Nov. 19:IRIS Presentations

 IRIS Presentations

The boys made their IRIS presentations tonight at youth group. It was very interesting, and they did a really great job! The kids all really seemed fascinated and asked really good questions.

Alex:

In school, there are 50-60 kids in a class, and the teacher moves from room to room. There is no air conditioning. They have year round schooling with short breaks in between the semesters. Each semester is 13 weeks. They get off school for Muslim holidays. 90% of the students at school are Muslim.

Alex showed us a map of Nigeria & the surrounding countries. The flag is vertical stripes with green-white-green. The green is for agriculture. People do a lot of walking or riding motorcycles.

Alex discussed the bombing of Christian churches in Nigeria. People are afraid to go to church because of this. He told the true story of 3 ministers who were captured by some Muslims. The Muslims asked the clergymen to deny Christ, and 2 of them did. The Muslims killed them, because they knew that if the clergymen were asked to convert, they would lie about it and deny it later. They let the minister go that did not deny Christ. I believe there is a lesson there for all of us.

In Alex’s family there are 4 kids. One brother wants to work and not go to college, 1 sister is in college, 1 sister is admitted into college to study estate management. Alex wants to be an accountant. They have 2 cats & 2 dogs. They own a Toyota van just like ours.

The traditional way to greet an elder:

Jer:

He shared map of Egypt. Aswan (his town) produces 90% of the electricity for Egypt. Cairo, the capital of Egypt, has 12 million people. Aswan has blue water in the Nile, because it is purer than other places.

He gave everyone a bookmark made of papyrus. The kids were very excited by this.

Jer tried to explain why they all have different last names in the same family. They each have 4 names, including their father & grandfather. Women do not take their husband’s name. I would be known as Mrs. Krys at school, to show that I am married.

94% of Egyptians are Muslim, the rest are Christian. 99% of the Christians are Orthodox like he is. He is not recommended to take communion outside of his church. You should go through confession before communion. Women cover their hair for communion. You do not eat anything for 9 hours before communion. If you are late for the prayer time, you can’t take communion. His church actually has 2 sanctuaries, 1 above the other. The lower church is for families with kids, and the upper one is more calm and for mostly older people. The church service is 3 and a half hours long, and is kind of like an open house. The beginning is a prayer service that begins at 6:00 am!

Kids go to an international school or private school for the best education, but they are expensive. Most kids go to public school because you only pay for the books. It is cheap. 30% of the kids at Jer’s school are Christian because the owners of the school are Christian. Most schools have more like 10% Christian kids and the rest are Muslim. The kids are more tolerant of each other at his school. His best friend is Muslim, and the kids all get along pretty well.

Nov. 16: Our First Real Snow

 Our First Real Snow

The boys were very excited to have snow at last! This time the snow stuck to the ground! They were in business class when they saw the snow out the window. Alex raised his hand and said, “It’s snowing! Can we go out in that?” Their business teacher, Mrs. Whitlock, was kind enough to allow the boys to go outside and play in it during class. She also made a really nice video of them which I am hoping will post here. (I tried it on Facebook and it wouldn’t load). Boys being boys, the first thing they did at home when it snowed again was to write their names in the snow! Luckily, they wrote their names with their fingers on the table! For some reason, I thought this was hilarious….

 We had to teach them how to get dressed for the weather. They didn’t want to put on gloves, or hats, or mittens, etc. We did manage to get them to put a long sleeved shirt on under their coats, and we had snow pants for them. (they didn’t see the point in these). We got some of Jim’s boots for them to wear, so they wouldn’t get their shoes soaking wet and freezing, and they had trouble with this as well.  I had to teach them how to do the toggle kind of laces, because they had not seen these before. They also tried to put their boots on barefoot!!! Meanie mom that I am, I made them go put socks on! Once they were prepared, we finally let them go out. They played outside for quite a while. They tried to sled and throw snowballs (wrong kind of snow), and ended up playing football! It didn’t really matter what they did- they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Nov. 9: A Midwestern Homestyle Dinner

A Midwestern Homestyle Dinner

So today I decided to make the boys a typical, traditional, midwestern dinner. Growing up, Jim's mom made homemade beef and noodles frequently, and when we got married I got to taste them! She taught me how to make them. We LOVE this meal!

