April flew by in the gift of Easter celebrations, kindergarten teaching, meetings, birthdays and the normal day-to-day stuff that brings joy and exhaustion and everything in between.
the weather started (or more correctly is starting) to get nice; providing a reprieve from long underwear, the ability to run consistently and nasty dust storms.
April snow showers bring May dust storms in Mongolia.
The beginning of this month has been filled with a visit from a GBGM staff member, team meetings, a dear friend's graduation, cooking for the young adult fellowship, watching the interactions between a sick puppy and our scared cat for one evening and an allergy-related eye infection/thing scattered in between the regular work stuff.
As Holli described it, it's "an allergic reaction to Mongolia in [your] eye."
I blame it on the clouds of dust everywhere. Although, I think the recent 70 degree weather was a peace offering. An olive branch of allergy-covered apologies if you will.
One I will gladly accept for that matter.
Holli and I were sitting outside at one of our favorite little cafes the other day, the first time we've ever done that in our time here, and we ended up talking about how crazy perfect this weather feels to us.
And how we somehow managed to fall in love with this place even when it was -40 degrees outside and we never thought we were going to be warm again and we spent long periods of past conversations belly-aching having to go outside to buy milk or flour or some other necessity.
And now? Now it's 70 and sunny and beautiful every once in awhile (it's cold and windy and gray outside as I type this) and the place that we thought we couldn't possibly love anymore?
Is totally taking my breath away.
(and filling it with car fumes and pollution and the smell of burning trash, but that's beside my happy point)
It just proves that it's not the temperature as much as it is the people.
And now I'm going to enjoy every iota of this weather, storing it up in my memory so I can pull it out next winter when I'm silently cursing the cold and think, "See! This beautiful place isn't without it's moments."
Onto a random assortment of pictures:
Hol and I got crafty one Monday and bought traditional fabric at the black market and made skirts. This is the inside of my purple fabric and the skirt I was trying to use as a pattern:
many hours of stitching later, the finished product on Holli. Amusingly, we somehow ended up making skirts for one another instead of for ourselves. A measuring mix-up made in heaven.
Od's graduation day. Isn't she lovely?
the graduating girls of Od's class
And what's a spring-y post without pictures of our house-elf/cat Dobby? She has a strange love of dirt. When we brought this big bag of it home to do some planting/gardening, she was so excited and spent the first few minutes trying to open it.
She's also deceptively cute and snuggly-looking when sleepy. This picture? It lies. Because this cat is the same one that jumped on my head at 5:30 this morning and swatted at my ears until I got up.
(side note: Did you know Holli and I have a cooking/baking blog? Because we do. Check it out:-))
2 comments:
erin, WHAT are you going to do with Dobby when you leave? i am having a minor panic attack just thinking of it because i want to meet her! yay she loves you so much!
and what did you sew with? A NEEDLE???
We are planning on bringing her back to the States with us(if possible) :-) So hopefully you will indeed get to meet our crazy but much loved cat.
Haha- yes, we sewed with a needle and thread. :-) It took all day, but it worked.
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