Moments and memories

From J&J Slide Show Pics

I know, it's just a little picture.  But it's the only one I have on our hard drive of me and my mom.  It was taken when I was brand new.

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my mom's passing.  Yes, it is a day that brings some tears and sorrow.  But more than that, it's a day to celebrate moments and memories of Mom's life.  Of course I am a bit partial, but I think Kathy Pandiani was an incredible lady.  She lived a life that's easy to celebrate.  She was sincere, loving, caring and joyful.  She loved to dance and laugh.  She wanted people to feel involved and important.  And she found great joy in serving others.

My mother taught me to be a woman of faith and prayer.  Throughout her sickness, she always had her eyes focused firmly on our Lord.  I remember her praying for healing but also praying for God's sovereign will to be done.  I believe she was a testimony of God's love in her life and in her death.

A lot has changed in the last ten years; graduations, a wedding, moves all over the country and world.  There is so much of my life that I wish I could share with her, although God has blessed me with many wonderful people to share these moments with.  Of course, I will always miss her.  But I am so blessed to have lived 17 years of my life with Mom.

Two memories: This may be bad parenting.  But to reward me for doing well at my piano lessons each week, Mom would buy me a vanilla latte and a chocolate chip cookie from Shakabra Java on 6th.  This started when I was in 3rd grade.

Every Christmas we would spend Christmas Eve and Day with Mom's family.  Part of the tradition was Family Follies, our annual family talent show.  Mom always planned out a little act for us to do, usually with elaborate choreography.  One of the most memorable Family Follies was when I was almost six and Mom, Melissa and I performed "The 12 Days of Christmas" with interpretive dance.  Sarah recited a poem about her Auntie Flo who gave her underwear every year.  She can probably still say it, you can test her on it.

Caroling in Kabul

Last night I attended a ladies Christmas party.  It was a great chance to spend some time with the women I work with/for and have some Christmas celebration.  Getting into the Christmas spirit is not an easy task over here.  There are no decorated trees, no lights on street lamps, no malls (let alone a decorated Nordstroms), no displays of Christmas foods in the non existent grocery stores.  In the expat community, we all work very hard to make our homes feel Christmassy.  In our house we have a tree and wall decals of Christmas scenes that arrived from Dynamic yesterday (Thank you Dynamic!).  And we feel that we have the corner market on holiday beverages with lots of apple cider, hot chocolate, and my holiday syrups for pumpkin spice lattes and peppermint mochas.  But it takes a lot of work to get in the Christmas spirit.

Last night was definitely an exception.  Our hostess had her house decorated from floor to ceiling.  We enjoyed punch and appetizers and a beautiful formal dinner of lamb.  Everyone contributed to the meal with a holiday favorite.  And all the while we enjoyed Christmas music.  We even had a gift exchange.  I think that everyone felt a little closer to home.

But the icing on the Christmas cake was when there was a knock on the door and one of the small groups from within the Community had decided to go caroling around the neighborhood to expat families.  Caroling in Kabul is something that I did not expect.  And I have to admit that while we all sang "Go Tell it on the Mountain," I got a little teary eyed.  As we sang through a couple songs, I was struck by the fact that with all the work we put into Christmas in Kabul, without all the Jingle Bells and department store Santas, we have the advantage and blessing of being able to embrace Christmas without much distraction.  Celebrating Christmas in Kabul is not easy.  We miss family and friends, traditions and even the dreaded Christmas shopping.  But we're thankful for friends that come to carol in the cold, cold Kabul night.

Some Thankfulness

Well, I have been a little absent from blogging the last few weeks.  I've started a couple of posts.  But each time I sit down with the intention of blogging, I get pulled away.

The last few weeks have been too full to go into much detail at the moment.  In a nutshell, we had a few situations come up culminating in a very sudden and unexpected trip to Dubai for visa renewals and various appointments.  More on that later.

