Summer Time & Squatty Potties

Do you know what a squatty potty is? If you have never seen one or experienced one you are in for quite the experience. It's basically a hole in the ground that you stand on top of and do your business. You better have some good aim too! Some are very humble while others have porcelain. It all depends on where you are at the time. Wikipedia calls it a squat toliet. Nationals prefer these squatty potties to our western toilets. You may even catch the nationals standing on top of our western toilets because they believe that squatty potties are more hygienic. Squatty potty stools are actually being marketed now. You can look them up at www.squattypotty.com. This is what you will encounter pretty much on a daily basis when you visit a non-western country. This is their typical public toliets. So as you can imagine, if you have children, you would need to train them in using the squatty. I can recall a friend who was training her son on how to use the squatty. Her son was so excited about this new adventure he created his own squatty in his bedroom with a Quaker Oats can. Talk about working on aim! I must admit, you gotta give the boy some credit with his imagintion and creativity. Never and I mean NEVER did I think I would live to tell a similar story. ;) As most of you know, we are getting some new wallpaper in our apartment. It is not in a livable condition at the moment. Therefore, we moved into our friend's house for a week. We found out the day before we moved in that their sewer pipe had broken and that we would need to use their outhouse squatty potty for the next 10 days. This family is western, and so their outhouse had not been used in years and was filled with bugs. Oh, you can imagine how that did not excite this 7 month pregnant woman! I had Matt google, yes google, "what to do if your sewer pipe breaks?" He came up with some pretty intresting and creative solutions to our problem. Our favorite of which was finding a big bucket, lining it with trash bags, and filling it with kitty litter. Now, I am not going to admit who actually used this method, especially in the middle of the night, but I personally found this to be a genius idea, amusing, and embarrasing all at the same time. Ok let's just admit it, my husband had just created for me my very own personal squatty bucket with kitty litter that let out a fresh scent when I peed on it! hahahahahaha!!!!! I can see you all laughing now. This is life overseas friends. This is the stuff books are written about. Also, the same week, summer defiitely hit our city. You would never imagine our country getting hot. If you know where we live, you might think that it is always cold or that it is only mildly warm in the summer, but you are wrong. We have two extremes, cold and hot. The high was 97 one day. Because we live in a country that has winter 7-9 months of the year, air conditioning is a luxury. So my experience living in 97 degree weather with only one fan, no air conditiong and peeing on kitty litter has got to be the highlight of our 6 months living overseas. Hope you feel blessed where you are today! ;) I know that I will be better because of this one day, and now I have a story for the grandkids! On a side note: We did buy a swimming pool that Harper could play in and that I could also sit in with her to keep cool during the afternoons.

Experience a New Culture #3

Here are the promised videos.  I had to upload them to You Tube because they were too big to upload straight on the blog.  Here are the links.  Two of the videos are of some awesome drum skills and the longest video is of their amazing, fast, and upbeat dancing.  Notice their feet and how they dance on their knees.  Enjoy and come visit us so you can experience this culture for yourself! ;)



'A' people dancing

Drum Line #1

Drum Line #2

Experience a New Culture #2

In their dancing they are not supposed to ever touch.  Both the men and women dance on their toes at times.  It is a very upbeat and hard dance.  They are considered to be one of the oldest nations in the world.  They are an indigenous people and as you can see, warriors.  Harper correctly identified them as "princes and princesses."   She said she can't wait to go see the princesses dance again.  She loved the concert as much as we did!

Experience a New Culture #1

Living in another country provides you with the rich opportunity of exploring and learning from new cultures.  It is a unique opportunity and will give you a new worldview.  I would love to share just a taste of the culture where we live with you.  I will post pictures from an amazing dance concert that we attended a little over a month ago.  You will see our new culture dressed in traditional clothing, and I will also upload a video of their dancing for your enjoyment.  Their dancing will blow you away.  I loved getting a glimpse of their culture and even wish I saw more of it on the streets.  Enjoy!

A difference in hair styles

Every day, when I leave for class, Harper's hair looks like this,

but when I get home her hair looks like this!  She likes the finished product, but it sure is a pain to take out!

Taking a walk

Last week, I decided to take a walk around the city for some exercise and to just get lost and explore.  Well, as it turns out, it's pretty hard to get lost in our city.  You can walk from one end to the other in about 40 min, but it was fun to explore.  I decided to capture some of the sights that I saw along my walk and share them with you.  You will see different style homes, buildings, and places of worship.  Hope you enjoy my walking tour.  I hope to do more and share more pictures of our city with you.  I still find the market intimidating and will have to get pictures of buying meat, which I find the most intimidating, for you later.  For now enjoy!

Not sure if this is a house or what?!