Souvenirs!

Yo, peeps!! Don't have much to say right now, but I'm hanging out at the wifi cafe waiting for America to wake up and Skype with me so...might as well blog!

This morning, the big church near our house was having a bazaar. They were selling all kinds of things made in Ethiopia, and we heard it was a great place to find souvenirs. It sure was, we bought so much stuff! Get excited, people back home. I won't go into details because I don't want to ruin any surprises but, I've got all kinds of fun things! Of course I kind of want them all for myself so...I'll have to decide if I love you enough to give some up ;)

In other news...

We haven't seen any more rats (thank goodness!!), and our puppies are adorable. As you may have seen on Facebook, Luna ended up having four! Two boys, Pongo and Oreo, and two girls, Perdida and Brownie. They are adorable! We even got to hold one yesterday for a second!

I'm uploading pictures of my kiddies onto Facebook right now, which is always a pretty big effort for my computer. I think the speed of the internet in America is going to blow my mind. I'm pretty pumped for that. Our kids are adorable, still, and we love them. Teaching the after-school program is tricky (we have like 70 kids from 6-13ish years all in one tiny room!), but we really enjoy it. We're excited because this week we are also going to visit a daycare during the mornings. The daycare is in our neighborhood, Kore, and is for children of very, very poor families. I'll let you know how cute those kids are in a few days!

Alright, I think that's all I've got for now! Short and sweet today...enjoy :)

Puppies!!

Sorry, but, I just have to write a whole new blog for what just happened! It doesn't deserve to be squished in with the nesty rat blog. Ew.

A few days ago, Amare informed us that they suspected Luna (one of our three dogs) was pregnant. He explained that he felt this way because, "her breasts are getting very big" to which Masresha answered, "that's inappropriate."

Turns out she was indeed pregnant! This morning, we noticed Luna was missing. Kendra kept asking Amare where Luna was, but he didn't know. Finally he and Desta went on a hunt for her. After a few minutes, Amare came running back into the house to tell us that Luna was having puppies! We hurried out to see.

She had made herself a little spot under one of the beds in the extra room next to the outside kitchen I told you about in the last blog. There she was, licking and licking one verrrrry tiny and very adorable little black puppy! Kendra, Amare, Desta and I made camp on the floor to watch. Shortly after, she had a second puppy! This one was a little white and black one. Both are boys. When Luna began chewing off the umbilical cord (yeah, gross) Amare decided he had had enough...he jumped up yelling, "aw ewww!" We stayed and watched for quite some time.

We're pretty sure Bobby (one of our other dogs...the one who ate the goat head) is the father. The puppies have a stricking resemblence to him. That, and Bobby seemed quite concerned all morning. He kept coming in and peeking around the corner at Luna.

It was pretty much adorable...the puppies are so super tiny and they look pretty darn cute right now! When we left, they were cuddled up with their mommy making cute little puppy noises. We're pretty excited to go home and check on them.

Happy Birthday, Pongo and Oreo! :)

Worst African Fears Confirmed (2-22-12)

Last night started off just fantastically. Kendra and I turned on one of two English TV channels, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was on. We decided that this could be a fun movie to watch. Our dilemma was the couches. They aren't the most comfortable I've ever sat on, and if we were going to stay up to watch a movie we were going to need better seating. Quickly, we found a solution: bring out a matress and sleeping bag. We did exactly that, and were very pleased. Of course, Amare and Masresha found it hilarious, but what else is new. After getting comfortable, we remembered that Amare had bought popcorn in a can the other day. Popcorn in a can?! Fun! Obviously popcorn and a movie is a good choice, and making popcorn from a can using the stove (old school!) makes the choice even better.

Unfortunately this is where it all went downhill.

We excitedly got up and headed out to the kitchen. Allow me to help you try to picture the setting. Amare and Masresha were finishing a late dinner in the house, sitting at the kitchen table by our little family room / eating area. They were going to come help us with the stove after we got set up, because the stove is quite tricky...you have to turn on the gas tank then turn on the stove and light the flame and sometimes it's a little frightening. Now, the kitchen where food is prepared is outside. You leave our house, and along the side of the house is kind of like another teeny tiny house. There are two rooms that you enter from outside, and the kitchen which you also enter from outside. Essentially an outdoor kitchen. It's very small, and the light doesn't work. It was nighttime, so it was very dark. Luckily, we had our phone to light the way until Amare and Masresha came out to help. Anyways, we go into the kitchen and Kendra opens the cabinet to take out a pot for the popcorn. That's when it happened.

It all happened so quickly. My thought process was as follows, "Woah something just ran out of the cabinet! Oh man it's big and black and it's running at me! There ARE rats here, I KNEW it!!!" There were most likely some profanities in those thoughts, considering what was actually coming out of my mouth in that split second is not appropriate to post in my blog. Kendra took the worst hit. She was right in the line of fire and the nasty rodent actually made contact with her, running over her foot. I had started running and screaming immediately, and Kendra was not more than a second behind me. We got to higher ground (aka we stood on a step outside the kitchen...as if the rat couldn't climb one step?) and continued screaming.

Amare, Masresha and Desta came running and looked genuinly concerned for our well-being...until we screamed at them that a rat just jumped out of the cabinet at us. Then they just about died laughing. Amare couldn't even move, he was laughing so hard. We continued freaking out, and told them to find it while we refused to leave our safe higher ground. Desta brought a flashlight over and they checked the teeny little kitchen. No luck. They assured us that he had escaped, and it was okay to come into the kitchen. We weren't so sure, but we tried to be brave and cautiously made our way back in. It didn't help one bit that all three boys were having a fantastic time freaking us out by brushing our feet with things, turning off the flashlight to scare us, and any other trick they could play.

Amazingly, we still made popcorn (under the protection of three guys who were willing to kill the rat if he showed his disgusting face again) and returned safely inside.

And so, my fears have been confirmed. If you remember from a few posts ago, I awoke one night and swore I heard some sort of rodent on the roof. I was only comforted by that fact that I not actually seen one. Well, now I've seen it. And this was no small mouse. This thing was legit. It had to be as big as two baseballs (I know that's not a very good comparison, but all I can think of besides that is "it was as big as a giant, black rat" and that's not helpful at all). Gross. Disgusting.

Needless to say, I had to check under my blankets before I went to bed last night. The coast was clear, and somehow I slept just fine. Perhaps because I still haven't seen a rat inside the house, I feel relatively safe. But I know he's still out there somewhere, probably with all his nasty rat friends. And can I just remind you once more that we found him in our kitchen?! Ew. That's just never a good place for a rat.

Amare and Desta just came in to say good morning to us, and to see if we survived the night. They're still laughing and making fun of us. I have a feeling we're not going to live this down for awhile :)

Ew.

