Rainy North Carolina

Hello from North Carolina!
I made it in late Monday night. Tuesday I got my new car, a '97 Chevy Blazer (pictures to come.) It's been nice to be able to spend time with my mom and dad, and I look forward to seeing friends at church on Sunday morning.
Please continue to pray for me as I am transitioning back into a U.S. lifestyle. I'll be speaking Dec. 30th at Coats Baptist Church. If you're in NC, I'd love to see you there! :-)
Carrie

In Louisiana

Thank you for all your prayers while I wrapped up my time in Mexico. I made it to Louisiana on Wednesday evening, and have been on-the-go since! It's been a great time to catch up with friends. Today it is raining--a good, hard, long, normal-to-Louisiana rain! After 11 months in the desert, I almost want to go play in it! :-)

More Thanksgiving Pictures

Pablo el Pavo's first bath (and last for that matter!)

The whole family: Raul & Sarai, Me, Raul's sister & parents, Ruben & Margarita, Jason, Judit

Teaching Sarai about the wish bone

We like to go out for chicken wings--so Sarai is taking her picture with the TURKEY WING! :-)

Thanksgiving Day

This Thursday, I had the blessing of cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my good friends from church. We had a fun time cooking all day, then had a late dinner (8pm). It was great to spend time with them, and fun to be able to cook a traditional American meal for them. They had never celebrated Thanksgiving before, but they decided they want to make it their own tradition in their family! :-)

Turkey in Spanish is "pavo", so this is "Pablo el Pavo".
The before picture...

And the after picture! Ruben getting ready to carve Pablo.

Traditional Thanksgiving food

The funny thing, was that they didn't know how to "serve" their plates. They didn't know what went where, and what was supposed to go with what. After some coaching, they did great, and went back for seconds when they knew they liked the food!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Revolution Day Parade

November 20th is Revolution Day in Mexico, and there was a huge parade to honor the day. We were just down the road from the state governor, so there was a LOT of security nearby! Many of the schools have students walk to represent them, and in a city of nearly 1 million, that equals one BIG PARADE!

The military came by early on in the parade with the Mexican flag.

There were a lot of dancers!These kids re-enacted a battle scene between the peasants and the military."Pancho Villa"--the only man to ever invade the U.S.Father Hidalgo: Initiated the Revolution early when the military discovered the plans.

I'm hoping I'll be able to get a video of one of the dances on here. Hope you enjoyed the Revolution Day Parade!

Some Miscellaneous--3 weeks...

A few weeks ago, some friends and I went for dinner at a churrascaria. This is a Brasilian-style restaurant, where meat is brought on a spit, and freshly carved onto your plate. It's great!

Remember Rous? We were able to go to a quincenera a few weeks ago. Our pastor's daughter turned 15, and there was a church service and party held in her honor.

Next week, I'm making Thanksgiving dinner for some of my Mexican friends. Do you have any special Thanksgiving traditions? My family doesn't have any in particular other than EATING! So, I will do my best to pass this tradition on to my Mexican friends! :-)

4 Weeks...

Today is Tuesday. In four weeks, I will be finishing up packing and saying goodbyes to leave Mexico. It's hard to believe how quickly the past ten months have flown by. These next four weeks will be very busy as I continue to study Spanish, pushing new aspects of Spanish grammar, and getting my things sold or packed. The To Do list seems to keep growing rather than shrinking!

Language:
In the past two weeks, I have begun trying to learn two new verb tenses. Do you remember learning "Perfect" tenses? I'm doing present perfect and past perfect (ie--I have eaten and I had eaten). These are fairly easy to learn, because I only have to change the helping verb. Over the weekend I was able to spend quite a bit of time with Spanish-speaking friends, and they were as excited as I was when I heard the new verb tenses. God has blessed me with great friends here, who get excited with me as I learn new things!

Prayer Requests:
1--Time Management: I have a lot to do in four weeks time.
2--Spanish Study: My Spanish study will be wrapping up in early December, but I am NOT done! I'll have about another year when I get to Paraguay, and I don't want to lose what I already have learned while I am in Missouri.
3--Farewells & Transitions: I'll be saying goodbye to many good friends here in Mexico, and don't know when I'll be back down to visit them. Pray also for the transition to the U.S., as I will have been here 11 months. My 'normal' now consists of Mexican daily things, and everything will change again as I head back to the U.S. Pray for a good transition back.
4--Walk with the Lord: That during this time of change, I will keep my eyes on the Lord.

Thank you so much for taking these requests boldly before the throne of GRACE!
Carrie

Globos

This weekend was the Hot Air Balloon Festival here in Chihuahua. I got to go with Judit, Sarai, and Raul. We had a great time watching them set up the balloons and taking a lot of pictures. I guess we looked like we knew what we were doing with our cameras, because two different families came up to us to say they didn't know how to make their cameras work. We all wanted the balloons, and many of us wanted to be in a photo or two with the balloons. In the dark, that was pretty difficult! With the flash you could see every dust speck in the air, and there were certainly a lot! :-)

Judit and I wandered off to take pictures. You can't tell, but there's a pretty balloon behind us!

