I see camels!!!

 I have finally seen the camels roaming around that everyone has been talking about here.  I was told that they hung out right outside the compound, or were right off the highway. I had been here 2 weeks and no camels!  But yesterday, on the way to Zumba at the other compound, the 5 of us were chatting, when I glanced outside the window and saw 4 camels just walking around in the desert by themselves.  I probably scared everyone by interrupting the conversation and blurting out "I see camels!"  Of course, this was old hat to everyone else.  One lady said that the first time she saw them, her driver just immediately diverted into the desert so that she could see them up close.

Another first for me was trying to cook red beans and rice on Monday.  New Orleanians reading this will know that it is a New Orleans tradition on Mondays.  People used to put a pot of beans to cook on the stove to cook while they did their laundry and hung it out on the clothes lines outside to dry (a long time ago).  The big problem with fixing this is that you cannot buy pork or ham here.  So,I looked around as to what I could substitute.  In the meat case, I found something called beef pepperoni, which I guess is a spiced meat.  I found red kidney beans.  I think that they take rice very seriously here because there is a whole aisle with selections of rice on both sides of the aisle.  I couldn't even tell the difference between most of them because the writing was only in Arabic and in burlap sacks.  I was looking for a long grain rice and ended up with a long grain, Egyptian, basmati rice.  It is good, but different from Mahatma long grain rice.  I had a couple of activities to do that day.  So as soon as Ken left for work, I chopped up all the vegetables and this beef pepperoni and put it in the pot to start cooking.  It cooked for 1 1/2 hours before I had to leave for Zumba.  When I came back, I put it back on for another 1 hour before going to the Monday afternoon tea.  When I came back at 3:30 pm, I tasted it and it was hot, hot with pepper.  I didn't understand why because I hadn't put much cayenne in.  It turned out to be the meat!  We had 3 people coming over for dinner and I just visualizing them eating a bowl of beans of rice with the sweat pouring off of them because the beans were too hot.  So, I scooped the meat out and put it aside.  I had read that if you have too much salt in a stew, you can put a cut up raw potato in and it will absorb the extra salt.  I thought well, let me see if it will absorb the pepper.  Luckily, it worked.   But the damn red beans were still hard.  They had soaked overnight and had cooked for over 2 1/2 hours.  Everyone wasn't coming over until 6:30, so they had another 2 1/2 hours to cook.  Finally, they were decent, just firm.  I like them really mushy, but these were a close approximation of New Orleans red beans and rice.

I had my first Mahjong lesson today.  Three ladies were playing and I watched.  A Chinese lady was teaching me.  There was another Chinese lady, who was used to a different style of play and an American, who was used to a third style.  This will take me awhile to learn. 

To just add a comment about the crazy driving....Yesterday, on the way home from Zumba, TWICE, we encountered someone driving on the wrong side of the street, toward us.  So, we are just driving along at about 40 mph and here comes someone just casually driving the opposite way toward us!  I was told that it is because sometimes the turnaround on a street is a long way away, so it is preferable to just drive the wrong way for several blocks!  Also, NO ONE stops at the stop signs.  They don't even slow down.  I guess they just pay attention if someone is coming to the intersection.