Hello Friends and Family, Friday the 12th.

Quote from Clay this Tuesday, “This has been a long week.” Mostly because of work, but here’s our home front update:

Last Sunday we attended the wedding of a co-worker’s brother. It was quite a nice experience, very colorful and a lot of music. Before the ceremony the family served breakfast to everyone. The ceremony started at 8:52, people arrived throughout the next hour or so and drifted in and out of the audience for the next 1 and a half hours. There was constant commotion, people all over the place and a stage in the front of the room adorned with bright flowers where the actual ceremony took place. The groom was up there by himself for the first 45 minutes or so with the priest going through some rituals. Then the bride walked up with her family, many of them. She had a beautiful outfit on and was carrying a coconut. We didn’t know anyone else there, so there was no one to explain what was going on. I’m guessing the coconut was an offering to the grooms family. The groom’s family held a sheet in front of the groom who was sitting on the floor with his back to the audience. The bride walked up to the stage and sat facing the groom behind the sheet. They passed several things under the sheet back and forth between the bride and groom. We couldn’t see very well, so I don’t have more detail than that. After the ceremony was over the families poured a colorful rice mixture on the bride and groom. The bride and groom poured the rice on to each other’s heads as well. Then the male guests went up to the stage offered gifts and poured rice on the couple. Once the males were done, the female guests did the same. After the ceremony they served lunch for everyone. We should have pictures up on the website this weekend.
Of course, we left because Claire needed a nap. She was all over the place over stimulated with the commotion. Oh yeah, she tripped and busted her lip open during the ceremony. Seems like a common occurrence. Anyway, our driver had parked our car and fell asleep in it, while he was asleep about 20 motorcycles parked us in. Since we left before everyone else, we were trapped. So what did our driver do? He picked up each bike and moved them out of the way. Good solution!

We are headed to the reception for this wedding this coming Sunday night, should be fun!

Tuesday morning we had spoke with Clay’s family online through software called Ivisit. We’ve been doing this since we got here, but this week was special, both sets of grandparents joined the call! What a surprise. Claire pointed at both of her great grandpa’s and said “monkey.” Made us laugh.

Claire Updates:
No more bottles! She kicked the habit this last week. It wasn’t too bad, she did pretty well. We tricked her into drinking milk out of a sippy cup by spiking it with mango juice. As Clay noted, “she doesn’t know that’s gross yet.”

She is really into throwing things away right now. She throws her diapers into the dust bin (what we call garbage cans here) and then claps in glee. It’s quite entertaining.

When you ask her what an alligator says, she claps her hands together and says, “chomp chomp”

She can tell the difference between a lion, tiger, cheetah, and leopard. Genious!

Both of these things happened before mom left, but I forgot to write about them:
-The other night we were all driving in the car and I said to Clay, “Should we give her some M-I-L-K” and she said, “milk, milk, milk.” Is it possible she understood that, no way?
-Then, I was saying something to my mom about doing something at 3:30, and Claire said, “clock, clock, clock.”

New words:
Dastairs (downstairs)
Jelly Toast
Hopper (Grasshopper)
Jeedeez (Jesus)
Dirt
Rock

Miss you all!

Sincerely,Julianna Ehlers