My next-door neighbor is a nice guy and a very nice neighbor.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have problems and he\u2019s always very courteous.\u00a0 Shortly after he moved in he introduced me to his girlfriend, and after a while I noticed that she seemed to be growing bigger in the mid-section.\u00a0 (Here, sadly, that\u2019s not uncommon before marriage.)\u00a0 She stayed here for a while, I think, but then when the baby was born she went back to her mom\u2019s house for her mom to help out with the baby.\u00a0 Now the baby is about 7 or 8 months old, and last month my neighbor told me that they were preparing the wedding.\u00a0 He said that the official wedding would be a certain day in a town a few hours from here, but then there would be a reception here in our town a week and a half after that.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I told that to some friends here, they asked if my neighbor, the groom, would be going to the wedding. Um, he\u2019s the groom<\/em>! Of course! Or at least that\u2019s what I had assumed, though I realized that that wasn\u2019t a given here. So the next time I saw him, I asked if he\u2019d be going to his own wedding. \u201cNah,\u201d was the reply. \u201cI have a few brothers who will go and take care of that for me.\u201d There are some things I\u2019ll never understand here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, the day of the wedding passed uneventfully and the day of the reception drew near. Here, it just means that you go and eat, and if you\u2019re there in the evening there may be dancing. But I knew that I wouldn\u2019t know many people there, so that it would be quite boring to just sit by myself until they served me food, I ate, and I could get up and leave. So I invited a friend to join me at the wedding. (Yes, that is one of the things I\u2019ve understood here \u2013 you can always bring someone else with you to such a festivity and they won\u2019t bat an eye at feeding your friends, too!) The friend I invited was my host sister from the village, who is a horrible conversationalist \u2013 it\u2019s usually awkward sitting and trying to chat with her. So I figured I\u2019d kill two birds with one stone \u2013 spend time with my sometimes awkward host sister and spend time at the semi-awkward wedding reception. I picked her up and we went to the wedding reception. We got food, several sodas a piece, some juice, etc. All in all, a fine time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When we were ready to leave, I told her that I wanted to go and visit someone else (another of My People) before taking her home, since we were just a few blocks from her house. (Yes, that is one of the things I\u2019ve understood here \u2013 you can also just stop in and visit people, and you can bring others with you. You can also add things to other people\u2019s plans without necessarily telling them in advance.) I showed my host sister a picture of the lady we were going to go visit, and she said that she didn\u2019t know her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we got there, we found the lady we were going to visit.\u00a0 And we found that she also had a house guest.\u00a0 The surprise was that it was the younger sister of the host sister who was with me that day!\u00a0 She had earlier kind of eloped and ran away (which is a big no-no here), but had since moved back to the village, pregnant, with her husband-ish.\u00a0 Now the baby was maybe 5 months old, and she was staying with this lady for a few weeks.\u00a0 The lady explained that her husband-ish had stayed at their house to go to school for a year or two, so that must be why she ended up there.\u00a0 It was weird, though, that her sister didn\u2019t even know she was in town, and she didn\u2019t try to find her sister and greet her while she was here.\u00a0 But what was even more weird was the fact that even though they hadn\u2019t seen each other for a long time, they barely said more than hi to each other.\u00a0 The lady we were visiting played on her phone, I tried to make conversation, and the others just sat there, mainly.\u00a0 There are some things I\u2019ll never understand here. . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, there are plenty of other things that I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever understand, but this post is already too long, so I\u2019ll stop here. Thanks for your prayers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My next-door neighbor is a nice guy and a very nice neighbor.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have problems and he\u2019s always very courteous.\u00a0 Shortly after he moved in he introduced me to his girlfriend, and after a while I noticed that she seemed to be growing bigger in the mid-section.\u00a0 (Here, sadly, that\u2019s not uncommon before marriage.)\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":945,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/945"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/susie-l\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}