Monday, August 29, 2016

Things I Love About Madagascar (TILAM): Drumline, Bubba, Chameleons, Dancing, Bazaars, Clouds, Tennis and more

Living overseas (PARTICULARLY in a third world country) can be exciting, interesting, terrifying, boring, sad, amazing, challenging and lonely ... in no particular order.

Eventually you come to some inner negotiated psychic truce wherein you realize that you will just have to ride out those valleys because they pass...they have to right?  Now that does not make them any easier but sometimes remembering the peaks can.


My lovely wife started doing these "Things I Love About Madagascar" posts on her facebook last year and I've collected them all here.  I still need to upload some pics for some of them but I wanted to get this posted...finally.

Things I love about living in Madagascar:  DRUMLINE. Around Christmas every year (we've been here now for three of 'em!).





Things I love about living in Madagascar: THE BIRDS.  Our little corner of the Indian Ocean has an amazing collection of beautiful bright birds that we've never seen anywhere before.


Things I love about living in Madagascar: BUBBA.  Bubba is "our" 20-year old irradiated tortoise.   These tortoises get passed down from family to family--our gardener mentioned that Bubba had about 4 different names before we gave him one.


Things I love about living in Madagascar:  Dancing with my husband :) 
Our friends throw some great parties and with how affordable babysitters are here ($2 an hour), it's so much fun to get to go out dancing together!











































Things I love about living in Madagascar:

The Winnie the Pooh clouds :) Especially During rainy season!
































Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Meeting amazing people Who not only want to make a difference but do! 
Check out the website for Hay Kanto! Or Iris Oprhanage!  Or the Street Kids Center
!


































Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Tennis lessons with my hubby on Friday afternoons! PS I'm really bad but maybe with some lessons  Annemarie Orr  Will play with me some day :)


Things I love about living in Madagascar:

The girls learning french (and Malagasy). Macee Took a bite of her lunch and said "C'est bon mama (it's good mama)" smile emoticon

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Fresh fruit / vegetable stands! 

Things I love about living in Madagascar:

When a fruit / vegetable season returns, it feels like Christmas :)


Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Fresh strawberries, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, etc from our backyard :) 
(I Realize we could do this in the states I'm pretty sure I Would not-have the full time gardener :))

Things I love about living in Madagascar:

Jasmine in October. Amidst the ubiquitous red-brown dust covers everything, the unfiltered belching diesel fumes, you might catch a waft of sweet floral magic that belongs on a tropical beach somewhere.  

Things I love about living in Madagascar:  Christmas Bazaars.
Every year there's a huge Christmas bazaar downtown with a cornucopia of embassy tables from all over the world!  One year the Russians ran out of change and were giving out change in vodka shots.

Things I love about living in Madagascar:
Rainy nights and mornings blue sky!



Things I love about living in Madagascar:
The neon green fields of rice paddies!


Things I love about living in Madagascar: WORK ORDERS.  When something breaks, you put in an embassy work order and the awesome staff comes over within a day to fix it.  But our favorite part is that they come over and hang up all your pictures!


Things I love about living in Madagascar:  CHAMELEONS! 

Almost every day for the past year the girls and their go on a wagon ride in our yard looking for chameleons, they've only ever seen 2!  But every day the girls are hopeful! The other day we spotted our 3rd! So beautiful! The girls were beyond excited :) 

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