The other day I fried up some
bananas for a snack. Though I rarely fry
bananas, it is a common snack here, usually dipped in palm sugar while eating. The locals fry a great deal of food; bananas,
fish, chicken, tofu, tempe, cassava, and corn or cabbage fritters being the
most common. Though we truly enjoy fried
bananas and chowed down, I can’t bring myself to provide my family with
frequent fried foods. Maybe that is why
it was an additional treat.
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| Whitman dipping the bananas in palm sugar |
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So many types of bananas.
Frying bananas on the top and little bananas on the bottom.
We eat the little ones most often as they are cheap and easy to come by.
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Though many things have become ‘normal’
to us here, not all ‘new’ things have. Just the other night while reading the boys a bedtime story, Caedmon noticed a cockroach on the mobile that hangs in the middle of their room. Did you know cockroaches fly? They do! And yes we have cockroaches. We finished the story then I thought about the best thing to do. I didn't want to fill the kids room with bug spray right as they were to go to sleep, but the mobile was too high for me to reach. While as I was thinking, John reach up and swatted the bottom of the mobile causing the cockroach to either fall or fly off. We saw it fly to the wall, then scurry towards a corner of the floor we could no longer see. Unfortunately this greatly disturbed the boys. Thouogh I couldn't blame them, that night Evangeline slept by herself in the bedroom. Both boys, regardless of how much we reassured them, would not sleep in their bedroom. They traded their own beds, in an air conditioned room, for a couch on which they both slept, together, in front of a fan. I thought for sure one at least would get up and move to their bed during the night, but neither did. The next day I sprayed under everything and in all corners. I didn't see the cockroach, but after a lot more reassuring, we convinced the boys to return to their own bed that night.
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Uniforms and a 7:30 start to school have become normal.
They boys wake up by 6am on their own, no problem.
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Black and White: a common phrase, often said in English, used by people when they compare their skin with ours.
I, Erin, have not gotten use to this as we use black in a different way in English and white skin is not as beautiful in our home culture as everyone thinks it is here (too much culture attached to the words for me).
Evangeline with a neighbor's son, who was born 1 month to the day before Evangeline.
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A baby girl in the house!
We have definitely gotten use to being a family of five and have fallen into a good rhythm with naps, picking up small toys, and keeping an eye on her as she now crawls proficiently.
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Riding a motorcycle
Though I have become comfortable driving a motorcycle, I still feel slightly stressed every time I go out as traffic moves so differently here than in the States. John compares it to a sporting event that just finished. Everyone is trying to move through the same two doors at the same time - ordered chaos.
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