Right now, I'm full of thankfulness.  One of the posts I started about a week ago was about our Thanksgiving experience here, and I feel that the theme of giving thanks has been recurrent for us the last few weeks.

For Thanksgiving, we had a great opportunity to spend time with some great friends and eat some great food.  There were around 70 people at the event; 4 turkeys and countless fixings to keep everyone happy and fed.  It wasn't quite Thanksgiving at home, but it did the trick.  Joey's happy because he got some Pumpkin Roll which he considers an absolute staple.

As I reflect back on the 5 months we've been here, I can't help but think of how the things I am thankful for have changed.  It used to be the basics: friends, family, health, wonderful husband, place to live, general things like that.  And while I'm still thankful for family, friends and Joey (increasingly so), I find that life over here makes me appreciate a whole new set of things.  Here are some of those things:

- Skype!  I am so thankful for Skype and friends and family that use this wonderful, free invention.  Although Afghan internet is not always up to speed, on nights when it works and I get to see my niece Karis whistle or my dad talking about the Christmas tree. . . it can't be beat.

- Keeping with the technology theme; Facebook, emailing friends and regular blog posters, readers and commenters are things that help keep me in the loop.  It's so nice to wake up in the morning to wall posts and email messages from back home.  (So keep wall posting, blogging, emailing. . . and if you aren't doing these things, start!)

- Hot water.  We live a luxurious life here with a generator that works most of the time, hot water from the showers after 3 minutes of warm-up, and space heaters that we can leave on during the night.

- Our APO.  Mail in Afghanistan is unreliable and verging on non-existent.  Any semi-reliable shipping methods cost an arm and a leg and have no guarantee that what your sending/receiving will make it to the final destination.  We are so blessed to have an APO even though we're non-military.  It usually takes letters/packages about 6 days to get here from the states.  It's great for receiving little pieces of home.  (If you want the address, email me!)

- I'm thankful that there are daily flights to Dubai.  Generally speaking, I'm not so much a fan of Dubai.  It's a big city with construction everywhere, traffic everywhere, malls everywhere, sand everywhere.  But for visa emergencies, healthcare, and getting our fix of little things like Starbucks or Mexican food . . . it's really a nice place to go for a day or two.  While in Dubai we enjoy little luxuries like eating out, holding hands, bath tubs, being able to walk places (did I mention we're on walking restriction here?), comfortable hotel beds and pillows, grocery shopping, and STARBUCKS!  After our quick little three day visa trip we feel revived and refreshed.

- Neither of us have gotten too terribly ill.  And this despite the fact that we recently found out our "cook" has not been iodining our vegetables.  This may be too much information, but we're thankful to be worm and hepatitis A free!

- And finally: Our prayer partners.  Over the last few weeks the importance and power of prayer has really been stressed in our lives.  We've also realized that we have an incredible network of friends and family all over the world that are partnering with us in prayer.  From here in Kabul all the way back to the US, we're so thankful for praying people.  Your prayers for us are such a blessing, we thank God for you daily.  Thank you!

Summary of India

Ok, so now that our future is settled for the moment, I thought I'd return to the India and Nepal Edition.  But since I've already been back for over a month, I thought that India would best be summed up rather than expounded upon.  Although India was a great experience and I hope to spend more time there, Nepal was much more personal and engaging.   In many ways, India reminded me of a louder, busier, more western Kabul.  India feels like an old country working to enter the 21st century; there is a campaign to be a "modern" city by the Commonwealth games in 2010, they have a lot of work to do.

In India, we visited Delhi and Jaipur.  Delhi is a very large, very bustling city with thousands of sights, millions of people, and a rich and varied past.  As a history lover, it was interesting to see (or drive by, we didn't have much chance to sight see) monuments of British Imperialism next to Islamic minarets and Hindu temples.  There are tombs and temples that are hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old.  Like Afghanistan, Delhi and most of India has been a part of several different empires throughout its history.  In fact, Delhi was once ruled by Afghans and seems to have more intact tombs, mosques and palaces from the Afghan period than Afghanistan has.

