Multiple Holidays

    The week of the 11th, this year, resulted in three holidays within one week.  Sunday was the second largest holiday of the year.  This holiday consists of the majority population taking part in killing a cow or goat in remembrance of a prophet's sacrifice.  We expected the visiting of neighbors to be similar to the larger holiday this past June.  In preparation, I made food the day before and made sure all was ready early that morning.  We decided to serve an American menu of hotdogs and watermelon.
    This holiday turned out to much different than we expected.  To begin with, we didn't have any visitors first thing in the morning.  We quickly found out the animal killing and butchering took priority in the morning.  Secondly, the visitors we did have turned out to be about 20 children and only two of our adult neighbors.  We ended up eating hotdogs for the rest of the day!

View from our back porch.

The killing, and butchering, of four goats and one cow took place right behind our house!

      The following Tuesday was a city wide parade highlighting local culture and individual neighborhoods.  We were invited to take part in the parade with The Labor Office, which has direct involvement in John's work visa.  The parade turned out to be about 200 yards long and a quick appearance in front of the Mayor.  We are pretty sure the parade was in celebration of Independence day, which was the following Saturday.

The Labor Office group preparing for the parade.

We waited at least an hour to get started, then took at least another hour to walk the 200 yds to the Mayor's viewing section.  

Our group waiting and lining up.  

We walked to the big red roof in the upper right.

     Thursday was the anniversary of the founding of the city we live in.  So this day also brought additional festivities.  In various neighborhoods, ours included, there was a small parade of women marching and giving small performances.

Marching

Performing before judges

     Saturday was Independence day.  The largest festivities took place down town.  As we keep Saturday as a family day, we stayed at home enjoying each other's company and didn't catch any of the celebrations.

Big Events

The end of July brought a group from the States.  They conducted a seminar for middle school and high school English Teachers from around the province.  The presenters had thoroughly prepared material and creatively adjusted to the needs of the attendees.  Though it proved to be a very busy week for John, we were blessed to have each of the eight the presenters over to our house for dinner.

John inviting the head of the school district to the training.

Welcome speech by John's boss

A Session

Another Session

The first week of August we celebrated Caedmon’s birthday!  Caedmon is now 11 and going into the sixth grade.  He still enjoys being where the people are and playing games; board games, sports, and those on the iPad.  Many of his presents this year revolved around these likes. 

Opening presents in the morning.  

Evangeline wanted to do all the opening.  Caedmon did a great job sharing the honors

Pull-apart Monkey Bread

Basketball hoop present.

John, himself, constructed the backboard, window protective sign, and put up the hoop and boards.

Birthday Cake

We bought trick candles in the big city, which turned out to be very hard completely extinguish.  

Eleven Years Old

Caedmon received a ping-pong net to attach to a table.  

We bought a piece of plywood to enlarge our dinning room table to a better size for a game.

We held to our tradition of allowing the birthday kid to pick their menu for the day.  Since Caedmon’s favorite foods are Italian and anything sweet, he chose Monkey Bread for breakfast, ravioli for lunch, and gnocchi for dinner.  He also requested a blue three layer cake.  

All the restaurants here in Barat serve only local food.  Though we are able to buy spaghetti noodles at the small convenience stores, other Italian products, such as ravioli and gnocchi, are nonexistent.  So in agreeing to Caedmon’s menu, it became necessary to make everything from scratch.  Unfortunately this also meant the ricotta filling for the ravioli had to be made from scratch.  As the birthday cake and frosting were included in this cooking extravaganza, I stopped at just a two layer cake.  I enjoy making foods from scratch and creating things we cannot buy, but it may be the last year the whole menu is homemade.  

We included our tradition of a piñata in the day's festivities.  This was quite a cultural experience in our new neighborhood.  None of the kids had ever seen one, let along knew how to play.  We didn't send out invitations, but Caedmon did intentionally invited two friends over for the piñata.  It turned out to be a mass candy dash when the piñata broke as there were at least 25 kids that came to watch.  

Though birthday parties are not a common tradition here, presents are given when they do occur. As we had not given the kids any notice, a handful returned that evening to bring Caedmon presents.  

Neighbor kids bringing presents.