I made noodles from scratch, and told the boys how I did it (I didn't think about teaching them how to make it until too late).

We had quite a bit of pork left over from a gigantic roast earlier this week, so we made pork and gravy instead of beef and gravy. It was awesome! We also made mashed potatoes. Yum...

I had some fresh apples from my dad's trees, so I made an apple pie for the boys. We were talking the other day and they had never really had pie before. They had eaten McDonald's apple pies, but not a real one! We had a truly American meal tonight!

To top off the post, I decided to stick in a couple of more sunset shots from tonight. (The boys are going to have quite a collection! :)

And one from earlier this week...

Nov. 2: A Nigerian Dinner

Nigerian Okra Soup

Alex brought some ingredients with him to make a couple of Nigerian dishes for us. One thing he brought was dried cassava root. It has the consistency of hard dried milk, and once it is cooked up, it is like very thick oatmeal. The cassava is similar to the potato. Read to the end of the post- I tried to recreate the recipe as best as I could so you can try it, too!

Step 1- chopping the onion and pepper

Cassava prepared with boiling water. The lid went on for about 10 minutes, kind of like how we prepare minute rice.

This is the sauce, or soup. It was actually much more colorful in person. The red peppers looked really pretty!

Alex explaining how to eat the meal the traditional Nigerian way.

Karley giving it a go!

Jermaya isn't sure....

Jamo trying it....

 Another demonstration: First you make a ball and roll it up in your hands, then you dip it in the soup, then you eat it!

Explaining the process to Kaydey, who did like the cassava!

Thank you, Alex for making us a wonderful traditional Nigerian dinner! I loved the flavor of the sauce! Alex toned it down for us, and did not add any hot peppers, because he was afraid we would not be able to eat it. 

Nigerian Okra Soup

1 onion, chopped                      2 t curry

1 bag okra, chopped                black pepper to test

1 red pepper, diced                  1 T seasoned salt (Lawry’s)

Bake 2 or 3 tilapia filets

Put ½ C peanut oil in a soup pot. Sautee the onion and pepper in the oil. Add several cups of water and bring to a boil. Add the spices. Add the okra and continue boiling. The soup should be thick like a sauce. Cut tilapia up into bite sized pieces and add to soup.

Gari (Cassava)

2 cups potato flakes (best substitution for cassava I can come up with)

Boiling water

Prepare according to box.

Makes very thick mashed potatoes. Like oatmeal cookie dough thick.

How to eat: Put the soup in a bowl and the potatoes on your plate.  With your hand, take a wad of potatoes and dip it into your soup. Eat with your hand!!! When your hand gets sticky, dip it in water in a bowl by your plate.

Nov. 2: Fall Activities

Fall Activities

Each year we like to go to the pumpkin patch and the apple orchard. It is something that we love to do! This year, we waited too long and missed the boat- I was crushed! We went to the pumpkin patch first. There is a huge play area for the kids, a fall barn for the parents (decorations, jams, homemade stuff, etc.), and tons of gourds and pumpkins to buy. There is a huge corn maze, too. There are lots of fun photo ops as well. We thought they would be open this weekend since Halloween was on Friday, but we were sadly wrong. We took a couple of pictures of the boys anyway, even if they didn't get the whole experience.

the cool old truck

"turbans"- a funky squash

very bumpy PVC slide

Oct. 31: Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat

Here in the USA, we trick or treat on Halloween night, which is Oct. 31. Around here, the towns have different nights for trick or treating, so you could actually end up going to several during a week. This year, Fort Madison did theirs on Oct. 31! The downtown businesses had candy to share, and County Market had a hotdog dinner. We went to the downtown businesses and then went to a few friends' houses. We collected a nice assortment of chocolates, sweets, gum, and toothbrushes! :)

Oct. 30: Trunk or Treat

Trunk or Treat

I'm not sure how this tradition got started, but in Denmark, Iowa, the members of the UCC church hold Trunk or Treat. They pull their cars up into the parking lot & decorate their trunks and hand out candy. People really get into this, and wear costumes. One year, someone had a whole table set up to look like a mad scientist's laboratory complete with jars of body parts! Sometimes, the youth group will set up a "haunted bus" which is a draw for the little kids. This year, they had hotdogs inside the church for us to enjoy after treating.