Visit to the village

We just found these pictures we had taken on a visit to one of the local villages here. I have added them to our blog so that you can see them, but have not organized them yet because the lights are due to go off at any minute. I will come back and oragnize and explain!

Cooking in the CIS

For those of you who have checked the blog recently, I promised pictures of the corn tortilla incedent. We are also including pictures of our first attempt to make and can our own spaghetti sauce. We bought 6 kilos of tomatoes at 5 coms/kilo, which roughly works out to be like 10 or 15 cents a kilo, or 12 lbs of tomatoes for less than a dollar. Crazy I know, but exciting. The kids love it, and it has the consistency of Prego, but tastes way better! Okay now, here goes the play by play on the pictures.

This is the lime, or limestone that you need to boil and soak the corn in. I found it at our local paint store!

This is the local popcorn that we used to make the first five tortillas.

Here is the popcorn soaking in the lime.

Our first handmade tortillas. Not so pretty, but oh so tasty!

This is our second batch of full sized corn that has been soaked over night.

Now my grandmother used her stone to grind her corn, but nowadays, we use the "Magic Bullet", which you can get here, and works great for grinding corn into masa or dough. My friend Jack would appreciate this and all of its wonderful infomercials that come with it!

Here is the masa or dough ready to be made into tortillas.

We did not have a tortilla press, but found that a cutting board works just as well!

See how nice and round they come out when you squish them.

Here is a stack of the finished product. Oh so TASTY!!!

Okay, here are the jars that have been sterilized, ready for filling.

One jar filled and one waiting!
Three jars ready to be bathed!

One jar failed. And then there were three!

The aftermath of a jar that went bad.

Corn tortillas in Central Asia

I just wanted to let you know some exciting news. For some of you, you might think we are a little strange, but it is exciting!
We can not find corn tortillas here, and did not know how important they were to us and our diet =-). So, I set out to make my own, and I DID IT!!! Now again I know this may seem silly, but I was able to make my first batch of five corn tortillas that were just Heavenly. We could not find any other corn at the time, so we used popcorn. We also had to find lime, or limestone. Here, like many other spanish speaking countries, they use it to paint their trees and houses white. When I went looking and asking for it, I got the strangest looks, but no matter, I was a man on a mission. Anyway, now I know where to buy full sized corn, and where I can get lime. Now I am good to go. I told the other teacher at school I was able to make corn tortillas, and everyone is waiting for me to bring some to share! PTL for small things like corn tortillas. I will post pictures of my endevour later!

Catching up!

It has been very difficult to keep up with pictures because we only had dial-up, which was very unreliable. Things have changed!!! We now have high speed internent PTL!!!!! Thank you for your patience. We should be able to be more consistent now. We are including some pictures from the weeks we missed.

This is the view out of our front door out to our front gate. We have a small enclosed yard where the kids are free to play in safety!

This is the view from our front gate to our front door.

Here you take your shoes off before you go in a home. Notice our lovely array of shoes outside our front door.

Josiah and Ruthy playing in the rain on one of the two days that is has rained in our time here.

Here is a picture of the streets here. Please notice the yellow van. These are our local transportation. Can you say sardines! You can get about 25-30 people in one of these, all SMOOSHED in together. Literally SMOOSHED! We have had lots of fun practicing being sardines! Imagine putting 30 people in a 15 passanger bus, and only 7 have seats, the rest are standing holding on for dear life. The nice perk is that people give their seats up to people with kids, so Rhesa usually has two kids in her lap, and Mikayla in the backpack carrier. Just imagine all the fun! You can't get any closer to your neighbors than in a "Marshutka".

Ruthy and Josiah at mommy's home school! Don't you love our school desks?

With the trauma of having to give our dogs away, we decided to get pets for the kids that can be flushed down the toilet in a moments notice! Here we are at a local bazar in the pet section that only opens on the weekends. Robert decided he needed to choose the guppies he wanted and the vendor agreed. The vendor is a deaf man, and Robert has been able to talk with him some and compare American Sign language to Russian Sign. There are many similarities. Remember the vendor and his daughter as we try to begin to build a relationship.
We got the tank all set up, and so far only two have gone down the drain!

I just love the local brush clean up. It is truly do it yourself! We cleaned our yard up, and asked our landlord what we needed to to with the brush. He said, "burn it" so we did! It got pretty high for a little, so Robert stood by with the water hose just in case! We truly doubt if the local fire department would show up to help!

Here is a local carseat! Not really, we bought a tub at the bazar for our laundry, and since kids don't use seats here, we thought it was "safer" for her to ride in a confined space. Check out her new hat!

