We made it!

Sorry for the update delay. We have had a pretty busy 5 days here in Northern Iraq/Kurdistan (I may use these terms interchangeably here on out). We are doing great! We have finally recovered from jet lag and even though we arrived with head colds, we are feeling much better today. We have made a lot of progress with our house. We got the whole thing cleaned this week, we bought our bedroom furniture, living room furniture, all of our carpet, and designed our kitchen cabinets and counter tops. We are having everything delivered on Monday and will get all of the painting done this weekend. So, by Monday night we should be staying in our house! We got 4 amps from of electricity from the community generator, so we should only be without electricity for around 6 hours a day. Here are some 'before' pictures of the house. I'll post the after ones next week!


Here is Jeff in front of our house. It is a 2 story house with a bright purple gate!


These are our front doors. Traditionally there are separate entrances for men and women, the women's enters into the kitchen and the men's into the main part of the house. It doesn't appear so far that these rules are very strictly followed, but all of the older houses have 2 entrances.


This is the view from the top of our roof. Notice the mountains in the background? It is really very beautiful here, if only there were a beach...

We got to go yesterday and meet one of the children who's heart surgery we helped fund a couple months ago. She was visiting a dentist to get a filling and have a check-up. Lack of dental care is one of the causes for many of the heart conditions that effect children here. It was really great to get to meet her family and tomorrow I am going to see the family of the child we sent for heart surgery last week.

The people here have been so wonderful to us and we are really enjoying ourselves. We are learning more and more Kurdish words everyday, but we still have a LONG road ahead of us!

We will keep you posted! In the meantime check out our website for the latest updates at www.preemptivelove.org