Proud to be Canadian (2-21-12)

Yesterday's highlight: Waking up and seeing Desta's choice of clothing. He was wearing a gray t-shirt that said, "Proud to be Canadian!" with a nice Canadian flag picture. Pretty much hilarious, since Desta is certainly not Canadian. He was indeed proud, too, because everytime he saw us he pointed to his shirt and said, "Canadaaa!" I'm pretty sure he didn't understand that the shirt was saying he was Canadian. Obviously the best part of the whole thing. Oh Desta, you crack us up.

Speaking of Canada, we got invited to Happy Hour at the U.S. Embassy on Sunday (I know that has nothing to do with Canada, but talking about Canada made me think of America since they're neighbors and all...and also I wasn't sure where else to put this little story). This guy we know (but I don't know his name) was talking to us and said, "So do you want to go to happy hour at the U.S. Embassy sometime?" What? The U.S. Embassy has happy hour? Curious. And how does this Ethiopian guy know about that? Does he frequent the U.S. Embassy? Interesting. Actually, we haven't even seen the U.S. Embassy yet...evidently it's on the other side of the city. I'll let you know if we end up partying it up at the Embassy with all kinds of Americans.

Speaking of America, I got lots of mail yesterday! Exciting! I received a giant package filled with all sorts of school supplies that my mom collected, which I can't wait to use here. That's just fun. I also got four letters from my Grandpa...wow! He's on top of things. Tamrat (whose P.O. box we are using) said, "We usually use email here" when he saw how many old-school letters I got from my grandpa. I explained to him that my grandpa doesn't know how to email, and anyways, snail mail is just exciting! I also got a big envelope filled with letters to Kendra and I from my Mom's second grade students. These were lots of fun to read, and we're working on writing back to them. I think my favorite was the one that said, "I heard you're in Africa. I feel bad for you."

So, I have a mosquito bite that is oddly purple all around. It's probably malaria.

...

Just kidding, Mom and Dad! I'm still taking my malaria drugs, so I'm safe. No worries. Anyways. Let's see, what's new in this wonderful African place...

Right now, I'm hanging out at home waiting to go to school. I had pretty big plans of showering this morning but, go figure, our water stopped running sometime last night. Unfortunate to the extreme! These past few days have spoiled me, and I quite wish I could shower today. Oh well, when in Africa...don't shower. I should know this by now. After all, I've been here for six weeks and five of them were without running water.

That's right, six weeks, tomorrow. We're halfway done with our trip! It is flying by. I can't believe it's already half over. Wow. I'm definitely not ready to go back just yet, but I do have big plans for when the time comes. Some of my plans include having my parents meet me at the airport with a burrito from Chipotle, which I will enjoy very much immediately. Then, we will stop at Starbucks on the way home and I'll get an Iced Caramel Macchiato. Venti. You have no idea how much I miss iced drinks such as that. One time, Amare asked me if I wanted coffee. Jokingly, I said I would love an Iced Caramel Macchiato. This was two or three weeks into the trip and I hadn't seen any kind of iced coffee anywhere, so I knew it wouldn't happen. He looked at me in confusion, and tried to understand as I explained to him what it was. After eating and drinking these wonderful things I'm going to take an absurdly long and incredibly hot shower. With like 17 kinds of soap. Wow, it will be fantastic. Then I'm going to begin frantically looking for a job.

Back to the whole my-life-in-Africa thing...funny story. A couple of days ago, Kendra and I were in Mekanissa, the neighborhood area next to ours (I feel like I should show you a map or something so I can just name places and you can follow along, but I don't know how exactly to go about doing that). We were looking for a minibus to take us home. It was the afternoon, which is usually a very easy time to catch a minibus to our neighborhood, Kore. We just walk to the bus area, and there are generally like five waiting to go to Kore. The conductors call out, "Kore!" and you find the right bus. Well, it was a bit odd the other day because the person calling Kore was standing outside a pick-up truck. We stopped, looked at the truck, and both said at the same time, "this?!" Two guys next to us cracked up and said yes, this. The back of the truck was enclosed, and there were benches on either side. There was a door that swung open where you would usually climb up into the bed of a truck. We climbed in and took a seat. Pretty exciting, cause this was a whole new kind of minibus adventure! I'm going to try my best to explain how unsafely the conductor was sitting. On the inside of the swinging door on the back of the bed of the truck, there was a small round metal "seat" about the size of a dinner plate. He sat on this, with the door open! We just drove along like that. Um, seems like a bad choice to me. He didn't even fall out once though, so that's just impressive.

I'm realizing that I kind of just had some really random not-so-exciting stories for you this time...sorry. Besides that, life has been pretty normal over here. School and playing with kids in the afternoon, hanging out around the house at night...nothing too super thrilling! And it's really hot today, and so it's kind of killing me to write this because I'm hot so my brain hurts. Which means I'm going to be a quitter, and give up. I can't post this today anyways, because we aren't venturing out to a wifi place today. Perhaps tomorrow I'll write some more! But never fear, we're still having a very fantastic time :)

An outing with the kiddies! (2-18-12)

This morning we got up briiiiiight and early to take the kids we work with to a children's theater with Mastresha. Shout out to Wasco Elementary School for donating lots of money to make this trip happen!! Thanks, Mom ;)

Let me just start off by saying that this "field trip" was so different from a field trip in America in so many ways. In the morning, we met the kids at the school. Whoever wanted to go, came. No silly permission slips needed here...that's not how they roll in Ethiopia apparently. There were 68 kids there, and four adults (including Kendra and I). Another difference from American field trips...I'm fairly certain that ratio of teacher to student would not be okay. Now for the super-not-okay-in-America part: We took all 68 of these kids plus us four adults in two minibuses. If you remember from my minibus post, there are 12 seats. So on two buses, there are 24 seats. We had 72 people. And we all fit into two minibuses. Um, if that's not the most unsafe 20-minute bus ride ever, I don't know what is. Especially when these extremely over-crowded buses are driving on the streets of Ethiopia, where traffic laws are practically non-existent. Wow. Shockingly enough, we made it to the theater safely.

When we got there, I paid for all the admission tickets using the money that was donated to us. It was amazing how little I had to spend! For 72 tickets, I paid a total of 220 birr. That's appoximately $14. So cheap!

Here's another difference between field tripping in America and Ethiopia. In America, adult chaperones attend to keep an eye on the kids. Meaning they don't leave 68 6 - 13 year olds alone. Ever. Well, in Ethiopia apparently you do because we got to the theater, showed the kids their seats, and then went to have breakfast with Mastresha and the only other adult while the kids waited for the show to start. When Mastresha asked Kendra and I if we wanted breakfast, we thought he meant he would bring in a snack for us. When he took us to a restaurant to sit down and eat upstairs, in a totally different room from the students, we were shocked. He told one of the few older kids (i.e. a 12 or 13 year old) to keep an eye on the others (yes, the other 71 children). We were gone for almost an hour, and returned just as the show was beginning. Luckily all children were still accounted for! That's just crazy!

