Weekending...

So it's Friday already.. the day of the week I've been waiting for with relish... it's the day for letting go and just being...
No rainy, cold, drizzly walk to school... no breakfast too early for appetite... a chance to wake slowly and enjoy the warmth of the covers for a while longer before facing the chill..

The beds are all still down in our communal sleeping space, the big boys have taken themselves off to the tutors, and I'm thinking about what I might do with this day of ours.

I hate planning... I fly by the seat of my pants these days, taking life as it comes at me. And on the odd day when neccesity makes me scrawl a to-do list I can only work in brief stages.. planning the next hour or two ahead... no more.

It's a challenge for at least one of my children, who is an organizer, a naturally neat and ordered person who needs to know what's happening ahead of time... all the time.
I try to accommodate everyone in my house, but there are just some things about yourself you can't change... and this for me is one of them.

So my day is starting slowly... it's raining outside, it's cold enough for me to think about lighting the fire inside once all the mattresses are up and out of the way... the 3 yr old is awake and happy to have found that we've brought the kittens (newly born four days ago to a slightly slapdash mama cat!) into the sitting room during the night... it was far too cold upstairs and one of her brood has already lost the struggle for life.

Someone else has gone to put the kettle on the stove for tea, and the first wash of the day has just started tumbling about in the machine... it's a low impact kind of day... no need to rush about making sure lunch is on time... there are enough lentils from yesterday to suffice... perhaps I'll throw some bread dough in a bowl and let it sit on the fire to prove in this all purpose winter room of ours... sometimes I kinda wish we had a wood burner set in the middle or could at least bring the primus stove in here ...

And then I remember it's Friday.. and I need to put pans of water on the stove for Friday showers... and that  I need to plug in the emergency power because the rain did seep into the electrics again and we need light in the bathroom...

The 3 yr old has settled himself down next to the kittens under the fully loaded clothes horse, some of the others are watching the last bits of a film... HOOK I think...

It's a nice start to a weekend which might deteriorate at some point into siblings screaming at one another... the 3 yr old doing what he does best and creating all kinds of havoc, and me screaming at the 14 yr old in my life to clear his room up... it currently looks like a hurricane it it.

The day of course, will be punctuated several times over by prayer, and hopefully some Qur'an.. the nearly 9 yr old has started blessing us with her very own unique Qur'an recital skills.. and as a mother I'm happy to hear the happiness in her voice as she belts out verse after verse... the others of course are different.. siblings don't have the same tolerance levels as peaced out mums....

Breakfast is nearly here... the eldest has made crepes while I've been sitting here... the 12 yr old is about to brave the rain to buy butter... the 3 yr old has been crawling around on the floor pretending to be a cat... and  most of our mattresses are still dotted about the floor... it's time to start.

Time to do something slow, yet constructive... to think about grabbing my knitting bag at some point today too and getting on with that cardigan...

Here is some of our week in pictures....

rain rain, go away.....

it's been raining for over a week now, incessant and dismal and very, very heavy.
I've said it before I'm sure, but there is nothing like Algerian rain.. it's relentless. I spent the majority of last week wet.. and muddy. and sleeping with my family in our living room to get away from the leaky upper level of our house. But we haven't flooded yet so this I tell myself is a bonus. We needed the rain.. in fact about half an hour before it started a couple of our local mosques prayed Salat-al-Istisqah.. which is basically a plea for rain.. it worked.. I was standing outside the school when the heavens opened and the rain came down, and it's hardly stopped since.

It's at times like this that I have to remind myself why I came here. Why I put up with the sub standard housing, the mud, dust and bugs...This time last year I was almost booking tickets to go back to the UK, so I guess there's been some kind of an improvement because it hasn't got that bad for me yet this year...

Hijrah does get easier for people. I see the evidence in how other people are living, but then maybe I'm only seeing the surface... who knows how hard it is for people really and how much they divulge about the difficulties of living here. I have yet to see it in my own life.. but we march on regardless... getting through the day and making the best of what we have, and don't have.

