Mashramani!

We’ve been here two years!

Our two year anniversary of being in Guyana coinciding with Mashramani is pretty awesome! What a celebration. Even in our far-away village, people came out to celebrate the patriotic holiday. We dressed in red, green, yellow, black, and white, danced and marched and sang and ate and played.

Tuesday night was a special concert that featured dances from the Aishalton Culture Group. Also, ladies from my dance group danced “Waka Waka.” It is such a fun song! And a pretty fun dance too, kudos to the choreographer! ;-) Here's Tonica and I dancing.

The next morning was the parade. The clouds blessed us with coverage. Parades in small villages are the best! It is not something to go and see, because there simply aren’t enough people for an audience! So, everyone dresses up, marches and dances down the road to the blasting music coming off the 2 vehicles. A few people have fancy costumes, most wear Guyana’s colors, and wave flags and other homemade decorations.

We couldn’t carry Kanaimuu this year – she walked and marched and danced though. Without planning it, I inevitably ended up wearing the same clothes. (That’s what happens when you only have 2 suitcases worth of clothes, and you just happened to bring yellow pants).

Grannys come out to celebrate to! And they're always prepared - the umbrella just in case!

Aaaaaaaaaand, the village Americans get decked out:

I'm a bit in love with Camille:
Sisters! And their beautiful flowers.

After the parade and celebration at the sports ground, the sun broke through the clouds and the heat bore down. It got HOT. Did I mention it is hot here? So, some crazy people started playing football (soccer) but Chris and I felt the pull of the hammock. We went back home for a nap in the hammock. After I woke up, I decided it was time to celebrate our two years away from home properly.

Something American was needed. Something we had really missed. I remembered we bought a bag of chocolate chips when we were in Georgetown in January. Cookies! How perfect?? Some of you know, my favorite thing in life is chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

So, we made cookies. Not normal Kristin-style where I just shake some baking powder into the bowl, estimate the amount of butter, and throw in some sugar. These were going to be perfect. Never mind that I don’t have measuring spoons and cups. I guessed which of our spoons was a teaspoon, picked a mug to be a ‘cup’ of flour, and used real vanilla that mom had sent. I beat the butter and sugar by hand for a long time, measured and mixed. Then, for the real treat. Since we don’t have an oven, we normally ‘bake’ cookies by cooking then in a shallow fry pan and flip them over halfway through; but this time, we carried our gas bottle to our neighbor’s oven, hooked it up, and baked our cookies in a real oven!

Wowza! They turned out good. They rose and cooked to perfection. They weren’t flat like my cookies normally turn out. They were amazing. We shared a few and ate a few. Well, we ate so many we didn’t end up making dinner. We had cookies for dinner. And it was good. What a perfect day to celebrate two years away and two years here. A parade and cookies.