They all seemed to really enjoy the show, and I think they had a fantastic time. They don't often get to go on outings like this, as they are some of the poorest kids here. It was so cute how "dressed up" they all got for the occasion. Generally, they all wear the same outfit every single day. Today, we could tell they put on their nice clothes. Of course, "nice clothes" are much different here. Their clothing was still much dirtier than anything I ever see students wear in America. But regardless of the dirt, they were dressed up and it was super cute. I really enjoyed taking them, and loved seeing how excited they were. Thanks again to all you peeps who gave money to help us out, it was a great morning! We still have lots to spend, and I can't wait to go shopping for lots and lots of fun school things! :)

Hamburgers, Hyenas and Monkeys...It Can't Get Much Better Than This! (2-17-12)

I'm just still so excited about the hyena and monkeys that I want to talk all about that right away. But, I'm fighting the urge to do so because I figure I should write chronologically. That's just easier for everyone.

So let me start with an update on the running water situation. It's been a good 24 hours since we were informed of this blessing, and amazingly, the water is still running! I know, it's just shocking! The water heater doesn't work in our bathroom, so we have two choices:

1. Shower in very cold water, or

2. Shower in the other bathroom with warm water that comes out of a hose-like apparatus.

Really, either option is so much better than a bucket so we're very pleased. Let's just hope this water keeps on runnin!

Now on to the hamburger news. Last night, we had cheesburgers. They were amazing. It was nearly like eating in America! Masresha and Ready took us to a restaurant that we were told has very, very delicious hamburgers. Oh my goodness, it's true! We don't get much meat here, and although many of you at home think I'm practically a vegetarian, I'm not. In fact, certain days I quite miss meat. As a result, we were pretty pumped for a chessburger! I was envisioning a cheeseburger with bacon...even more meat. It sounded just fantastic. Unfortunately when we got there, it said on the menu, "Due to a bacon shortage in the city, we will not be serving bacon for the unforseeable future." Too bad, but I got over it fast. I got a regular cheeseburger and Kendra got a BBQ Burger. We cut them each in half and traded so we got to try two kinds. Needless to say, it was quite the wonderful meal. Yum.

After we enjoyed our hamburgers, we went with a whole group of people to a thing called street ministry. Every Thursday, a bunch of people from the organization we're working for go to hang out with a group of people that live on the streets. They talk, sing, and bring some food for them. We hadn't been before, but we went last night and it was a good time. Definitely interesting to see how these people live. It was very late when we went, so I pretty much loved looking at all the stars while we were there :)

This morning, Dundee and Amare took us to the Nile Gorge. It's about two hours away, so we got to go on a little roadtrip! We were very excited to get out of the city for a second time. It's funny how fast you leave the city...Dundee turned down one of the roads and all of a sudden there were no more signs of city life and we were driving up a mountain. The ride there was really pretty with lots of hills and beautiful scenery. After awhile of driving along, Dundee slowed down the car and said, "Ok by the way, that's a hyena." We looked out the window and there was in fact a hyena! It was a dead hyena...roadkill...but still, a hyena! Oh my goodness, that's just crazy!

So anyways, we arrived at the Nile Gorge and it was very pretty. It reminded me a lot of the Grand Canyon, only it's in Africa so that's like five times better instantly. And then it got approximately one hundred and ten times better when we came across the monkeys! When we arrived, the guys ordered some lunch for all of us. Kendra and I took of to explore while we waited, and began walking down the gorge. About five minutes into our exploration, we turned a corner and there were just ginormous monkeys right there! We literally almost ran into them. There were maybe five of six, and they were just hanging out under a tree. We took lots of pictures, and were totally shocked that we just walked right into a bunch of wild monkeys. That's just awesome. A little creepy cause they were pretty big and we weren't sure how to handle an attacking monkey....but luckily the monkeys weren't attacking. They were just staring at us. Since they spotted us before we spotted them, we figured no sudden movements was the best approach. Obviously, we made it safely away and continued our journey.

We walked pretty far down the gorge, and saw a bridge called the Porteguese bridge. Evidently it was built a very, very long time ago. You can cross it, but we decided it was best not to take that risk...the bridge looked a bit if-fy. As we headed back for lunch, we crossed paths with our monkey friends again. This time, one of those big guys stood up and started walking right for us! We walked away as quickly as we could without running, just in case he was after us. Well actually, Kendra walked away as quickly as she could and yelled at me when I was trying to walk and take pictures at the same time. But again, no monkeys attacked us so we're good. It was just the coolest thing ever - monkeys, not in a zoo! Oh my gosh I loved it. Awesome.

After lunch, we were sitting around for a while just observing the gorge. As we sat, we spotted some more monkeys! These were tiny little guys walking around together, and they were adorable. Unfortunately for the entire world, they were too far away to see on my camera. Thus I have no pictures. Sad day.

We left in the early afternoon to head home for a "movie night" party at our house. On the way home, I had the opportunity to throw a moose out the car window, so that was fun. It makes it sound a little less cool when I tell you that it was not a "moose" so much as a banana. But in Amharic, "banana" is "moose". Since Kendra and I are kind of easily amused, we like to make jokes about how we ate a moose and other such things. Well I was enjoying my moose, but it had quite a lot of bad spots. Obviously I should throw it out the window…especially because then I can say I threw a moose out the window. And anyways, apparently there were monkeys around, and they like bananas right? Win win.

On the ride home, things almost got really exciting. As we were driving through middle-of-nowhere Ethiopia, nothing in sight but hills and dust, our car broke down. As the Ethiopians put it, it "lost some energy". Luckily, we got the car some more "energy" somehow, and made it all the way home. Phew! Who knows, we could’ve been attacked by hyenas or something! Dangerous.

Alas, we made it home safely and had a fantastic time. Tonight lots of people came over for dinner and a movie. As we were beginning a game of "Mafia" before dinner, there was another one of those wonderful power outages. They always happen at the best times! Clearly total darkness makes the game way better. We ate a yummy dinner, and continued playing games since we couldn’t watch a movie…what with the lack of power and all. Our night was, instead, romantically lit by many, many candles. Solid.

Oh Ethiopia, I just love you!

What's on my roof? (2-15-12)

I'm a bit sleepy today due to the fact that I was up for approximately forever in the middle of the night last night listening to something scurrying around on my roof. Kendra, on the other hand, went to bed at 9pm and woke up at 10:30am so she's pretty well rested.

