Marvelous May

It's beautiful here...

Happy May 1st!

May 1st is kinda like Labor Day here in EA. Which means...no school! We decided to go visit some friends and climb a mountain with them since the weather is BEAUTIFUL!

But we ran into a lil bump, literally, along the way to their school.

We ended up taking a van to their school b/c on big holidays taxi's are scarce and buses are hauling 50+. But the van driver wasn't exactly sure where he was going, and after taking us to the wrong school, we found ourselves riding down a bumply lil side rode going "too fast for conditions." Now we were only going about 35mph when ran over an old broken speed bump, but we lost a pipe or something as soon as we hit it. So we found ourselves stranded on this lil alley w/ no transportation and not a clue where we were in relation to where we wanted to go. Thankfully, one of our friends who was waiting on us at the school found a van that was willing to take her off looking for us! We flagged down a lil motorcyclist who was able to tell our friend's van driver on the phone where we were, and they were able to come to the rescue! The adventures of public transportation! :)

But we finally made it to the mountain and enjoyed an awesome afternoon with friends!

The Dating Game

So I've ran into a growing trend here in some of the big cities in EA. When I was walking around a park with a friend the other day we came across hundreds of personal ads, you know the kind where you list your age, job, appearance, hobbies, etc...

and next thing I know we come across nearly 200 or so people my parents age and older holding the personal ads and sharing pictures of their son/daughter...so turns out that the parents are the ones that made the personal ad for their adult child, and are the ones looking at other personal ads and talking with other parents to find a date/mate for their son/daughter.Yeah, I'm still not sure what to think about this, but it was really interesting none the less.But I was SO excited to spend time with my old friend, Cat.

Backpacking

Well kinda...I got the awesome opportunity to travel in country with a dear friend, Stacie, and live outta my polka-dot girly backpack for 5 days. Though we definitely did a lot of walking, there wasn't any hiking involved. My hair products and computer kinda weighed me down though. :) I got to experience an overnight train ride for the first time! Each train car has several compartments, and each compartment has 6 beds, 3 high side by side. The very bottom bunk has the most room, like you can actually sit up straight. I got some decent rest, even though there were some furocious snoorers around me. :)
I found BARBIE Uno in a foriegn toy store right before we left! So we kept ourselves entertained, along with the people around us! Imagine what these people were thinking with their only reference point for American card games being with a deck of Barbie Uno cards!

So here's a few pics from our journey & the peeps we met:

People from all over this city were coming to this spring to get water...

We asked this man if it was safe to drink the water straight from the spring, without boiling it, b/c we'd seen lots of people doing it...but his response made us laugh when he said the some people can, but that speaking truthfully he couldn't...guess ya know what that means!
These are keychains with LIVE fish!

Too cute!

And some cute grandpas!

Living Hope

I'm not even really sure where to begin or what to tell, but it's been an awesome month, and his mercies have been new every morning! These are a few last shots I got with my camera before it broke...

Thanks so much for the lifts!!! He's answering!!!

Weekend Getaway

We took some time to retreat this past weekend...here's some pics from our "getaway":

Just in case...

Just in case you can't find your keys and make it up the flight of stairs to your apt... someone was nice enough to leave this lil contribution at the entrance (for over a week).