as if to say "thank you" obviously in Arabic tho!

Organizing the Kitchen
So the ants and cochroaches here eat THRU plastic bags....cereal boxes, etc. Ieman took us far away to Carrefour again (haven't been there in at least one month) to get a bunch of things.

I can now safely store our noodles, cereals, flours, sugars, etc.



AND...I can even make a side dish of COOKED something or other. I only had 1 skillet and 1 small pot and 1 deep pot. Now I can scramble eggs, stir fry veggies to add to a homemade sauce, boil 2 types of noodles at once, OH THE SIMPLE PLEASURES OF MY LIFE! WOO HOOO!

A toaster and slotted spoons - LIFE IS GRAND!!

and, I got a couple containers so that our school stuff doesn't just lay in a pile! woo hoo!!

Movies
self explanatory about this simple pleasure ;)