Let me start off by saying how tough I think I've become. In order to do this, we should think back to my reaction to bugs and other such creepy crawlies prior to living in Africa. To put it simply, I was not a fan. I'm still not, but I can now face them with bravery...which is an improvement. For example, when I was visiting Lee Ann in California just before coming here, a yucky bug made it’s way across her floor. I couldn’t face sleeping on the air mattress down there, knowing he was still wandering around. Instead, I had to crawl into bed with Lee Ann. It was safer that way. In Africa, as you may have heard, I’ve woken up to a bug in my bed right next to my pillow. And I calmly got up and killed him. No big deal, I’m brave now.

However, my bravery was tested last night when I realized that I’m pretty sure there are mice out there. Or rats, or something equally freaky, scary, and gross. I was sleeping ever so peacefully when I woke up just parched. I took a sip of water, and laid back down. When I laid down, I heard a sound that I was not pleased with. It sounded like a little something munching on a little something else, and it was coming from above me. I realized that I had heard this sound before, a few nights ago. However, last time I heard it I brushed it away and fell back to sleep. Last night, not so much. I thought to myself, what little something is munching on a little something else right up above me? Is it a noisy, very hungry bug? Then I heard a scurrying pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter (Kim, Cheryl, Ben and Jeff – as I typed "pitter patter" just now, I was reminded of the clomp drag grass grass grass…right?!). Not comforting. It came to me then that this was no hungry bug, this was sounding a lot like a hungry mouse. Oh dear me…I may be brave enough for bugs now, but I am not brave enough for mice!

I then came to a dilemma: How risky am I willing to get? You see, when I woke up parched it was because I was quite warm. I have somewhere around six blankets on my bed, and I was tucked under them all. Comfortable, but toasty. Now, I really wanted to get out from under the blankets so I wasn’t so warm. But with that came a price. Was I willing to expose myself to the mice like that? What if one found a way in through the roof and fell down upon me in my bed? And what if, when that happened, I wasn’t safely under my covers? Goodness gracious, I don’t think I could’ve survived. I wasn’t willing to take that chance, so I stayed under the blankets. Since this meant me being uncomfortably warm (while at the same time being worried about attacking mice), I naturally couldn’t fall back to sleep. I was stuck awake, listening to the scurrying and pitter-pattering above me.

When I finally did fall back asleep, I had a nightmare about mice and rats living under my bed. Not a peaceful sleep.

In the morning, while discussing this new concern with Kendra, I realized that I probably wasn’t quite thinking rationally in my half-asleep state. I mean, we’ve been here for five weeks now. Have I seen a mouse even once? No. Have I seen any signs of mice? No. If there were mice on my roof that wanted to get in, wouldn’t they have done that by now? Probably. So I’ve decided that I’m safe. Hopefully. Kendra has also given me the helpful hint that next time I’m too warm and also concerned about mice attacking me, I should take off three of my six blankets. Still safe, but also not quite so hot. She’s so smart.

Ok, I’m going to get a wee bit random here, but you should all be used to that by now. There’s something I’ve been meaning to make fun of, and I suppose now is the time. All over on the streets here, no matter where you are, there are shoe-shine people. They’ve got their little chair out for customers, they’ve got their bucket of water, and they’ve got their shoe-shinin tools. There are so many of them. Constantly (and by constantly I mean approximately three times per day), they try to get our business. They may call us over, perhaps simply ask us to get our shoes shined, or just tell us straight out that we have dirty shoes. Their approach is not important, though. It’s just important that you understand this is not a one-time occurrence. Or even a once-per-day occurrence. Now, let me inform you of the shoes I wear in Africa. Every day, I either have on my Toms or my flip flops. It’s one of the two. That’s all I’ve got. Do they even look at my feet before they try so hard to convince me to get my shoes shined? Because my Toms are made of canvas, and my flip flops are…flip flops. Shoe-shine man, can you really help me? It happens so frequently that Kendra and I are tempted to take them up on the offer someday. I think I’ll wear my $2.50 Old Navy flip flops and see just how spiffy the shoe-shine dude can make them.

This afternoon we did something exciting. Yes, we re-arranged our bedroom! Kendra and I returned home and thought it would be quite a fun time to move things around. Switch things up, you know? So we got to work. We decided that our beds were simply too far apart (no, our room is not that big, we’re just weird), so we moved those first. They are now quite close together...because we don’t spend enough time right next to each other these days (note the sarcasm there). We moved around our "dresser" and our top-notch table (aka broken drawers with a piece of plywood on top) and even swept up the floors. It’s like a whole new place in there! When Amare came over today, he was pretty much left speechless. He just kept saying, "Wow…wow…" and "I’m so proud!" I guess he likes the new arrangement. We’re pretty excited to show it off to everyone else. Clearly, we are easily pleased…

More randomness: As Kendra was brushing her teeth, she came out and said like it was nothing out of the ordinary, "Hey, there was a snuggle-bug in the sink so I killed it with shampoo" and went about her business. Of course, we lost it instantly and died laughing. First of all, she actually used the word "snuggle-bug" in a seemingly normal conversation. "Snuggle-bug" is the term we have created for the type of bug that I found near my pillow, trying to cuddle with me. Hence, "snuggle" bug. Secondly, she killed it with shampoo. What? An odd approach, yes…but it does indeed work! Actually, it’s not the first time we’ve used shampoo as a bug annihilator. Spider in the shower? Shampoo it. Bug in the sink? Shampoo it. Always a good solution. So good, in fact, that Kendra had the "fantastic idea" of squirting a shampoo barrier around walls of our room to keep other bugs from coming in. I just looked at her like she was crazy (note from Kendra - It would legit work! I mean, if any little critters tried to get in, they would get stuck in the sticky goodness of the shampoo killer!).

Breaking News!!!

As I was not able to post this on Wednesday, when I wrote it, I’m going to add today’s very exciting news. On this Thursday, February 16, 2012 the Strong Hearts guest house in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia acquired running water. Running water! Water, that runs! Desta came in this morning and tried to tell us something. He was saying things like, "Shower? Water? Waha alleh (water here)?" Our last guess would be that he was trying to tell us that we had running water and could take a shower. He was laughing, and we kept trying to guess. In the end, we said, "Ok! Yeah!" And he walked away laughing. Evidently, as we found out later, he was trying to tell us the fantastic news of the day. Amare came in and explained in English. Even though we could understand his English just fine, we still had quite a hard time believing! No way could we have running water. It’s been one month, one week, and one day since our arrival and we have not had running water for a single one of those days. Sensing our skepticism, he took us into the bathroom and….turned on the shower! Water came flowing out, and it was a beautiful sight to see! Currently we are waiting for them to get the water heater working. If all goes well, we’ll be taking nice warm showers in our very own bathroom this afternoon! We’re still finding it hard to believe, and are quite sure something is going to go wrong before we actually get to enjoy the shower. Fingers crossed, I’ll let you know how it all turns out!

