Easter 2012

This post is over a year old.  There have been many events happen in the Deschaine household since but I wanted to finish documenting our time overseas.  Hopefully, over the next few months I will find the time to finish blogging about our fantastic time.  Wtihout further ado...here is Easter 2012.

 

We had a wonderful Easter this year.  Even though school is typically held on Sundays, Brian had no school on Sunday or Monday.  The only church service on Easter was the sunrise service, which is held at 6am...a whole 2 and a half hours before BJ normally gets up!  We decided that we would forego the service and have a family devotional instead before breakfast. 

After our devotional and breakfast, we gave BJ his Easter basket.  It took him a while to open it since he wanted to play with everything!

BJ playing with his new wooden bus.

Brian got BJ a bubble gun. He used all the bubbles up in about 2 minutes making this bubble mountain.

We also had an indoor Easter egg hunt. 

BJ was so excited to discover that some of the eggs had chocolate in them!  He got to eat 1 piece of chocolate after the hunt.

For lunch we were invited to our friends' house.  In all, there were 16 of us there for the meal.  We had an AMAZING meal!  We had bacon wrapped pineapple for an appetizer and a baked ham for our meal!  You don't understand!  You CAN NOT get any pork products here.  This meat came from a German butcher in the capital city some 3 hours away.  We were in heaven!!   

BJ and his pal, Kelyn, sat next to each other during the meal.

For dessert we had many options such as pecan pie, coconut custard pie, and apple pie.  BJ opted for the chocolate cupcake! To quote BJ, "Yum.Yum!" 

Sites of the City

I intended to post this a long time ago but life got busy. We are currently preparing for our return trip to the United States.  We leave this Friday to go to the capital city and then leave on Sunday (Father's Day!) for the US.  This will most likely be my last post before we return home but I do intend to continue posting after our return.  There is still so much I have to write!! 

Here are some photos of what we see around town: 

 

Grocery markets with car carts!! (Notice the sweatshirt...dead giveaway that this was taken when we first got here.  You cannot wear long sleeves now in this 100 degree weather!!)
 

The pharmacy. 

 Interesting fact:  If you need any procedures done at the nearby hospital you have to go to the pharmacy and buy EVERYTHING yourself....anesthetic, sterile needles, gloves, etc.  The doctors give you a list of things to buy. 

Tempo.

Usually these vehicles are overflowing with riders.  Was kinda concerned about the little kid sitting in the front seat!

Yes, there is a rickshaw underneath all that!

A lady carrying sticks on her head.

The rearview of a tempo. See...I told you they are usually overflowing!

A memorial for their war of independence.

Instead of a truck, most items are transported this way.

This is a port city.

There are a couple restaurants that have play areas for children.

A view of poor housing.  This is only a 7 minute walk from our home.

A view of the open sewage.

You need to watch where you are walking since there is also open sewage on the sides of the road.

This photo is taken in our yard looking out onto the street.  This person is selling vegetables. Every day you can hear them yelling in the streets to advertise their produce.  BJ likes to yell back :)

This is a butcher shop.  You can see the meat hanging from the eaves.  This is why they tell us to have our house help do our food shopping.  You really don't want to know where your food comes from.

So many rickshaws and baby taxis!

Beggars outside a mosque.

Food stands with the sewer right behind it.  We did not partake in any food purchased at a vendor.  Our stomachs would not be able to handle it.

There is Pizza Hut, KFC, and Baskin Robbins stores :)

A crowded intersection.

Playdate at an arcade!

There are random cows all over the city!

Turtle Pond

Before we came here we did some research on what sites to see around the city.  One place of interest we came across was a sacred turtle pond.  Legend has it that in the 13th century a saint turned a group of sinners into turtles to live eternally in this pond instead of in hell (my very loose interpretation of the story).  An interesting note on these turtles is that they were thought to be totally extinct but then 150-300 turtles were discovered in this pond.  The black softshell turtles are classified now as extinct in the wild.  The manmade pond is part of a shrine in the city.  We had the opportunity on the Saturday of Easter weekend to take a ride out to this shrine to see the turtles.  We only visited for an hour but there were many sites to behold. 

The Hazrat Sultan Bayazid Bastami shrine.

You can feed the turtles bananas by hand.  We did not for fear of falling in!

The crowd of people coming to see the turtles.

A picture by the turtle pond.

We were allowed to go up the stairs to the temple but we had to take our shoes off first.

This is the women's side.

A candle vigil.  While we were standing here a man came and blew out all the candles and incense that was burning.  Don't know what that was all about...

This is a tree with ribbons wrapped around it.

There are many poor people who come to the temple. 

Nearby is a very poor community.

Beggar children walked with us as we visited the grounds.

Many of the beggars have physical ailments. 

The shrine was under construction at the time of our visit.

The head can be used to carry many things.

A rare site...a female construction worker.