Readjustment to Winnipeg and a visit to Sunneh

I am back in Canada after having a wonderful two week visit in Germany with my daughter Janelle and her husband Laurens. As always it takes me awhile to readjust to being away from Kurdistan. I have spent some time looking over the photos that I took in the last three months. I have found a few that I have not shared yet. For the Kurdish people who look at my blog I think that I will make some blog posts in the next months about my life here in Canada. So stay tuned to this space!!

I just read a recent post by my newest team mate, Carrie. She is an avid blogger/journaler and I am so happy because it means that I will be able to keep track of my team`s activities while I am gone this summer. Her blog address is http://spacklegeek.livejournal.com/ if you would like to follow her adventures.

The topic she wrote about is the team`s recent visit to Sunneh. I had a visit to the same village about a week before I left. It was one of the most wonderful trips of the last 3 months. I won`t write a lot, but I want to show you some photos of the wonderful people I met there.

Breakfast along the way (a lentil soup, and yogurt and bread.) On this trip we travelled with Soran and his taxi. Soran often drives us so knows what CPT is about. He is able to explain us to the guards at checkpoints.

Here is Lukasz with the English teacher for the older students. He had asked if we would be able to find him an English book on Greek mythology. L. found one while he was away in the US.

We taught some English classes to get to know the students and to let them get to know us. On the this trip teammate Laura started the process of videotaping for a short video on life in the village.

We set off with 3 girls and 2 boys from the Grade Nine class who also live in Sunneh. We asked them to tell us about and show us their village.

As we stood beside the kani/spring I took some portraits.

Two of the younger students (the older ones come in the morning and younger in the afternoon) joined us on the walk.

The beauty of the mountains around the village of Sunneh

The young man in the first portrait invited us to visit his home. The teacher told him that he needed to make sure we got lunch. So we walked to his house, met his family and had a wonderful simple meal of dolma and bread. Here is his sister and her baby girl.

His mother and her granddaughter.

His father. He told us that 12 years ago he encountered a land mine in the fields.

His mother proudly showed us what she was working on. She takes reeds and weaves them together with the many coloured strings. I believe she was saying that would become an enclosure for their sheep. (I was the CPter with the most Kurdish on this visit. I was very pleased with how much I was able to say and understand, but I missed a lot.)

The younger women left our meal early to continue making the bread. The dough is rolled out on the low table, placed onto the cushion and then laid onto the steel rounded oven. It turns out very thin and crispy. This bread keeps for a long time and then is rehydrated just before eating to make it softer.

After we left the first household we visited one of the girl's family. This is her grandmother.I have learned that a smile is not something to look for when taking photos.

This is her little brother. He was working hard at getting the nutmeat out of the walnut shell.