Shooting Stars and Valentines

We've had a pretty fantastic past few days here!  You know why?  Because Ethiopia is just a fantastic sort of place.  I think I love it here.  A lot.

Two nights ago, Kendra and I were returning home from somewhere.  I don't actually remember where we were because sometimes I have a very bad memory.  The important thing is, we were walking up to our house and thought, hey we should probably lay outside and look at the stars!  We've always talked about how pretty they are here because you can see so many of them.  We hadn't actually taken time to look at them though.  So we made a plan to go inside, get a blanket to lay on, and head out front.

We did exactly that, and turned off all the lights in the house.  Desta even turned off the light in his little room for us!  The Ethiopians thought we were pretty funny, laying on the concrete and rock ground, but we were loving it.  Desta and Amare laid with us for a bit, but I don't think they appreciated it as much as us.  Amen said, "Wow, I love your style!" when he saw us camping out...but he claimed the ground was too hard for him to lay on.  Wimp.  We laid there for a very long time, and got incredibly excited when we saw the best shooting star of my life!  It was super duper bright, and went pretty far!  Epic.  We repeated this last night, and even upgraded the experience with pillows and a sleeping bag.  Comfortable, beautiful, and we saw more shooting stars.  Seriously, I don't think a night can get much better than that. 

Yesterday morning, we took on the challenge of making pancakes American style.  My mom emailed me her recipe, and we found all the ingredients.  The tricky parts were measuring and cooking.  We had to eyeball all the measurements, but I think we did a pretty wonderful job!  Then, we headed to our little mini stove and tried making one pancake.  Super fail.  We got a little discouraged, because this pancake was just messed up.  But after some changes in butter and pans, we ended up with some pancakes that actually looked like legit pancakes!  We got a little over excited when we flipped the first pancake that actually turned out...we may have shouted really loudly, alarming Desta who was in the kitchen doing dishes.  But we were pumped, so what are you gonna do.  It happens.  Anyways, the pancakes were pretty good.  Though they would have been better had we had syrup.  When we asked for syrup for the pancakes, Amare offered to go to the pharmacy and buy some cough syrup.  We explained to him that that wouldn't taste too good on pancakes...

Today is Valentine's Day.  Yes, they do indeed celebrate Valentine's Day in Ethiopia!  I don't think it's as big as it is in America, but it's here nonetheless.  We have some pretty big plans for our first Valentine's Day in Africa, and I'm pretty much loving it thus far.  We started the morning off by going out to breakfast.  Fancy, right?!  Afterwards, we went to the awesome grocery store where we first discovered African Betty Crocker.  We had the exciting idea of making and decorating sugar cookies for all our Ethiopian friends.  After all, they get pretty excited when we talk about making cookies ever since that fateful day when we introduced them to cookie dough.  We had seen frosting and food coloring there, so we were pretty pumped.  Well, turns out they didn't have sugar cookies.  Or vanilla frosting.  They only had lemon frosting, which didn't sound like it would taste so good with chocolate, peanut butter, or chocolate chip cookies.  Since we didn't think we could find all the ingredients to make sugar cookies from scratch, we improvised.  We purchased the lemon frosting (not the best, but alas, our only choice), and two packages of plain cookies to decorate.  And decorate we did.  They look pretty awesome.  Basically like really expensive cookies straight out of a bakery.  We've given some away already, and they've made people pretty darn happy (because they were so touched by our thoughtfulness or...possibly because they think we're hilarious and our cookies looked ridiculous).  So far Amare, Masresha, and Desta have received these delicious gifts from us.  Lucky peeps!  We've got a lot more that we're looking forward to passing out.  Should be a good time.

We'll be finishing off our wonderful African Valentine's Day with an afternoon at the school with the kids and another night of looking at the stars...this time with even more upgrades.  We're planning on bringing out more pillows.  It's going to be pretty much like a bed out there.  In fact, we just might bring an actual bed out.  Why not?  We can easily grab a mattress off one of the extra beds, and I think laying on it outside would be putting it to pretty good use.  Sounds fantastic to me!

A few little odds and ends

Hello peeps!

So, not much news to report from this fine country of Ethiopia. Things have been a bit uneventful for the past couple of days. It's been rather relaxing around here, which has been nice. But I've got some time now while I wait at the wifi cafe to see if my lazy sisters will get out of bed and Skype me :) so I'll fill you in on some random little happenings...

Let's see. First of all, Kendra and I got our hair braided like legit African girls. We were sitting around our house the other night, and Dundee and Amare's sisters were there. All of a sudden, they just started braiding Kendra's hair. Of course, that meant they had to do mine, too. It was pretty exciting, and we looked pretty awesome (or maybe a litttttle weird...). We took it out the next morning, because well...let's be honest. We don't really look African. I mean yes, I am pretty much incredibly tan....but we're not that tan. We figured we might get even more looks than usual if we went out with braided hair, trying to look African and failing. And anyways, we really needed a shower. That braided hair of mine had not been washed in too long, and it was well worth taking the braids out in order to get clean hair. But never fear, I have pictures! Coming soon to your Facebook.

Speaking of showers...Kendra and I still don't have running water. Not like this is news to anyone, given that we've been here for a month and have never once been able to use running water at our house. I bring this up, though, because we both awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of trickling water running through pipes. Was it just a dream? I don't know. All I know is that when we woke up in the morning, there was definitely not running water. Sad day.

Alright, let's talk about food again. Remember how Amare and Dundee's mom made us a fantastic dinner a few nights ago? Well, she cooked for us again. Two more times. And both times were amazing, of course. One night we had pasta with a meat sauce, vegetables, and fruit salad. The other night we had pancakes! And wow, was that a surprise! In fact, it was a surprise times two. Amare had told us that his mom was making pancakes for dinner and we got ever so excited. Then, she brought dinner in and we saw the "pancakes". They did not really resemble the pancake I am accustomed to. We questioned this and said, "Um, that looks a lot like injera. We like injera but...it's not a pancake..." to which we were told, "No, it is a pancake. Ethiopian pancake." Okay, so we were kind of bummed. But then, surprise surprise, Kendra took a bite and yelled, "it's a PANCAKE!" Amare's mom (and everyone else around) laughed at how excited we got all over again. After all, they did tell us it was a pancake. We just didn't believe them until that first wonderful bite. Tomorrow we are going to be making homemade American style pancakes for the Ethiopians. I don't know who is more excited, us or them.

