American cooking

I forgot to mention that while up on the mountain I also drank water that came from a spring. I'm still standing. It would have been rude to refuse, since our host was so enthusiastic about the fresh water. It did taste quite lovely. Saturday (which is kind of like your Sunday) we went to an Iraqi friends house to just hang out and watch Egyptian telanovella. It was nice to be able to lounge about chatting and watching very dramatic soap operas.

At 4 o'clock the electricity went out. That was the end of the state sponsored electricity for the day and that meant no more air conditioning. I don't know if I've described this, but people run lines to someone who owns a generator and buy a certain number of amps from them. It costs money and so it is too expensive to run the air conditioner. Our friend had, what I have heard called, a swamp cooler, that helped keep things cool. It is this giant drum that spins and I think there is water involved, but I cannot even begin to describe how the thing works.

I made pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner. A first for our Iraqi friend, and as we were eating dinner her two year old daughter brought the Saddam playing cards to the table. I do not know if you remember these, but years ago the American military put the pictures and rank of all of Saddam's henchman (and one woman) on playing cards and distributed them to Iraqi's. It was a bit surreal to see something that you had only heard about being played with by a child.