Things are just not going our way for our assignments that we have been given by our bosses who think they are so smooth! :) The museum, that we got into upon our second attempt, did not have the exhibit we needed to see and the mosque was closed for repair! The museum has recently gotten two new exhibits. One exhibit promotes tolerance, it is posters from all over Europe. Tolerance is DEFINITELY something people could use a little more of over here. We get so upset every time the more prominent people group bad mouth the people group we are working with. Today, one of our taxi drivers felt the need to degrade our people group to us. Well, Katie had heard enough of it and said "Don't you think that any of them are nice people?", he said "hmm" and changed the conversation to where we lived. He wasn't happy with that either, because the town we live in is primarily made up of the lower people group. The more we observe the situation here, the sadder it is. It is exactly the same situation that the south was going through in the 60's. I guess I was just naive enough to believe that people had moved passed that way of thinking. I was wrong.
On to more fun things! We had "lupper" as Katie called it (lunch + supper) with a friend of ours after our defeated morning. Going back to the "lupper" terminology, I was surprised after thinking about it, that I had never heard that one from my Daddy. He is pretty good at that kind of talking as all of you know! :)We ate at our favorite Italian place here in town. It is a treat to get any food that is not the traditional food for this country. When we eat out, we eat a lot of pizza (don't get excited I am not in Italy I assure you), grilled chicken (mmm, my favorite)and beef, and salad. The traditional salad here is called a Shopske salad. It is a salad consisting of diced cucumbers and tomatoes, shredded feta cheese, and ONE olive (never 2). Lettuce is a delicacy! We are landlocked and they depend only on what they grow and can supply. Which I guess is good in theory. Our friend that we ate with is such a sweet person. She is very quiet, but speaks and understands a lot of English! We usually try to catch her by herself so she can open up.
Our classes continue to go well. This is the last week of this session. We are still averaging about 12. Mine and Katie's class was struggling with practicing their English during class, so I came up with a little strategy. At the beginning of class we gave each of the four girls an envelope with 10 playing cards in them. The rule was, if they spoke in their language(s) they got a card taken away. The reward at the end of the two hours was if they had at least three playing cards left in the envelope they got a chocolate bar. At the end of the class all four girls had 10 cards left! Very exciting!
After class tonight we walked down to the park with some of our friends/students to hang out. I was shocked to see what hanging out at the park meant. There were people everywhere! People were riding scooters up and down the sidewalks, riding bikes everywhere, there were no empty benches, they were laying on blankets, and there were kids all over the small playground. The best part was there was a man selling cotton candy!! I ate some just for Whitney Bryant! I must say its the first time I have ever seen the sugar being turned into cotton candy by fire. It kept sparking while I was waiting for mine...sure it was a completely safe machine!
Well it's about time for me to head back down to our house. It's 1:30 a.m. here and we have an early bus to catch, hopefully successfully! Oh, and there should be more pictures tomorrow.