Woah! We saw a giant turtle yesterday! We were sitting in some grass in a little mini park type area just minding our own business when Kendra screamed. There was an extremely large turtle walking right towards us! And let me tell you he was really bookin it, for a turtle. He got to some pretty high speeds, and he was really just coming right at us. Resisting the urge to see if we could pet him, we moved to slightly higher ground. We weren't sure if mayyybe he wanted to eat us...and that's just not a risk I'm willing to take. After he left, two tiny puppies came to visit us. They were just adorable! Except for the fact that there were fleas all over them, so we couldn't pet them. Bummer, yo.

This morning, I was walking to meet Kendra at a cafe near our neighborhood. Just walking down the street I've come to know and love, taking in the Ethiopian scenery. A usual morning. Then a random Ethiopian guy came up and started a conversation with me as I was walking. Still, a usual morning. We get this a lot. People really like to come up to us and say hello. So anyways, he chatting with me about how nice the weather is and if I come from England or America...just small talk. Until he decided to check my marital status. "So...you have husband?" he asked. I replied with, "Uh...yes? I'm going to meet up with him right now." In case you were wondering if I got married since leaving America, worry not, it was a lie I told the man. He seemed bummed, and left with a sigh and no goodbye. Sorry, buddy. My fake husband and I are very happy at the moment.

Let's discuss the things Kendra and I are doing work-wise now, shall we? I don't want you getting the wrong idea, thinking I'm spending all my time in Africa doing silly things like eating pancakes and stealing sheep. This past week, we went to the after-school program every day. This is for the kids who live on the streets of our neighborhood. You can tell very easily that these kids don't have much, but they're an amazing bunch! There are a lot of them, and apparently there usually aren't people to help with the program. Kendra and I decided that we wanted to help out every day, so we've been planning activities and games and hanging out with them every afternoon. This is nice, because once we find a closer orphanage we can still do that in the morning and this school group in the afternoon. The kids are a lot of fun, and range from about five to maybe 13 years old. One day, we taught them to make paper airplanes. They loved it. We're looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow! Again, I'll have pictures up of these cute kids soon :)

Well I'm nearly out of random things to talk about here and Kim and Cheryl just are not Skyping me...what the heck guys, come on. What else could you possibly have to do? Just kidding, I still love you. I just think you should Skype me.

Want to know how much Amharic I know? It's going to be hard to type it in here, and I'm just going to go with phonetical spelling, because I don't know the crazy Amharic alphabet. Or how to type with the Amharic alphabet. I only know how to speak it. So, here goes:

Salahm. Denanachu? Ene arabungne. Erat ifilligallo. Hulet arungwade tshirt allesh.
That says "Hi. How are you? I'm hungry. I want dinner. She has two green tshirts." I know, impressive! What's even more impressive is that I also know the days of the week, all kinds of food, how to count to 100, and lots of other random stuff. But I'm not going to type all that on here because that's just boring. So if you want me to show off my bilingual-ness, Skype me and I'll have a conversation with you in Amharic. It'll be fun.

Oh yes, I know what else! Kendra and I bought a hair straightener a few days ago. A pretty exciting purchase because (don't judge me, I'm in Africa with no running water) it makes our hair look cleaner for a longer period of time. Nice!

Guess what? My sisters do love me! They just both Skyped me. Finally. I know you were all worried, so I thought I should update you. Brady asked when I was going to come over again, and if I was at Grandma's house. Aww, no, I'm much farther than that my cute little nephew :( I miss those kids!!

Anyways, I'll give you one more random story then I'll shut up for now, since I'm not trying to pass the time waiting for my sisters anymore. When we acquired our wonderful hair straightener, we of course went right home to do our hair. Kendra (being kind of short, as you may know) was standing on the toilet to reach the outlet in the bathroom as I was leaning over the bathtub washing my hair in a bucket. Then there was a scream and a crash as Kendra broke the toilet seat and tumbled into the toilet. Luckily for her, when the seat broke a piece was under her foot. That, combined with her quick reflexes, allowed her to avoid contact with the water inside the toilet. Close call.

Well, that's all for now! I'm sure I could go on and on and on and on with random African stories, but I think people can probably only handle so much before they start getting bored. Yes? So I'll save some for next time :) Until then, peace out everybody!

A water shortage?? Now I really feel like I'm in Africa!

Yes, I'm aware that there has been somewhat of a water shortage since I arrived in this wonderful country, given that we haven't had running water since the good old USA. But it hasn't been a shortage so much as just a problem making the water we had run through the house. Hence no running water. We did have water outside that we could access and carry inside in buckets, though. Which is why we could shower with buckets (oh the luxery!). Yesterday things took a more African turn when we realized that the water filter in our house had been empty for two or three days. They usually refill this daily so that we have filtered water to drink, but lately we've had to buy bottles of water. When we asked why the water jug was empty and why there were no buckets in the bathroom, they told us that there was a water shortage in the area. Not just no running water, but apparently no water in general. Ah yes, this is Africa! No worries though, we can of course get by with purchasing bottled water for a few days...we won't go thirsty. Still, a water shortage combined with the pretty frequent power outages we've had lately? Nice.

Now allow me to try my hardest to describe to you how fantastically amazingly wonderful last night's dinner was. Wow. I'm still so happy just remembering it. Yesterday afternoon, Amare said that his mom invited us over for dinner. Of course we said yes, it's not like we had any other important dinner plans. That night when we got home right before dinner, we walked into our house and were welcomed by some very yummy smells. In our kitchen, the fancy little portable oven that we used to bake our Betty Crocker cookies was baking pasta and it smelled awesome. Amare was there to give us our Amharic lesson, and he told us that his mom was making that pasta for us! He informed us that his mom was a "farenje food specialist" ("farenje" being the word for "foreigner" here, in case you forgot). Now, we were beyond excited for the pasta. But wait, it gets better. After our lesson, we headed over with Amare to his house. Waiting for us was even more wonderful food. Here's what was on my plate:

1. French bread. If you know me at all you know that bread is my all time favorite food ever in the whole world.

2. Pasta. Again, if you know me you know that pasta is my favorite meal in America.

3. Shiro. My favorite meal in Ethiopia.

4. Injera. This is what you eat the shiro with, and is the delicious bread of Ethiopia.

Four fantastic foods. How did she know?! My plate was filled with wonderfullness, it was unbelievable! Needless to say, we super enjoyed dinner. There are no words.

The end.

Ethiopia: One Month In (2-8-12)

Well, it's official. Today is my four week anniversary with Ethiopia. I absolutely cannot believe that we've been here for four weeks already! The time has flown by...four weeks in means we only have eight left (tough math, right there).

