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| The park in the middle of our complex, as see from out side our house. |
We have a small and rather nice
park in the middle of our complex.
When I,
Erin, say park I mean a landscaped area with some paved paths, lots of shade,
and a few bamboo benches.
There is a
small roofed structure about to fall over and the occasional garbage pile being
burned.
It is not the large grassy park
with a play structure I often dream of taking the boys to, but there is so much
shade from the surrounding trees it is quite a pleasant place to visit.
On Saturday we noticed two large cows tied to
trees in the park.
I could not
believe it!
The park has been home to
building materials for houses being renovated and rice field plowing machines
for sale, so why not cows.
It shouldn’t
have surprised me, especially with the upcoming holiday, but it did.
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| Two new additions to the park with two very excited boys. |
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| We spent most of an hour looking at the cows and learning what a 'cow pie' is, right in our complex! |
Yesterday, Tuesday, was the
second largest holiday of the year. The
majority of the population celebrate it by killing a cow or goat,
depending on financial ability. The meat
is then shared with the poor and also cooked as part of the day’s celebratory
meal. When we first noticed the cows we
where told they were to be killed there in the park. Last year John and Caedmon accompanied our
host dad to the killing of his cows, so this year we thought we’d just go
outside to the park. By Tuesday morning
though the cows had been moved to the far end of the complex where the owner
killed them in front of his house instead.
The boys, only, where slightly disappointed to not be able to watch.
We were invited over to a tutor’s
house to eat dinner with her family that evening. We
enjoyed two varieties of wrapped rice, goat, chicken, noodles, and
vegetables. Today we ate lunch with
our host parents. We had wrapped rice
and beef cooked three different ways. The
flavor of one in particular I really enjoyed; tasting like it might contain
coconut. After placing another piece on
my plate I noticed the texture of the meat was slightly different. I’m pretty sure that dish was made mostly
from organ meat (heart, liver, lungs).
The flavor was good, but the texture is just not appealing to me. As we left our host mom gave us a bag full of
beef. As she handed it to me she
explained it was cooked so it would keep longer, but not seasoned at all. It looked rather strange, was room temperature, and smelled strange. I heated it up in the
pressure cooked with some BBQ sauce and we ate it for dinner, so hopefully all
will be well tomorrow J. Throughout
the day we were also gifted with many of the wrapped rice varieties.
We are still having new experiences after more than a year! Enjoy a few extra pictures from
the weekend as well!
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| Three varieties of wrapped rice. Each has a different name, uses different leaves, and at least one a different kind of rice. |
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| Cooked beef given to us. |
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| Limes from our back yard. John went crazy on Saturday picking limes for our breakfast. |
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| The longest paint brush I've ever seen! |
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| A wooden structure built in front of a home for special occasions, usually weddings. |
