Trail REMARKS

Blogger or Wordpress? I may be making a crossover soon. I am checking
it out and will make a determination soon. I may be not blogging
until further notice. Check back in a couple of days.

Lydia has turned into a biter. Can you see the marks on Paulina's hand. Poor girl!

The other day my language helper came by to talk about "business" matters. I knew he was looking for a full-time job sense he recently graduated from university. I realized when we agreed to work with each other that inevitably we may part ways. It turned out that he did find a job in another province. He will be gone for 2 months and then have off for 1 month. It's a unique opportunity for him. I will miss our times together.

However, that wasn't the business at hand. It turned out that he showed up at our door with his girlfriend. "Odd", I thought. Anyways, we had tea and cupcakes (that I, Mark, made) and chatted about his new job, but then it came out. "I wanted to ask if my girlfriend could stay with you for two months while I am away. When I come back I will find a new place." Woah!!! That was a shocker. Hopefully, my face didn't show it. We still are trying to figure out if he came to us out of desperation or because we had a larger place.

We told him we would think about it. We honestly did and in the end came to the decision that it wouldn't be the wisest thing to do. We did offer to help him with finances, if he needed it, to find a temporary place for her, which we felt was just as good. I'm not sure if he took it that way over the phone.

This was a tough choice and whether we made the right choice we will never know. I hope that I didn't ruin our relationship as a result of the outcome. I think it may have. *sigh*

I remember when living in Russia there was a time that I was very sick. It was probably one of the most discouraging times; being in a foreign land and receiving medical care from people you don't understand. Of course Ayuna was there to help during that time.

Of course, now, it's a little different with baby girls. Lydia came down with something last week: high temperature and cough. Some doctor friends looked at her and took some preventative measures for pertussis (whooping cough). It turned out to be some sort of virus. In a week she was back to normal. However, than Paulina got sick as well. Two days ago she was the worst, but now she is coming out of it and starting to act "normal".

Thank you for thinking of us. We were remarking pre-sickness how healthy our little ones have been with all the new environments that they have been in since their birth. It's amazing.

Today we are heading down to see the school where the students who came on the cultural exchange night are from. Did I write about that?

I am in this posting craze at the moment. Here is another short video that I took yesterday.

Early on in our marriage I said, "We should have twins, so that they can play together." Well, it finally happened, but of course only for a few seconds. Here's the proof.

I don't normally recommend movies for the fear that your tastes will be different than my tastes and then you will say, "He watched that!!!" So, please remember that the views expressed in this post are not approved by the parental guidance association or whomever those people are that rate movies.

Great Debaters is the first movie that I want to recommend. It is based on a true story and has good actors to portray the roles. You can read about the movie here.

The second movie is Evan Almighty. I think this movie is far better than it's predecessor Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey. Ayuna and I laughed many times and also made comments like, "That's a good point." We never thought that this movie would make us think on a deeper level. Again, I'm not going to give you an outline. You can read about it here.

However, I wouldn't go to Blockbuster and pay 4 something to watch it. Try to find them at your local library for free. I think newer movies you can rent for a fraction of the price. At least that's the way it when I wanted to see the movie Invincible.

Happy Watching!

The semester final is on Wednesday, so I am cramming as much information as possible into my head. The test breaks down like this: 2 parts listening, 6 parts written, and 2 parts speaking. It will be good to see how much I have retained during the semester.

It's rainy season here. We've had some reprieve the last two days, however, a few days ago we did have some flooding all the way up to our building. It turned out it was like this all over the city. The cleanup crews did a good job of getting things back to normal within 24 hours. Here are a few photos. I especially like the photo with the red umbrella. I think he/she was moving faster than the vehicles.

Free Stuff

Wouldn't you all agree that free stuff is always a cool thing no matter how big or small? I am trying to think of any times that I got something for free. Usually it was with a coupon or discount. Here you, sometimes, get gifts when you spend a larger sum of money. Here are some examples that happened to us.

1. We bought our washing machine and got a free drying rack and towels. I have to admit that was kind of cool.
2. We bought the girls b-day present and got little tupperware containers. (We needed those.)
3. I bought some baby formula at a local convenience store and got an umbrella. I had no idea what they were saying to me. They offered me something and I remembering saying, "I don't want that." Then they offered me the umbrella and all I understood was, "No money."
4. We bought a cell phone and got a bar of soap.
5. We bought a kitchen table and chairs and received some cooking oil. (I think the lady just gave us her own cooking oil.)
6. The strangest gift was when Ayuna went to buy milk she got two eggs free. Hmmm...I'm not sure if eggs is the perfect gift, but they weren't bad.
   

This is an interesting part of culture, but doesn't happen all the time, but when it does it's fun.

"Red Bags of Gravel" culture coming next.