Trash & Treasures

We finally finished our wood project!! When we first moved here we stumbled upon someone’s old, trashed, left for dead on the side of the road, china cabinet. I could see why it was thrown out; it was stained, missing some shelves, missing a drawer front… some of the wood was even rotting away. But Steven and I saw the true beauty within.  We left the top half to the trash, there was no saving that thing. But we were able to take some wood from the top to repair the drawer front and add a shelf.

Once we got it home Steven went to work sanding it, and cutting/gluing wood, while I went to work trying to find fabric and paint. Steven got his part done in about 3 days… I on the other hand took FOREVER to find fabric. It was about 3 trips to Satwa (the only town to find fabric) a few trips to malls and shopping centers and a lot of hunting online. Once I would find something I thought I liked, I would spend forever debating on if it was right or not, only to go back to look at it again and find it was sold out. I found these pre-made curtains that were cute, but pricy. Again by the time I said, “Fine, those will do.”  They were gone.  I finally got my decision making skills together along with a trusted friend and decided on this:

It’s not great, but it’s the best non-Arab lookin fabric I could find here in the Middle East. Next we had to decide on paint. That was easy! Or so I thought. It was going to be blue, that way if we found better fabric later, blue was neutral enough that it would hopefully still work… well Sky Blue, ended up looking much more like Smurf Blue, and I was not about to have a giant Smurf sitting in our kitchen area. One more trip back to Satwa for another gallon (which was under $5 btw). This time we went with National Blue.

 

After I finished painting it for a second Steven gave it a light sand which made the Smurf blue show up in some places and actually gave it a nice refinished look.

Next we painted the hard ware silver and hit the whole thing with a gloss finish varnish. I just have to finish sewing the curtains, but it’s pretty much done, and it only took 4 ½ months! Ha! I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, especially since we spent just under $30.00 on the whole thing.

And now we have a great place to hide our food and dishes!

MEACH Trip '12

Back in the first weekend of March we went on our first camping trip here which took us over to the mountains of Oman and the beaches of Fujairah. It was our church youth groups 2nd annual MEACH trip (Mountains + Beach), and it was one of the worst camping experiences of our lives.

It started off well with great people, and great food, hopes of singing songs around the camp fire, the light of the full moon over head... we had no idea the night we were about to be in for. The drive up was beautiful. You had to have a 4 wheel drive car to make it up the mountain so we left our rented Nissan Sunny and squeezed into an SUV with another family.

Once on top, we started to set up camp. We pulled out our tent and noticed that the wind had picked up. It was soon too windy to put our tent up on our own so we helped another couple put theirs up then they helped us. We had hoped that the wind would die down once the sun set, but that didn’t happen. As the sun set, the wind picked up, and the temperature dropped. It was FREEZING! (well, not really… but if it drops below 60, that’s pretty much freezing here)

Our friend JP, who is the manager of Texas Road House, and also an eagle scout, was in charge of dinner. He made these awesome little packets meat, carrots, and potatoes that just had to be thrown in the fire to cook. It was so smart of him and made for super easy clean up, and it was amazing!

After dinner I had my very first banana smore. JP’s wife, Ana, brought bananas to eat instead of graham crackers since she can’t eat gluten. All you do is slice open the banana, stick in some chocolate and marshmallows, wrap it in foil and throw it in the fire for about 10 minutes. If you have never had one, I totally recommend trying it.

It was only about 10 by the time we could no longer handle the wind so we attempted to call it a night. Some of the students stayed up and continued with their campfire songs as we headed off to our tent that was obviously not made for desert wind camping conditions. The entire night we had sand blowing in on our faces, and our tent collapsing on our heads. There was no escaping it. Steven had to keep the walls of the tent up with his feet, and even still they closed in on us. I kept praying, “Lord please stop the wind, if only so we can have some rest, please make it stop” but someone else must have been praying harder because the wind kept on howling all night long. We maybe got about 2 hours of sleep all night.

The next morning we woke up to goats all over the place and one lone donkey begging for food. The wind was still there but we managed to do some exploring of the ruins that were there.

After breakfast we packed up and made our way down to the beach. And our old friend Mr. Wind joined us there as well. Good thing the beach was beautiful and the sun was out!

After a few hours at the beach and some lunch, we headed home for some much needed sleep & showers. Though this camping trip may not have been a success, it was still great to get away and out of the city. Hopefully in the future we can try it again and have a better out come and much less wind.