pictures only my mother will probably care to look at...

Our first squash vegetables are starting to form...in a few more weeks they should be even bigger and more beautiful...I am so excited!

Sarah, my sister, just hanging out our sheets to dry on our clothesline...I love this backyard (although we have no grass)...it is so much fun to nurture a small garden in the middle of the city.

One of my favorite things to do when I get home from work is to check on the garden and provide some refreshing water.  Even though they look quite puny from the picture (the bright Denver sun can make them whither during the day but on cloudy days and at night they are perfectly perky), they are growing stronger and more full everyday.  I can't believe I haven't had a vegetable garden before now.  I guess the fact that I lived in the on-campus apartments in college and then lived in a Moroccan city with no grass around after that would make sense.  Well, from now on, no matter where I live, I am determined to have just enough land to grow some of my own food, in'shallah...(if God wills, in Arabic).

Which leads me to my next point...Sarah and I are very fortunate to live in a neighborhood with a "lake" and open grassy space with trees a few blocks away.  It's convenient to have a bit of "nature" (although it was "human-made") close to our home in the middle of Denver.  We've always loved being outside (random thought:  it is so funny how whenever I write I always talk about "we"...Sarah and I are like, a unit...we are together all the time and it never gets old!  Even my sweet little nephew Caleb recognizes this...whenever I talk to him on the phone or if Sarah talks to him, he always asks where the other one of us is...he doesn't know what to do when there is just one of us...I like having a family unit always with me though...it seems more natural.)  Anyways, so this evening was just beautiful here in Denver so we decided to take a walk around the lake.  We usually discuss our thoughts about our jobs, our co-workers, our friends who are getting married soon, our friends who are having babies soon, the importance of intentional ethnic diversity in the church (more about this to come in the future...I'm still formulating my thoughts.), our inability to feel like we fit in wherever we go, our constant struggle to find a church fellowship to be a part of and to make our home, the latest happenings in our nephews and niece's lives, what mountain are we going to climb next weekend, what vegetables to get at the farmer's market next week, where to go camping when our Mom and Dad come to visit in a few weeks, and me educating Sarah what music she has got to listen to, etc.  Inevitably during these conversations, we seem to always end up talking about when we lived in Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan.  It seems this is at the forefront of our thoughts almost all the time.  We crave meeting Arab strangers who are new to America or who are old to America but still feel lost in this massive country with many stereotypes about Arabs.  We can spot a group of Muslim girls from a mile away.  Sarah slips into Arabic any chance she can (I'm still waiting for my chance to speak Tarifit Berber with anyone...I doubt that will happen anytime soon :)  So back to my main point of these ramblings...Tonight, we were casually walking and talking and we round a corner of the lake and I see a woman sitting on the ground with hijab (head scarf).  There is a middle-aged man and 2 small children (who are just adorable riding their pint-sized bicycles) not too far away who look like they might be part of the family.  So far this is not a too uncommon site for Denver but as we get closer, I see that she is wearing a jalaba (a long dress-like covering with a pointed hood that women wear over their clothes specifically in Morocco).  Here, like the women in this picture...

       

Obviously, we get so excited and formulate a plan to talk with them so as not to make it awkward when we both feel practically naked in our tanktops/tees compared to what we wore when we were in Morocco.  And they were just great.  Yes, they were from Morocco, Casablanca to be exact and they live in our same neighborhood here in west Denver!  The older woman was the man's mother and she only spoke Arabic and the two little ones were his children and his wife was at home.  We had a nice conversation about America and Morocco and of course, the only part of the Arabic conversation I understood was when the woman was proudly telling us that she had been on the Hajj (Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia) 4 times.  They were astounded that we once lived in Al-Hoceima which is a small town on the northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.  And like all hospitable Arabs we exchanged phone numbers and got an invitation to have tea at their house and meet his wife (yes!  I've been craving Moroccan mint tea for sometime...it is just not as good when I make it).  It feels so nice to have other people validate that Morocco and Al-Hoceima are real places.  I know that sounds strange.  Sometimes, my memories seem too surreal to think that my experience there was and is a major part of my life thus far.  We have been wanting to meet some Arab friends here but it has been somewhat difficult.  We couldn't find any women, only men.  But oh no, not tonight!  So all things considered, it was a good, good night for walking around the lake.