Paul did say we had to become all things to all men, in this case Rhesa became an electrician! It works!

View from the outside entrance where Robert works.

View of the front entrance to the school.

The basketball/soccer field.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a local fellowship. It has been a blessing!

Instructions for sending packages

Some of you have asked how you could send care packages to us. I am attaching detailed instructions on how to send using the most reliable method, an organization called CAP. Please carefully read the instructions and follow them to the T, or we might not recieve the package. Please only send personal items unless you email me. Please notice that you ship the package to one place, but send a check to pay for the shipping from the U.S. to us, at $3.1o a lbs., to another location.


Sender Responsibilities

It is in the best interest of all members of the Service if every individual who has your shipping address or plans to send you items via the Service understands the nature of the service and the packing and shipping guidelines. Therefore, upon acceptance to the Service, members should give an explanatory introduction of CAP Shipping Service to all potential shippers. Key points for senders to remember are:

1. Shipping Standards
All packages should fit the following guidelines:
a. SIZE: Able to fit into the back seat of a car and to be carried by one person for 100 meters.
b. WEIGHT: Individual boxes should weigh no more than 30 lbs.
c. DENSITY: Boxes should be packed as tightly as possible, to minimize air freight costs
d. CONTENTS: Preferably nothing fragile, glass or liquid. Any such contents should be very well-packed and padded.

2. Coding
To comply with customs regulations, the contents of all packages must be known.
a. On the outside of the package, next to the address, simply write “CODE” and two or three of the following content codes to represent the main contents of the box:
1 - Letters and Mail
2 - Books (includes printed matter, documents and magazines)
3 - Clothing (includes shoes)
4 - Toys
5 - Kitchen Items (all foods, drinks and spices as well as usual kitchen items)
6 - Office Items (faxes, modems, computer accessories, teaching supplies)
7 - Bathroom Items (medicines, personal care items, cleaning supplies)
8 - Household Items (decorations, bedding, storage devices, lawn care items, hardware, furniture, stereo equipment, cassettes, CDs, videos and everything else for the home)
9 - Computers
10 - Sports Equipment
11 - Musical Instruments
12 - Child Care Items (includes strollers, children’s car seats, children’s beds, etc.)
b. Example: a box containing cookies, popcorn, socks, winter hats, cold medicine, ten cassettes, towels and several pieces of office equipment would be coded as: CODE 5, 6, 8
c. Items shipped to members of the Service via on-line or catalog companies should meet the coding requirements for package contents by the member including “Code #” as part of the shipping name or address given, if possible. Otherwise, educated guesses will be made as to what the contents may be, based on the main products of that company (such as drugstore.com)

3. Shipping Cutoff Dates
Whatever is received in Marietta by about 4 p.m. the third Friday of the month (or whatever shipping date is advertised) will generally be sent on to Bishkek within 20 business days.


Packages should be sent to:
CAP Shipping (Robert & Rhesa Rodriguez)
6025 Sandy Springs Circle, NE
PMB #316
Atlanta, Georgia [30328-3863]
Code___________


The packages are then flown to Bishkek through ARI Cargo
The over sea shipping is payed by sending your estimated $3.10 per pound to the address below
If you do not pay this Robert and Rhesa will have to pay when the package arrives

Send payment to; (Be sure to include name on check memo line(Robert & Rhesa Rodriguez)

Carole Sprague(CAP Shipping Service)
Texas Capital Bank, NA
2100 McKinney Avenue, Ste. 100
Dallas, TX 75201

A picture of our kitchen and our floor scrubber in the background. It is amazing how dirty the floors get sooo fast! We bought the hood above the stove, and our landlord installed it. It was funny, the whole landfamily came over when he was installing it. I guess to see the new fangled thing. His wife kept asking questions about it, and then proceeded to tell her husband that she needed one for her kitchen. I thought that was cute and funny!

They have the shortest brooms here. You have to bend over to reach the floor!

A picture of our new dishwasher!!!!

Mommy getting the dirt out of the floors the old fashioned way!!!

Our new bed with a stow away!!!

Josiah and daddy were running upstairs to see the new bed, he slipped and went into the corner of our night stand! OUCH!!!

Josiah needed stiches, but no doctors in town, so nurse mommy came to the rescue with a butterfly strip cut smaller!

Robert Loves bright colors and was extatic to find this jacket in his size at a thrift shop here. It was less than five bucks. Can you imagine? Who would get rid of this wonderful jacket? Joy Lou, this one is especially for you!!!

An electrical fire broke out! Luckily we were in the next room when we heard the snap crackle pop of the electricity, and were able to get the extension chord out the door and nothing was burned! PTL!!!