Not much has happened since the Betty Crocker blog post, because obviously not much can top that. This week, we've been going to help with the after-school program everyday, teaching the kids from the streets of our "neighborhood". We hope to be able to visit more orphanages in the coming weeks, but have had no luck getting back to the other orphanage. So for now, we're spending lots of time with the after-school program. Of course, we love these kids, too. After all, have we met any kids here yet that we didn't like? They are adorable, and range from about six years old to maybe 11 or 12 years. Since we started teaching them, they all find us every day when we head out of our house onto the street. We can't walk a block without hearing, "Deannaaaa!!! Kendraaaa!!" and being trampled by kids. We feel pretty loved! :)

But anyways, since I don't have many interesting stories to report right now, I thought I'd just do a general little somethin somethin about how we're feeling after living in Africa for a month. Might be boring for you, I don't know. But you know what? My mom reads my blog, and she would like it even if I just wrote, "Hi, I'm still alive and happy over here!" So I know that I'm at least pleasing one person with this. And anyways, I figured I just might be looking back on this awhile from now and it might be nice to remember how I felt after month one. So, there's my justification. Here I go.

I have to say, first and foremost, that I am honestly surprised at the fact that I haven't hated this place at all yet. I fully intended to hate Africa for like, the first week or so. I was totally ready for that. I even told my parents before I left (as they were giving me the "if you ever ever feel like you need to come home for any reason at all you just tell us and we'll make it happen" talk) that I would probably hate it at first and if I told them, they weren't allowed to freak out and buy me a plane ticket home immediately to save me. But amazingly, I have loved Ethiopia from day one. People here told us that culture shock would hit us around week three (and I suppose we're only a week past that) but it hasn't. At least not yet.

Now don't get me wrong, there have been moments when we weren't jumping for joy. For instance, when we were first introduced to our house we were a little...skeptical. I mean, our room didn't look super fantastic and we were greeted with the information that we currently had no running water. Kind of a bummer. We soon realized, though, that our beds were very comfortable, that our suitcases made for some great extra storage space, and that we could in fact manage to kill bugs by ourselves with our shoes (or with an air freshener assult, either way works). And now, our room really feels like our room. In fact, after seeing how other people are living out here it seems quite luxerious. Running water or not. Really when you have no other options, a bucket works out just perfectly. Although we've grown accustomed to showering slightly less often (you know...being kinnnd of dirty) and other such things, there are some aspects of American life that I'm missing.

One of those aspects would be Chipotle. Miss that place. I just want some Mexican food. Another thing I miss is walking down the street without smelling nasty smells. Like urine. Or seeing where those nasty smells are coming from (aka people peeing). Everywhere. I also find myself missing texting. Honestly I haven't missed my phone all that much, but from time to time I quite wish I could send out some texts to my American peeps. I miss cake, or brownies, or something. But we've discussed this already, in the Betty Crocker post. If she has cookies in Ethiopia, maybe she has cake. We can only hope. I also miss rinsing my toothbrush out under the faucet. Good thing I brought like eight toothbrushes, because they get crusty fast when you can only dump some bottled water on top to clean them. And of course of course of course, I miss you people over there in the States. With me often being online around 2am Chicago time, I only get to Skype with people every so often. I very much miss talking to you all, and seeing you all, and hanging out with you all. Honestly. Skyping with anyone from home is always so exciting. That being said, don't be offended when I say that I'm glad we planned this trip for three months because I'm not ready to come back yet.

There were two boys here before us who left the day after we arrived. They were here for a month, and I was thinking last night about how I couldn't imagine leaving here already. Because even though I just listed a few minor cons about living in Ethiopia, there are so many things I love that make up for it. I mean, let's be honest, not being able to thoroughly rinse my toothbrush is not that huge of a bummer. I love the food (except when it made me sick, but that was only one day of many. So we're good.), I love how cheap everything is, I love how there are donkeys everywhere, I love that goats and sheep just walk right by all the time, I love how people are always carrying crazy amounts of things on their heads or backs (blows my mind, all the time), I love that we get to walk so much in the beautiful weather, I love the sugar that they give you for coffee (it's super delicious), and I don't know, I just love so many things here.

To finish it off, I know I've already said how much I love all the people here. They are all just fantastic. Welcoming, friendly, helpful, awesome. We've met so many people already, and I know I'm going to miss them a lot when we leave. There's always someone around at our house willing to do stupid stuff with us, or just laugh at us as we do stupid stuff. After all, Amare and Desta helped us steel a sheep. That's pretty epic. And we got a whole group of our Ethiopian friends in on that fantastic game of Ghost in the Graveyard. We have such a fun time with them, every day. Not only have we made some really great friends, but we also really like how friendly even strangers are. If we're ever lost or need something, there's always some random person willing to help us out.

You can probably tell from previous posts and I may have been a little repetitive today, but long story short, I really am having an amazing time in Ethiopia and this first month has been one of the best months of my life. Coming here was certainly a very, very good decision. After being here for a month, I'm very happy. I know there's still so much I haven't seen or done here yet, and I can't wait for all the fun things that will happen in the next two months.

That being said, I'll work on having a more exciting story for you in the next post...I should probably free some more animals destined to be slaughtered or something ;)

Betty Crocker!!!

Holy goodness gracious, did we find something amazing last night! If you read my last blog, you heard about how much we (I think mostly me...) were missing dessert. Leaky cakes and medicine-like ice cream just don't make the cut, in my book.

So last night, Kendra and I went out for dinner. On the way home, we met Dundee and Ready at a bakery where they supposedly have good cake. We tried it, and of course were not pleased. But it was okay, because right next to the bakery was a supermarket. We decided to take a look inside, and what did we find? Betty Crocker cookie mix! WOAH! We were so pumped. We bought two packages: Chocolate, and Peanut Butter. It was so super American, 100%. All in English and everything. I just can't even believe it! I mean, we've found things like Pringles ("Mr. Potato Crisps") or Apple Jacks ("Apple Rings") that are basically the same, but these packages of cookie mix were legit American. It was like being in Jewel. Or Target. Absolutely wonderful.

A short side story: As we started walking home with our super exciting purchases, Kendra got a little chilly. When she said something about being cold Ready so nicely offerred, "Shall I give you my trousers?" Kendra and I died laughing, of course. Ready asked what was wrong and pointed to his sweater, asking if it was "trousers". We told him no, trousers are pants. He also referred to the crosswalk on the street as a "zebra", because it's white stripes on a black street. "Come on, we're going to use the zebra." Funny guy, funny guy.

