Bread of Life

Old dry crumbled bread is being poured in on top of the wheat remains and the girls are mixing it up. Kurdish people can not eat a meal without eating bread. It continues to give life after it is old.

Notice the little lambs that got left behind for the day in the background. They are calling for their Mom and the Mom's are calling for them.

Shepherd Friends

Haybet finally stopped and posed for me. Women do not like to have their picture taken here unless they are in their fancy Kurdish dresses. We were introduced to this family way up in the mountains in the village of the girl that Tim hit in May. They bring their sheep to the cities' edge during the winter. She is a wonder woman as far as I'm concerned. She has 12 kids from an adult son all the way down to a 6 month old baby. Her husband and son take care of shepherding, but her and her older daughters do the milking. With 400+ goats and approximately 100 sheep she has her hands full.

There food in the trough is the remains of wheat grown in the area. After harvesting they bag it up for feed.

Feeding the sheep

Brianna and Haybet, my friend, are taking old bread to feed the sheep. Bread is never thrown away here. People set it out to dry, then crumble it with a concrete roller used for the dirt roofs and then it is used for animal feed.

American Football

In Kurdish and through most of this part of the world, when someone says "football" they mean soccer. It amazes us how they can kick a soccer ball around and never lose their cheap plastic sandals. We recently acquired an American type football. As we were visiting our shepherd friends a few days ago, Tim taught some boys how to throw and catch it.

Ancient

About halfway above this mansion you can see a flat area on the side of the mountain with no snow. Their is an ancient relief there from the time of King Sennacharib. Our girls love to climb up to see it with their Daddy. This just happens to be across from the "mound" in the other picture. I've read that this area was possibly the entrance area to the Assyrian empire at one time.

The Mound the Morning After

This mound is a landmark in our city. At one time there was a building of some sort on top of it. There are concrete platform remains on the top. Some have said that there was an Assyrian building on top. I've heard that regimes in the past have had lookout stations there also. There is even an old story that a rat came out of the hole at the bottom of the mound with gold in his teeth. There is an old cemetary at the base of this mound, and many people plant daffodil type flowers on the graves. These don't smell like ordinary daffodils, but have a very perfumy scent. Beautiful! Our girls recently bought "flower water" as they call perfume. It was from these daffodils.

You may also notice from this picture that rooftops are flat. Water storage tanks are on top of the homes, and every home, tent, or shack has a satellite dish no matter how poor you may be.

SNOW!!!!

Snow finally came in the city. It was really wet and the ground was too warm, so it didn't last long.

Megan was wearing four layers of pants and the top two were soaked when she came in.