Cat Feeding Time!

A friend of mine recently asked us to feed her cat while she was out of town for a week. When we got to her house all of the doors were locked, and our keys would not open any of them. After several phone calls and an attempt to kick in the door you see here we realized we were not going to be able to get into the house. We ended up using our cheerleading skills from long ago and stuffing small cans of tuna and cups of water into the ventilation slots in her stone stairway. We're pretty sure by the end of the week everyone in the neighborhood knew what was going on as they peered into her garden over the wall around her house from their 2nd stories then laughed and giggled at us as we walked down the street home from her house. Well, every week there seems to be some great oddity to my life and here it was for this week!

jmay and I have enjoyed several adventures together, and I'm so glad she could see just how "fun" life can get here!!

Change

First - the most beautiful change in my life for these few weeks is that jmay is here!!! One of the most amazing people I know and best friends from the states is here to chill with me. YAY!

Now on to the real point...money change....

When you buy something and are owed changed it's not always necessary that be paid to you in money....here are some recent examples....

Nail polish:

jmay bought a fine purse in one of the capitol's markets and received this lovely blue nail polish instead of the 50 cents she was owed:

Flowers:

I bought jmay a "lei" of sorts to greet her with at the airport and received my change in loose jasmine flowers...

Market Picture & Thoughts

We went down to one of my favorite restaurants last night - "the fish restaurant." It's on the roof of a building in the middle of the fish and vegetable market, that was absolutely bustling last night. Here's a pic:

Sometimes when I'm sitting eating dinner and looking at scenes like this I feel insanely distant from my "old life" that I left somewhere far behind a year ago. But as I have become close to many people here, I've discovered similarities between us that have simply amazed me. There's something about people that prevents us from being too different from each other. It's more obvious to me than ever before that we were formed in the image of One who loves, gets jealous, has a Spirit, desires justice and unity and exists as separate members of a loving community. It's pretty beautiful. Of course, it's all a little off and messed up at the moment due to our inability to maintain such a wonderful creation, but I have no doubt that "this too shall be made right." (You can thank d. webb for that last phrasing being in my mind. He's been on the jukebox here a lot lately).