Wednesday, May 8, 2013

What’s Out Your Window?

Today I thought it would be fun to show some of the views from a few of the windows in my house on a typical Ukarumpa day.

Let’s start with the everything room—the room where we play Christmas carols on the piano, visit with friends on the couch, watch movies on the TV (or computer), host families at the dining table, play card games, pray, laugh cry, cuddle pets…


We are fortunate to have a huge plate glass window opening up to an amazing view! You can see Lone Tree in the distance (once it only had one tree on the peak, but now there are many…but the name hasn’t change), the Training Centre (where we hold classes, conferences, and workshops related to Bible translation), the cow pastures off to the right, and then the gardens of our national coworkers to the left. The little bush-looking thing in the yard to the lower left is actually an avocado tree. It’s a bit of a gray and hazy day today, so the clouds aren’t as spectacular as they often are.

Our lovely view from the "everything" room
Now, off to the kitchen! Just the other day I had a plethora of cucumbers, avocados, and some chicken…so I made cucumber-avocado-chicken soup! Despite its rather florescent green color, it actually was pretty tasty  This shows more gardens (this picture is taken just to the left of the “everything” room window). These are “louvered” windows, meaning the glass is mounted in narrow, horizontal plates that can rotate closed (when it’s chilly out), or fold inward, to let the breezes in.
As I stand at the counter mixing up the day's bread, this is what I see

Let’s go to the office/sewing room/craft room/dehydrating room/library/room with the light bulb that requires climbing on a chair and tapping it in order for it to turn on… here’s where I type many of these blog posts, work on literacy projects, or try to figure out how to repair the strange skirt that I bought in Kainantu. Because we have more valuable/expensive items kept in this room, we have both arc mesh and bars across the windows for security’s sake. But, even with the extra metal, the view of the surrounding mountains is still refreshing!

Often the storms approach over those mountains and I know to run and get my laundry off the line!


And finally, here’s the window from my bedroom, looking out the opposite side of the house from the kitchen. That’s our neighbor’s house, a grapefruit tree, a lemon tree, and our garden off to the left while you can see the edge of our clothesline to the right. The benches off to the left surround a place to build a fire and grill. Yum!

That grapefruit tree is really prolific; too bad they are quite sour, and despite trying, I haven't become a fan yet
What's out your window?