Another one bites the dust...

OK, before we get around to what bit the dust, I wanted to put a couple of pictures up from my birthday party and Easter.

The work week was tough but flew by and we found ourselves partying at a friend's house on Friday night. It was a great party and we had a lot of laughs. It was just the thing to unwind.

On Saturday we went over to one of my local coworker's house to learn how to dye Easter eggs in the local style. Of course no visit to a local house is complete without a feast so we got to help make all sorts of bread and sambusas.

Since the weather was good, our hosts fired up the tandoori oven in the back of their apartment building.

It starts by building a huge fire in the oven until the inside cement turns white.

Then our friend's mother slapped the dough onto the inner wall where it stuck until it finished cooking.

It's pretty cool to watch and delicious to eat.

After the feast, we went to the kitchen and made some of the coolest Easter eggs I've ever seen. We used leaves and cloth applied to the eggs to make patterns

and then colored them with purple dye and yellow onion skins respectively.

I think the results speak for themselves. It was a great day.

For Easter itself, I surprised Stephanie with an Easter basket full of treats that my parents helped me get on my trip to the U.S. She was most pleased. Then we had a relaxing day at home, made Easter ham and had some friends over for dinner.

It's hard to believe that we're halfway through yet another week. And it's been even more trying since the thing that bit the dust was our new car! There seems to be some electrical problem that keeps draining the battery and local mechanics seem flummoxed. We're hopeful that someone can figure it out, but have started looking for another car.

Fortunately, the guy who sold it to us is being great about it and is helping us out quite a bit. If we have to switch cars, at least we won't be taking a loss on this one, but we really like the car and hope it can be fixed. At least the next weekend is approaching and we're only three weeks away from R&R!