Lately I've begun to supplement the 8yr olds schooling ...  trying to weave into this life of ours some of the homeschooling lifestyle we left behind. So we've been reading ALOT... Roald Dahl is what she's loving at the moment and me, doing the grand high Witch complete with German accent is making her super giggly. She's also doing some Math drills online to try and get to grips with the speed at which lessons move in this country. And slowly, very slowly she's recognizing words in English and reading them on her own.

It's been a strange learning curve for her. Her first spoken language is English, but she's so fluent in Algerian derdja that English has become a language she only uses if she has to... She can't read English yet, she learnt to read Arabic first and is learning to read French before attempting to read English in any determined way. So the pace is slow, sometimes too slow for Algerian teachers and she's fallen behind her classmates a little. But this happens in the life of the multi-lingual child. And while I patiently sit by waiting for her brain to filter all the languages and make sense of it all, knowing that eventually it will all settle and make sense to her, the teachers here are not so forward thinking. I console myself with the fact that school will be out by the end of May most probably this year and that we can settle down in the summer to some home-ed unschooling style and do what comes most naturally to us all.

And we're embracing simplicity. Sometimes due to neccesity, but also from choice.
We live a pretty frugal, simple life anyway... we're minimalist from habit and don't have alot of the "stuff" that other folk have. But this year I was determined to set myself a challenge and make this my year of living sunnah. embracing from it what I could and living my Islam more holistically.

Which is why I started the New Year quietly... keeping myself slightly at arms length. Putting it all into perspective and taking slow, purposeful steps. I have hermit tendencies, and I'm standing slightly further back all the time,  no longer trying to find the place where I'll fit but content at last with the fact  that I never will and feeling comfortable with it.

And the rest of the day ahead?
Well the rain is falling... upstairs is leaking and out of bounds. Outside my window the mountains have disappeared into a grey cloudy haze and are no longer visible and I have all of the children in the sitting room trying to stay warm and not get on each other nerves. We were supposed to go to the doctors today for a routine visit for more meds but we're not brave enough to face the rain today. I'm off to cook, and get some laundry done. Figure out my spending plan for February, decide whether I'm going to plan my menu's next month or not. Get some more knitting done, a chunky scrapbusting scarf for the 3yr old and some of the Shalom Cardi that's coming along so nicely despite a couple of very minor imperfections that I can live with and the 8yr old won't notice. And if you've really been taking notice since my last post you'll have notice that the cardi is no longer destined for the 12yr old... we have a bit of a yarn, needle problem here in Algeria .. not enough different sized needles to suit the yarn weights... and I'm not going to even bother discussing my relationship with Math & Dyscalculia  here and my innability to veer even slightly from the pattern... so the cardi is slightly smaller than it should be but will fit the 8yr old nicely thank you...

Pictures will come eventually, when the rain stops and the Internet connection can take the pace of multi-tasking...

:: SEVEN ::

This will be my second time writing this post... my fingers got a bit slap happy while I was typing and I accidentally deleted everything... and now, as I sit here listening to the rain lashing against the side of the house I can't for the life of me start piecing that post back together again from what serves as my head...

I know menu planning was in there but after controlling the urge to take a spiteful swipe at my PC by going upstairs to check on the children I'm too cold to think thoughts of budgeting and food and ... well  it'll teach me to make some notes before I even think of approaching the keyboard in future.... 

Suffice it to say (for now at least) that it's going a good deal better this time around... I forced my own hand a little by taping the , menu to the fridge door for all to see... I gave myself less room to flake out and give up.

I even sat myself down this morning and put together another meal plan for the next seven days... 

See, I can be organised and well balanced when I have to..

It's freezing again here... after a full week of beautiful sunshine.. warm enough to have the windows open, the temperature dropped and the rains came down, and I'm shivering... I hate being cold!

if it's as cold as this tomorrow when dh goes away for the weekend... I'm going to drag the kids down for a camp out in the living room for extra warmth inshallah....