They set up all the fair rides, too!

Me with the FIESTA balloon

This guy had a purple wig on!

Going UP!

Thanks for visiting!!

Global Warming

This morning as I was waking up, I heard a funny noise...

I thought maybe it was hailing...

So I jumped out of bed and ran to the window to see what was the matter...

Only to discover...

SNOW ACCUMULATION!

It snowed, flurried, and sleeted for a few hours this morning.
This is only the second time in the past two years this has happened in Chihuahua.

Don't worry though--it's supposed to back up to 77 degrees by Sunday!

I Spy Something...GREEN!

I love the color green--I can't say it's my favorite because I think I just like colors! But I was very happy to see this guy outside today:

Learning Family Relationships

When I first arrived in Mexico, one of the first things I learned in Spanish was how to say who I was related to and how I was related to them. So I learned things like, "abuelos" (grandparents), "primos" (cousins), and "hermano" (brother).

Today during a language session, I got a "surprise" revisit to family relationships. Somehow the song "I'm My Own Grandpa" came up, and since I have it on my computer, we listened to it. My language helper is very good at English, so she was able to follow along for most of the song--much better than my first time hearing it! We drew a diagram of "Grandpa's" family which never forks:
The benefit of this? ... Well, I was able to practice describing how they were related to each other--using relationships I know, and we found a few new ones, like "tio abuelo" (great uncle).

If you want to here the song, you can click on the song title above and listen on YouTube with a graph. You can also click on the photo to make it bigger!

Not my own grandma,
Carrie

A Morning Visitor

This little fellow was outside this morning--sure am glad I didn't walk into him! He wasn't too interested in talking.

Late Night Musings...

I went to bed early tonight, but failed to fall asleep, so I thought I'd say hi. I was laying here and heard water, so I got up and tried to find it. If you've seen the earlier post with the video of my house, you saw that there aren't many options for dripping water. All the plumbing seems to have some slight leak, and I wasn't looking forward to finding my floor wet in the morning.

It wasn't near the kitchen...

it wasn't near the bathroom...

so I checked my bedroom window and heard the neighbors' shower! Oh the joys of close houses! :-)

Yesterday I went to Cuauhtémoc to visit friends and go ice skating. It was nice to be back on a rink! Cuauhtémoc is largely a Mennonite community. The Mennonites came down from Canada around the 1920s to farm the land in Mexico. Being from Pennsylvania, it's nice to feel a bit "at home" over there. This picture is from the trip:

Yes, a baby deer. Think "Bambi"...he's from the mountain area of Mexico, and lost his mama, so one of the missionaries brought him into town. He's currently growing up at the house where our friends were staying. I called him Bambi, but was quickly corrected--it's "Barbie". (Think Bar-B-Q...)

Hope you all have a great week! :-)

With the Youth

This week is the week of Independence Day here in Mexico, and the youth had a party Saturday night.

Here are some of the youth playing "Doctor". One team holds hands and twists themselves up as much as possible. One person from the other team is the Doctor and comes over to untwist them all.

This game was...messy...The goal was to use your face to find a small item inside the flour.

Judit and I

Chiles Rellenos

Friday I learned how to make a Mexican dish that I love: chile relleno. Here's how Claudia and I made it:

First, "toast" poblano chiles over a flame until the skin is blackened. Oil the skin so it doesn't stick to the pan. Toasting the chiles helps the skin peel off easier.

Second, peel the skin off.

Cut the chiles in half, and insert cheese. We used a cheese native to Chihuahua that seems to be similar to a cheddar/mozzerella mix. If you have toothpicks, this would be a great time to use them to hold the two sides back together.

Whip egg whites until fluffy, and dip the chile first into the egg white, then into a bowl of flour.

Fry in hot oil until browned, warm up tortillas, and enjoy! We sure did!

Mi Casita

Here's a brief video of my house in Mexico:

Hope you enjoyed the tour! :-)

"I've never seen a chicken in a grocery store!"

"I've never seen a chicken in a grocery store!" I said in amazement. My friend quickly followed it up with "Well, not alive!" I'm not sure why yet, but there were probably about 25-30 chicks in a cage above the eggs. You'll notice all the red, white, and green in the photo also--Independence Day is quickly approaching, so I'll be learning about how Mexicans celebrate September 15th.

Tuna...Fruit?

You may have seen this "Prickly Pear" Cactus fruit at the grocery store before. Here in Mexico, it is called "tuna". I have about 20 lbs of it in my fridge right now, waiting to be frozen whole and in juice. There are many different things you can do with tuna, from jelly, to juice, to salad dressing! I'm looking forwards to trying it in salad dressing! :-)

SUMMER FUN

Here's a glimpse of my summer:

Make a Smilebox slideshow