When I pictured India before visiting, Jaipur is what I imagined.  Jaipur's history includes tales of the maharajas and maharanis.  The area has an exotic feel to it.  Elephants and camels pull carts and men wear oversized red turbans.  There are beautiful palaces and forts throughout the city, some still in use, some converted into hotels.  And the whole city is painted a rusty pink, hence the nickname "The Pink City."

There were a few highlights from my time in India.  One was getting to drink great coffee at a real coffee bar.  One of them was eating a fancy dinner with the ladies.  Another was swimming in the hotel swimming pool.  But on a more serious note, we were able to visit Gandhi's Memorial, the platform on which he was cremated, on the Indian holiday celebrating his birth and life.  I have a tremendous amount of admiration and respect for Gandhi.  His motto, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," has become one of Joey and my life goals (and one of the reasons we move to places like Kabul!).  It was very inspiring to see people from all over the world and of all different religions honoring this man who promoted peace, love, and positive change.  It reminds me that regardless of creed or personal belief, there are certain things that we should all be committed to working towards together.

Staying Put

News to report, we're staying put!
Looks like it's going to be a Kabul Christmas!

Worry.

As I write this, a very important meeting is going on in Virginia concerning our future here in Afghanistan. Although I've known that this meeting was coming, I didn't want to say anything about it.  Mainly because all of us here really want to stay.  And we're all very uncertain whether we will be able to or not.  But for some reason, I felt that saying that we might leave Kabul would make it feel more real. . . and it does.

I have to admit that I am nervous about finding out the verdict.  And I think that it's ok to be a little bit nervous.  But at the same time, life is full of uncertainty (I feel like I'm learning a lot about uncertainty these days!).  And in a sense, we always live in the uncertain no matter how "secure" our lives are.  Bottom line, despite my desire to stay here in Kabul, despite the uncertainties that the future holds, and despite this feeling that I have that my life is in constant change. . . I'm not going to worry.

Fittingly, our Book Group studied Matthew 6:25-34 yesterday.  For a group of people that live in a place in constant flux, it was a great reminder to all of us not to worry about tomorrow.  Although we hope and pray that we will be able to stay here in Kabul, we're not going to worry while we wait for the verdict.  Tomorrow will worry about itself.

Afraid of the vacuum. . .

Taking a post break from The India and Nepal Edition.

My work laptop is afraid of the vacuum.  Every morning at around 9:00, the cleaning lady vacuums the hallway outside my office.  At about 9:05 my laptop suddenly shuts off and won't reboot until the vacuum is put away.

When I told the IT guys that I had a suspicion my laptops power problems were connected to the vacuum, they tried not to laugh, said my computer probably had a virus, and rebuilt it.

After the rebuild, the power problems continued.  So, Sami stood in my office while the vacuuming was running. . . and it didn't shut off.  As soon as he walked out the door, it promptly died.

They thought it might be a problem with an electrical circuit.  They bought me a heavy duty surge protector.  And it died.

So, we decided that each day when the vacuum turned on, I would just unplug everything connected to my laptop, everything connected to a power source, and continue working.  Although this would be a bit of a hassle, it would save the cost of buying a new laptop.  Next day, I sit with my laptop completely unplugged as she begins to vacuum.  And it died.

Obviously, my poor computer has had some sort of traumatic experience with vacuum cleaners in the past.

Today I arrived at work to find a shiny new laptop with all my files and work transferred over to it.  And it's not afraid of the vacuum.

Although we had a good laugh about my vacuum-a-phobic computer, this is Afghanistan and situations like this are not that uncommon.  Like the light switch that stops working, or all of a sudden starts to turn on the light in another room, or the shower that randomly loses all water pressure (conveniently right when you're all lathered up).  Dangling wires, faulty electricity, no electricity, no internet. . . all things that we're quickly getting used to here.  For now, I'm just happy that I won't have to be obsessive about hitting control "s" whenever I hear a vacuum.