mmm-BELLY-may Days

Dear Isaac

Hi Isaac!  Thanks for your letter.  It was so long ago that you wrote it, I'll bet you forgot all about it!  I suspect other people might wonder about the same things, so I'm going to answer even though it's late, ok?

I already talked about snow in mmmBELLYmay land here, do you think we'll get any before Christmas here in Illinois?

I get my food in a few different places.  Some of it I grow myself.  Actually, it was just an accident that a tomato plant grew out of my compost pile, but the tomatoes were so good, I'm going to plant all sorts of seeds in January.  I also have some fruit trees.  This is the first papaya that I picked!

I also buy veggies, eggs and other food from the open air market in the village where I live.   I get rice, flour, canned green beans, tuna fish, Nutella and Laughing Cow cheese from a little shop in a town about an hour away from where I live.  It's kind of like Olson's General Store in Little House on the Prairie.  Have you ever watched that show?  There's a store that has all sorts of useful things and food, all behind a counter.  I wait my turn, and then tell the man working there what I need, and he gets it down for me.

For lunch every day I get my goat and corn meal mush from a little restaurant right near my house.  This isn't the one, but it looks a lot like it.  I like my lunch!  There are days where I'd rather a Big Mac, but goat is good eating!  And, my usual lunch costs me about 75 cents.

Does that answer your food question, Isaac?  Next post I'll talk about how muddy the roads get when it rains!

Thanks for writing, and thanks even more for praying for the Bible translation into mmmBELLYmay!

Love,

Miss Nora

Of snow and snakes

Dear Abe, Isaac, Lexi, Jake, Lauren, Olivia, and Zach,

Thanks for your good questions about snow and snakes!  I'll answer your other questions too, in other blog posts.

Even though this looks like snow, it's actually cotton that's been harvested and piled up, waiting to be weighed.  It rarely gets below 60 degrees farenheit here, and in the hot season, which is coming up in March and April, it gets up to 120 degrees.  Our mountains aren't high enough to get snow, too bad, huh?  It would be nice to be able to go up into the mountains and cool off by going sledding when it gets hot!

Even though this snake came to visit my yard, I haven't ever been bitten by a snake, and I'm really glad!  I don't have anything about snakes in general, but there are some pretty poisonous ones that live here. One of the reasons I don't have any grass in my yard is so that snakes don't have anywhere to hide.  The other reason is that water is pretty scarce here, and there just isn't enough to use for watering grass.

Thanks for all of your letters!  Ryan, Courtney, Madison, Nicole, Taylor, Jared, Eean, Brock, Caleb, and Andrew, I'll be answering yours soon!

Love,
Miss Nora

Dear Abe

Hi Abe!  (Your name isn't really Abe, I'm giving you a pseudonym.  Ask Mrs. D what a pseudonym is!)

Thanks for your letter with all the nice compliments and good questions!

When I need to have clothes made, I go to a seamstress and I show her a picture of what I want my dress to look like.  She measures me, and then she makes it for me.  It's really nice to have clothes that fit perfectly!  Here's a picture of me at the seamstress' shop:

I don't know if it has a name, but one song that they sing here is a lullaby I call Yoo Yoo Yoo.  Click here to see a video of a woman singing it.  I like to sing it to crying babies because the babies stop crying and all the adults around start laughing because it's funny to hear me sing it.  And, when I forget the words, I can just sing yoo yoo over and over again until someone jumps in and helps me remember them!

Thanks for praying and for writing!

Love,
Miss Nora