More Pictures!

The Habibi is sleeping, so my update about today will have to wait.

We had visits at four different houses.

There were so many relatives that I will need Habibi to help me with name spellings.

Here are pictures from the last few days.

Driving Tour of Erbil

View of the Citadel from the market below. We climbed up from here.

There was a ramp. I did not go rock climbing!

Um... They spell what they hear and do not use spell check.

This was another interesting find at the grocery store... bondage horse?

December 26th Pictures:

Mohammed and Tanya dressed to see the chickens.

Sarteeb and Alan also dressed to see the chickens.

Why does Alan get to wear the fun jumpsuit? :)

Alan and me dressed to see the chickens.

I liked the level of safety, but would have loved a pair of goggles to complete the look.

Our tour guides for the chicken visit. The man on the left spoke very nice English and explained to me in detail how the raise the chicken by specific guidelines. He was very knowledgable.

Lunch at Tara's house. This was the Persian Kufftah. Yum!

Alan's parents, Shownim and Mahir.

Tanya was so helpful with getting lunch ready.

I am glad that she finally got a chance to eat!

Got dessert? Yes I do!

Tara is cutting the Kanaffa. The chocolate mousse is towards the front with the fruit.

The smiley face cake is off to right. I ate them all!

December 27th Pictures:

The second visit of the day. I forgot to take pictures at the first house with Alan's aunt.

This is the house of Alan's aunt and uncle. There son designed the house.

The railings and the grates in the windows were all recovered from the Citadel.

The design was inspired by the family house at the Citadel and definitely had that feel.

Do you see the large platter of cookies? They were from the same Lebanese bakery we had visited on Christmas day. These cookies were so good! Thankfully, they served tea rather than the Turkish coffee which is too strong for me. I am on a constant caffeine high here!

Aunts Sharmin and Faryal invited us to lunch. It looked like the same size feast as we had at Christmas dinner. When I said this they disagreed. They said this was a more "spur of the moment" kind of lunch. Wow! I can't imagine eating like this regularly!

Food from left to right: Kufftah, turnips, black eyed pea stew with chunks of beef, a rice dish called Parda Plow with meatballs and a lot of cinnamon, and a soup with tender chicken. It is a soup of rice and yogurt. You mix the rice and yogurt together for three days to absorb and dry. You roll them into balls and refrigerate or freeze them. When you are ready to make soup, you just add them to water. It has the texture and taste similar to porridge.

This is the other side of the feast that was not a feast.

Food left to right: chicken and potatoes (I did not have a chance to try this one), the Kurdish flat bread that I have been having for breakfast, pickled beets and cauliflower that they just call pickles (the beets were so good), a regular green salad, rice, eggplant sheikh, and that is the Kufftah again on the right.

Alan's cousin and two of her three daughters. The girls were so cute!

One of the oldest minarettes in Erbil. It is hundreds of years old.

A group from Italy is restoring it and has added lights to see its beauty at night.

Alan and I on the roof of Alan's cousin's house that is being built.

It was my first panoramic view of Erbil at night.

At one time it had a view of the Citadel, but it is not blocked by one of the ten thousand malls that have invaded Erbil. Can you tell people think there are too many malls?

This is me with Shara, the daughter of Alan's cousin. She is working of types of chemical equations and balancing chemical equations in chemistry. I happily went into teacher mode. I made her get paper and started giving her practice problems that we worked out together. It was nice to feel useful, rather than just sitting and smiling as if I understand what is being said. I may get together with her mother, Vian, to try out a cheesecake recipe. I am trying to convince Shara to come to the states (Denver) for college. :)