Falliday Fotos

Here are some photos of what we've been up to this week!!

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Photo #6--Our house: 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (with no bath tubs though), a wonderful kitchen, and cozy living room. Video tour coming soon!Photo #7--Our neighbors: Two doors down live these wonderful ladies. The baby's name translated into English is Pumpkin...! The older daughter knows some English and likes to practice sometimes. The girls call me Chi, which means older sister :)
Photo #8--Babysitting: The other night we watched the kids of some of our friends from the International Fellowship. They are here working at Bread of Life, a Western bakery & restaurant that employs young, deaf Vietnamese. They've been here for a few months, and hadn't had a date night in awhile. We loved hanging out with their kids for the night!
Photo #9--Juicer: Last June, before we left Vietnam, we were blessed with many wedding gifts from our friends here. One of them was a juicer! I have been somewhat intimidated to use it, because of the lengthy process of cleaning it after. I finally got it out this week after a friend told me she uses hers everyday and loves it.

Photo #10--Juicing buddy: My friend Emily wanted to try it out too, so she came over and we juiced squash, pineapple, celery, apple, and some unknown (to us) leafy green vegetable. It was good! We saved a jar each for our husbands to try. Emily and I thought it tasted great, and Pedro seemed to like it too!

Holiday Season in Photos

I don't know about you but I love Fall, and the "warmth" and coziness that comes along with it. Fall looks quite different in Southeast Asia than it does in the Pacific Northwest, but with rainy days and an early setting sun, there are enough similarities for me.

The similarities include events and activities that go along with the rain and early setting sun: staying home, reading, watching movies, impromptu dance parties, game nights with friends, baking with neighbors and dinner parties. I love spending time with friends, and also cozy at home. There's a lot of bonding and friendship building that happens when people are inside together, avoiding the rain & cold (yes, it gets cold in Vietnam!).

For the remaining weeks of 2011, I'm going to try to document our holiday activities and outings with pictures. I want this season to last as long as possible, so here I am stating that as far as I am concerned, it is the holiday season.

(I've been making pumpkin bread and listening to Christmas music for the past month...)

Happy Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Photo #1--Fall food: My first attempt at beef, carrot & potato stew. It turned out pretty yummy!

Photo #2--Happy husband: Pedro enjoyed the harvest-colored meal :)

Photo #3--Women's Day with Victory House: At Orphan Voice we house girls who have aged out of the orphanages, in order to give them a safe place to live, go to school, and learn life skills with a Believing house mother. For Women's Day (about equivalent to Valentine's Day in the US) we took them some flowers to honor them. They were excited to receive the small gift.

Photo #4--Women's Day with Pedro: Pedro took me out to dinner for Women's Day! (He also brought home for me a rose and a Snickers bar!!)

Photo #5--Com Nhieu (Rice in a clay pot): Women's Day meal. Very delicious!

More pictures and holiday stories coming soon! Have a wonderful time making your own memories this holiday season :)

Blessings on you and your family!

why i love aluminum foil

On weekends, Audrey and I usually play it by ear as far as plans go, but for the most part, we like to lay low and stay at home and relax. This is mostly because of our schedules during the week, which don't really allow us to spend a lot of time together to just hang out and relax. This past Saturday we stayed at home, except for about two hours to go to wrship practice at chrch for Sunday's service, and to go buy some groceries. We had talked about it, and decided that I'd be cooking Puerto Rican food, as Audrey loves it (and I was kinda craving it, too).




This is what the end result looks like
Anyway, as I was cooking the PR-style beef steak this time, I got burned really bad. The reason for this was because we don't really have a lid for our frying pan, so we use the only metal bowl that can actually cover the pan.

 

 The culprit
If you've never gotten burned before, it hurts. It really hurts. The problem isn't so much the initial burn (although that's pretty bad on its own), but the burning pain you get just a couple of seconds after taking your fingers away from the cool running water, ice, or whatever you're using to soothe the pain. In my case, I let my fingers rest on the cold water jar, but once we finished dinner, I kept them in water, which seemed to help. After some minutes of pain (during dinner) I decided I'd google to see if there were any home remedies to help with my problem. It turns out, aluminum foil helps with burns. I don't know exactly, but it has something to do with making your skin sweat, which helps the burn (the sodium in your sweat is what helps, supposedly). I read many stories, and people would say that wrapping the burn in foil would still make it hurt badly for 5-10 minutes, but then the pain would go away. So, I decided to give it a try:

 

 Best home remedy ever.
Sure enough, it worked. After about 20 minutes, the pain was gone. I was able to take the foil off, and enjoy the rest of my evening. Now, my fingers still look ugly (huge blisters showed up), but I'm pain-free and on the way to recovery.

 

Aluminum foil. Who would've thought.