It’s comfortingly cold here in Algeria now, tea drinking weather. And this week has seen us downloading patterns for winter woolens to keep us warm through the Algerian winter. I even brought knitting needles out of hibernation this week and started on a pair of handwarmers for dd9!
Life here is rolling on in it’s reletless fashion, life is alot busier now that the children are all at school and coming and going at various times of the day. And the day starts alot earlier for us now, up at 5.30am in enough time to wake those going out to the masjid and for those at home to pray and prepare a nice warm breakfast for when they return and to warm them up before they have to go off to school. School starts at 8am, and mine are fortunate enough to attend schools just across the road from us, so it’s out of the door at 7.50 and for the women, it’s time to tackle the daily chores which involve lots of sweeping, dusting and quite a few buckets of water in an attempt to eradicate the ever present and prolific Algerian dust. Time then for a quick cuppa before thinking about lunch and getting a nice warm meal ready for when the children get back at 12pm. One of the hardest things for us to get used to schoolwise at first was the school week running from Sunday to Thursday which really disoriented us for a while but which has just become another regular part of living in DZ. Back to school then for the children at 1.20 and for us girls, after salat it’s either siesta time, reading, crafting or catching up with studies, at any rate it’s a chance to unwind for a while before having the children come back in time for afternoon tea and the joys of homework!. some of the children have commitments at the masjid in the evening and dd9 has a tutor she visits several times a week, so during the school week time is very much spent making sure they get to where they have to be on time and making sure they’ve had a hot meal or a snack inside them before they go, which means in turn we’ve had to be far more on the ball about cooking and making sure mealtimes happen when they should than we ever had to be when we were homeschooling!
Because our day starts alot earlier now, it ends alot earlier too, and the long nights of insomnia for me, if not completely cured have become less frequent and less imposing, which is one of the good by-products of living in Algeria.
All in all we are more than happy here, alot happier than we were during our last year in the UK, and for us it’s been the best thing we could have done. For sure life here isn’t easy, anyone living here will tell you that, but for us at least it’s become a more rewarding way of life. For the children and dh, life now revolves around the masjid, and knowing that my children have access to it five times day and knowing that they are being nurtured there by brothers who are striving to raise a vibrant and Allah conscious youth has been one of the most uplifting things about moving here masha’allah.
We now have sporadic internet usage, via a modem on loan to us which has been good…giving us just enough internet time to catch up with emails and blogging and not too much for us to abuse it and allow it to eat into our day. Having said that we’re working on getting some internet access of our own, but by then we’re hoping we’ll be a bit more grown up and less adolescent in our use of it!
And now off for one of those body warming cups of tea, because although the sky from my window looks clear and blue, there is a definite chill in the air this morning, and then to think about what goodies to make for afternoon tea, perhaps some flapjack and beghrir?
I’m not sure when my next bout of blogging will be, but I don’t think i’ll be aiming for anything more than a healthily long weekly update for a while…I’m working on trying to get some pics up too but I’m having trouble trying to get my camera to connect to my laptop, so it’s going to take me a while longer to sort that one out I think…
Until then, have a happy and fulfilling day wherever and however you may be spending it…
xxx
alot of changes are waiting for us on the horizon insha’allah, and we’re looking forward to them with relish…I’m loathe to say anything more..fate feels like a fickle thing sometimes, so you’ll have to wait a little longer for the rest of our news insha’allah…..
