so during our language tutoring tonight we were talking about coffee... Our tutor said that his wife loved coffee and the way to say you love something a whole lot is by saying:

"I snort coffee" (in Arabic of course) ... kinda like cocaine i guess.
He was trying to explain it by pretending to snort something off of the back of his hand. So I asked him could i say, "I snort pizza" in arabic and he said "bezabt", which means "exactly!"

whatever...

we read in a book tailored for our area called, Culture Shock, that the following might happen...

so last night we were coming home from the maktaba kabirr (the giant stationary store... that is about 1/8th the size of office max) and to save time our cab driver decided to go down a busy one way street... going the opposite direction.
he honked his horn a ton to let people know we were coming and landon, whose car seat was sitting in the dining room because it is worthless here, was having a great time!

haha... wow.

we had a housekeeper come in today and do her thing... place looks great. she worked for 4.5 hours for $6.08.

timmy likey

well... here are the pictures from our flat... finally...

This is a pic of our family room. we rarely sit in here except when we have guests over. the couches are not quite as comfortable as say... the sidewalk. har har

Here is our Dining area... it is just to the other side (left) of the above mentioned family room.
The chairs are a little richety... but hey... it's home.

Note Landon trying to open the cabinet doors on the buffet... we keep that sucker locked because he plays in it all day long. He loves to pull out daddy's paperwork and electronic toys and toss them around.

• 1st door on right - kitchen
• 1st door on left - TV room
• 2nd door on right - bathroom (1/2)
• 2nd door on left - Landon's room
• 3rd door on right - bathroom (full)
• straight ahead - master bedroom

Here is our kitchen...
the gigantic American style fridge is to my back (it's bigger than the one we had in the states) which is very unsualy (the size) because most fridges here are rather compact. We have a ton of cabinet space, a lovely Caloric brand gas stove and oven (which I adore) and of course the George Forman grill we brought is to the right just outside the picture... too bad the base shattered. :(
Well it still works...

Here is our first bathroom... nice and small. There is this little hole in the back of the toilet.. you can actually see it in the picture. If you look just inside the bowl there is a dot dead center... it is a hole to shoot water out of (there is a knob on the right side of the toilet) and you wash your bungey off with it (left hand only please).
That egg shaped lookin' thing hanging on the wall in the top right is our water heater.

Welcome to our humble commode. haha.
Just to the left of the cabinets you see under the sink is a washing machine... small but satisfying.

Here is Landon's crib... no pun intended... well yes there was! He also has a balcony... which remains locked.

Thought you might enjoy a nice pic of Landon and his train that was hauled about 6000+ miles. Luckily it was light weight or else he would playing with toy rocks.

And last but certainly not least...
the Arabic Love Chamber. Haha!

A taxi from our house to the babysitter to Chili's... $1.50
Fajitas for two, two drinks and an appetizer at Chili's... $19.00
Two movie tickets to the Wedding Crashers, a bottled water, a popcorn, and two ice cream bars... $10.50
Not having to worry about sex scenes in the movie because the government automatically censors them out... priceless!

Seriously y'all... it was so nice. It was wierd because two people would be in the bedroom and then bang... it would switch to having dinner in the dining room.

so i am not used to cooking with gas, which means i have never expereinced "even" cooking. wow... do i love my gas stove and oven! i was watching the pies as they cooked like a hawk! I was not about to let them burn or anything. this was big responsibility on the new guy's shoulders.
the crust was super flakey... the "priceless pecan pie" was amazing! i got it off of allrecipes.com and it had cream cheese in it too. wowsers. the pumpkin pie was great too but the pecan pie was definetly the hit.

here is that pecan pie recipe:
http://pie.allrecipes.com/az/PricelessPecanPie.asp

enjoy!

There has never been such a display of blood, sweat and tears poured into two pies in the history of man. Let me tell you what...

On Sunday we were asked to pick something to cook for the Thanksgiving dinner we are having with friends here. We heard the run down and what was missing was the deserts. So we decided to make a pecan pie... and once we kinda realized that these types of items are rare for people here, i really wanted to make a pumpkin pie too. So I have been on this quest for ingredients that has spanned 3 or 4 days now.

The hard to find items were as follows (listed in degree of difficulty from easiest to hardest)

• Karo style corn syrup - while impossible to find in our local markets which the mainly the nationals (and us) shop at... it can be found at a few expatriate markets if you know where to look.
• Crisco or some substitute (preferably one that doesn't involve butter flavored water buffalo fat... argh!) - Crisco would be another one but that same friend had a friend that had bought some for her so she gave some to her friend (me!) because she would be able to partake in said pies involving made-with-crisco pie crusts (run on sentence? yes. i know. back off!). Otherwise it would have been a 45 minute taxi ride to the other side of town where I heard it could be bought. But then later today, after I already had it I heard where I could buy it within 10 minutes.
  
• Pumpkin pie filling - We hadn't really even considered pumpkin pie until we saw a "thanksgiving combo pack" at a local market which had a can of pumpkin pie filling, a small bag of walnuts and a can of jellied cranberries. Once we did see it that is when the quest began to really do a great job of deserts for our friends. I asked at the same market saying, "Ana eize pumpkin pie filling lechen ana misch eize walnuts wa cranberries". Loosely translated that means, "I want pumpkin pie filling but I don't want the walnuts and cranberries." I said all that to basically ask do you have just the pumpkin pie filling. This was met with a search through store and a big fat "lah" or "no." So I looked at Massoud market and didn't find it, so I looked at Metro market and found it there (yay!)
  
• Pecans - Well pecans really should be the hardest because they are only available once a year at one particular store in our whole megacity, but... a friend of ours had several bags in her freezer that were shipped to her from family.
• Evaporated milk - what a nightmare! So last night I went down to exchange some money before CSI Miami came on the tele... yes CSI Miami (we get 1 hour of free American television a night from 8-9. Sunday is WWF so we don't bother)... and I stopped at a local Metro market to see if they had it. They didn't so and I ran into an expat who said it was a mission to find. He told me to go to a place called Carrefore, which is sorta like Walmart. So I did later that night but they didn't have it. So I called it night in terms of evaporated milk. Today we met with some language tutors who told us that the bigger Metro market near them might have it. They didn't. So later I tried a place, Maryam Market, recommended by an expat we met yesterday. Nope. So I tried an old faithful, Kimo market. Nada. While I was at Kimo's I saw some old friends and they said they were on the identical quest. They said that Saoudi market might have it so we joined forces and I got a free ride (and they were more polite than some taxi drivers) and lo and behold... Saoudi's had it! So I bought 11 cans... 5 for a friend and 6 for me. The end.