And it's the start of the weekend tomorrow inshallah... three of mine have a half day and one of them only has an hour in the afternoon... so it's a mad rush to get all the weekend cleaning out of the way before they all  get home again..... with dh being away it's also an opportunity to slow down a little and catch up on some reading and crafting inshallah.... 

I've also got some plans to spruce up the blog a little... 

What will you be doing this weekend inshallah?

:: FIVE ..

Normally, during the winter I'm fired up with thoughts of crafting and spending long winter evenings with my yarn basket beside me. This winter just gone was no exception; but for one reason or another I just never got round to making anything.

Now, with spring on it's way inshallah, I have ideas growing... 

I've even almost been tempted to dust off the old sewing machine and finish off the dress I started for myself late last summer!  Good sense prevailed however and the old faithful stayed put and I went to work instead, tidying up my forlorn and neglected yarn bag.

Now here's the thing... I live in Algeria... and we're not spoilt for choice in the yarn department. We make do with whatever we can find that doesn't bring us out in a rash or cause friction burns while we're knitting  & crocheting it up... and whats more, by the time summer comes in ALL yarn will have been secreted away to the  back of the yarn shops and won't see the light of day till the wedding season is over... which is normally from the first blush of spring till the first frost of winter...

Never one to be put off by such trivialities, I've dusted off my very modest yarn stash.. discovered a few unfinished projects lurking in there, and made plans to stop by my local haberdashery store tomorrow to stock up on the necessaries to finish them inshallah....

See what a spot of spring sunshine can do to an uninspired crafter!!

On the home front, there's been alot of baking going on... 

One of my goals for march was to bake our morning bread instead of buying it. As a rule I do make bread daily during the summer, but during the winter our kitchen is just too cold.

This week I've found the perfect breakfast bread, and it's been a hit through the whole house mashallah...

I might even treat you to some photographic evidence tomorrow... 

Thinking ahead...

School, belive it or not, will start winding down for the year in May... Yes MAY!
As an ex-homeschooler, having them at home isn't the part that bothers me. What really worries me is that since we stopped home-schooling, their whole approach to learning has changed.
Part of our reason for coming to Algeria was the fact that the children would be able to learn Arabic more readily, which they have done (despite the fact that it's not actually the spoken language of Algeria); But I feel we've lost alot of ground Islamically over the past couple of years and I really need to do something about it. I think I've mentioned before that our lives were much more faith based when we were learning at home, and that was mainly because our deen was the foundation we built all our other studies and projects on.

So, I'm sitting here this morning planning some summer homeschool... yes I know it's only February but I've been out of the loop for a while. And if it takes me from dawn till noon to get my thinking equipment into gear even on a good day... imagine how much longer it will take to do something even remotely sensible.
I am therefor ignoring the mess on the floor, the fact that it's dh's day off and that he will probably be in and out of the house all day long  and I'm getting on with some long overdue planning.

Dh was impressed with my plans and even fell back into home-ed mode when ds13 brought out his maths book and decided to (briefly) explore the mass and quantity unit in the CPG book he's all but ignored since we came here... but it's a start. And if dh got a bit ambitious in guessing the mass of eggs and the possible capacity of a paddling pool, never mind! It's all part of the fun, right?

In the meantime, while we're waiting for the summer sun to bring our thinking matter back to life I've come up with a vague strategy to get them back on track before we plunge head first into our summer of learning.
Tuesdays afternoons will be extra English studies, Friday will be family halaqa, and I'm reintroducing our craft-time for Saturdays insha'allah. It's a small step forward but I'm feeling hopeful.

The weather continues to bombard us, and we're waiting for brighter, warmer things to happen inshallah. Despite the fact that I come from a cold climate, I have realised since coming here, that I dislike Winter intensely. I'm a hibernator, I have barely left the house since the start of December and I don't think very much will push me to venture into the breezy alleyways where I live, although today my dh's aunty wants us to visit. One of her daughters whom we haven't seen for a while is also visiting with her. The question is... can I be tempted?.....

We also have a casualty in the house, dd8 slipped and fell, hitting the side of her head on the bottom of our oil heater, there wasn't much blood but it did need some stitches. She's back at school with her patchworked scalp and strict instructions to obsessively stalk the teacher and stay as far away from marauding or menacing little people as is humanly possible. Algerian children are invaders of personal space... she may get feisty.

I'm off now to have my coffee and try and then it's split pea soup and cheesy bread making that awaits me this morning... connection and dh's phone permitting there may very well be a couple of recipes here tomorrow, how's that for a promise?

xxx

I have written this blog post many times over while we were internet free, and now as I sit here, typing with fingers numb from hanging laundry near the terrace, all the news I had prepared to tell you escapes me.

I'm glad to be back online that's for sure. Living in Algeria is challenge enough for me, doing it without any link to the outside world is, I feel, way above and beyond the call of duty.

I've been more or less phoneless over the past two months too, after what seemed like an almost complete
technological meltdown. I have no idea how my sanity was preserved, being holed up with multiple warring offspring during what appears to be a snap cold enough to freeze the bones is enough to send the hardiest of humans to madness and back. To say my house has resembled Bedlam at times over the past few weeks would not be doing it justice.

I think we had a brief school holiday in there somewhere too but life's a bit of a fuzz to be honest. Right now of course I should be doing something productive like baking or more laundry, but I just ventured out to the kitchen to make tea for the 15, 13 & 12 year old who have just come home from the tutors dodging hailstones and I'm too cold to think productive chore type thoughts.

All I do know is, I have a long weekend in front of me and if I'm going to survive it I'm going to need copious amounts of tea and an abundance of munchies. The only downside to this is the munchies will have to be homemade...third world countries haven't yet caught up with the trend in affordable healthy snacks unfortunately.. what we do have either results in tooth-rot, gut-rot or the eventual grissly death of the household budget.
So I'm off to get warm by the stove for a while & get some grown up chores done...


 

The best laid plans...

My plans for last week were to do some cosying up for winter. We've had a bit of a tough run since Eid, and we've really been questioning our hijrah. We put our best feet forward though and decided to carry on regardless. Tarting the place up a little and hunkering down for some winter comforts was on the cards.

And then the monsoon rains hit. If you live in Algeria you'll know what I mean. You'll know how relentless and oppressive the rain can be. 

It took about an hour. By then the rain had come in via both the open roof and the ceilings. The water on the terrace was shin deep. We're still drying out. We're not sure if the ceilings will hold another rain.

 

Are we depressed?.... yup!

Are we yet again questioning our hijrah? ... Hell yeah... we're only human after all and living nine to a room will do that for you.

We've moved downstairs. All the bedrooms are now unusable. The ceilings are making weird creaking noises.

It's a bit of a downhill groove we're on at the minute but we're trooping on. This is when our best of British stiff uper lip comes in handy. We're down, but not defeated.

I have thought about my hijrah alot since moving here. It'll be three years this coming summer. 

It hasn't always been what it could have. Sometimes it's been better. Right now it's not even coming anywhere close to hitting the mark. But these are tests. Tests of our endurance. This is Allah testing our metal. Seeing how strong we are, and how committed we are to staying here. 

To be honest I'm not so sure I am anyore, and because of our current situation I can't really tell if thats a fleeting emotion brought about by my immediate frustrations, or a deeper problem.

I guess I'll just have to wait things out as patiently as possible and ride the storm a little while longer.

It's also STILL exam time. For some reason, this semester the teachers have decided to prolong the agony and drag exams on for two weeks. But  the good thing is that a two week holiday is looming, so we get at least some time off for good beahviour.

I'm off now to cook some lunch and get some sorting out done. I have a mini battle going on at the dinner table/revision station.... and it could get super ugly.

Oh, and more heavy rain and flash flooding have been forcast for Northern Algeria.

Please make dua that our roof stays put and that we don't get too wet....

.