Anyways, we got home with our fantastic Betty Crocker. When Desta opened the gate, there were six or seven other guys there, hanging out (nothing unusual, Dundee's a pretty popular man, it's like a party house). I whipped out our cookies and told them just how excited they should be that we were going to make them American cookies. None of them had seen these before, and they were pretty curious..."You're going to make them now? Tonight?!" Yeah fools, tonight! We're baking these things up asap!

So we head to the "kitchen". Kitchens are a little different in Ethiopia, as you might expect. But after some searching, we located what we needed. We had to eyeball the measurements, because not only are they in tablespoons and cups (which they don't use here), but there aren't any measuring tools at our house anyways. No worries, we've made cookies plenty of times so eyeballing worked just fantastically. Right away, Amare got super into helping us make the dough. He was all about it. We made peanut butter first. When the dough was finished, we began feeding it to the Ethiopians. In Ethiopia, they do something called "goosha" (I am spelling phonetically here, I'm sure it's wrong!), which is feeding one another. They love to do it to Kendra and I, feeding us really spicy food with the excuse that "you have to eat it, it's our culture!" So we took a spoonful of cookie dough and went around to each Ethiopian and fed them. At first, they all looked at us like we were crazy. None of them had ever eaten cookie dough before, and even though Kendra and I were popping it in our mouths nonstop, they were pretty unsure about the whole thing. After we shoved it in their mouths, though, they were pleasantly surprised. Especially Amare's brother, Amen, who kept coming back for more. That kid ate so much cookie dough!

After introducing them to the wonders of cookie dough, we baked the rest. We don't have an actual oven at our house, so Amare went to his house and brought us something that was essentially a round portable oven. He said, "this will bake anything you want". It worked for us! They all loved the peanut butter cookies.

Since those cookies were gone in about five minutes, they asked if we could make the other batch, too. We took out the chocolate ones and Amare said, "Okay, I will make these ones all by myself! Like, just Amare will make these." Really, this guy was so excited about baking these cookies. He even made up a song about the cookies he was baking. And sang it, repeatedly. I have a video, and it's fantastic. He did a good job with them, he was proud of himself. We had them try the dough again, and this time they were a lot more excited about it. Obviously, they loved the chocolate cookies just as much!

I haven't had so much sugar in weeks! It was amazing. By the time we were done eating, Kendra and I were exhausted. A funny little story to end with - remember how I told you that Ready was amazed a few days ago that I wore contacts? Because he had "only seen that kind of thing in movies"? Well, as we were going to bed, Kendra told him he could watch me take them out. His reaction was priceless. He said, "Wow, really?! Right now??" I did it, and he watched in awe. At the end, he was literally speachless. Pretty amazing things, those contacts!

Blackouts: Inconvenient, or incredibly fun?

After school yesterday, a bunch of the kids were very excited to bring us to a soccer game they were playing. Anytime we walk down our street, kids come out from all over the place and start yelling, "Teacher, teacher!" "Deanna!" "Kendra!" They get so excited to walk with us, and were pretty pumped about the fact that we were going to go watch them play soccer. We watched until dinner time, then headed home for some food before our Amharic lesson.

When Ready arrived, he started doing some "review" with us. These Amharic lessons are getting tough, fast! We were so relieved when Amare interrupted us to say that his mom was making injera, if we wanted to learn. We did want to, so much! Amare took us across the street to his house, and we watched his mom make some first. She's pretty good, I think she's done it a few times before :) I went first, and totally threw his mom off when I tried to do it with my left hand. We told her that I'm left-handed, but in the end I ended up going righty. My injera totally would have been more perfect if I had used my left...just saying. But it didn't turn out so bad! You get a little pitcher of batter, and pour it around and around in a circle on the "injera maker", as Kendra and I call it. It's really a big round flat skillet-like stove thing. I know, really good description. It's hard, because you have to go kind of quick and you have to try to make a perfect circle like Amare's mom does, without spilling. I must say, we did a pretty good job, though! While we were enjoying eating our injera and talking with Amare's family, Ready made a discovery. He found out that I wear contacts, and was completely blown away. He asked me if they were in my eyes then, and if he could see them. He then proceeded to stare at my eyeballs for a good minute or two. He told us he's only seen that kind of thing in movies. We made fun of him, a lot.

After we made injera, we got some fantastic games going outside with the frisbee we bought. Kendra, Ready, Desta, Amen (another brother of Dundee and Amare...we just keep meeting more!) and I all played some serious frisbee. When that got old, we started to introduce Ghost in the Graveyard to the Ethiopians. It was obviously meant to be, because as soon as we finished explaining it there was a power outage! It was very, very dark. Outside and inside. The perfect setting. The Ethiopians all got super into the game, and we had some pretty epic hiding spots. If you remember from previous posts, we have acquired a minibus at our house. At one point, Kendra and I hid on the floor of the bus. Not the cleanest, but hey, we're in Africa. I'll be clean again when I get back to America. Desta was looking for us, and I'm pretty sure it took him about a half an hour to find us. Best spot ever. Another time, we kind of cheated...Amare had joined in, and decided to help us win. He took us away to his house, and we just hung out inside. They were looking for us forever, and finally someone heard that we had escaped to Amare's house. Which is when we snuck back home. We're so tricky!

Okay, so I realize it sounds like we played children's games all night. Which is essentially what we did. But I just can't even tell you how fun it was. Especially because the power was out. Just epic. Such a good time. I'm sorry that's all I'm writing about, perhaps it's not that interesting...but this blog just doesn't do justice for the incredible amount of fun we had. I absolutely love hanging out with these people, and I think you should probably all come and meet them. Yeah?! Good plan.

Bucket Showers

Our house got an upgrade last night. Since running water just won't seem to come back, Dundee told us that we would begin a "bucket system" of showering. This system involves getting a bucket of water from the well outside, and then heating it with a special heating stick. It may seem a bit...primitive? old-school? to you people at home with ever-flowing running water, but for us it's pretty exciting.

You don't understand how far an entire bucket of water can go until you've successfully gotten an entire "shower" out of one bottle of water. I mean like, a little individual Mountain Springs sized bottle of water. Kendra and I were making do with that (along with our very, very rare gym shower) up until last night. Last night, we had our first bucket shower. There was so much water in that bucket, I didn't even know what to do with it all. I bet it was like the equivalent of ten bottles of water. And, the water was actually kind of warm. Oh joyful cleanliness! When I get back to America, I'm going to live in the shower for hours and hours. It's going to be hot and clean and amazing. And then I'm going to eat chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (*cough* Mom *cough*).

Ethiopians have a problem with making cake. Or really any kind of dessert, because the last time we had "ice cream" it tasted suspiciously of cough syrup. Kendra and I have tried about five different kinds of cake from multiple places, and each time we only get about one bite down. For some reason, there is a lot of liquid in the cake. Meaning if you press your fork lightly on top of the cake, water leaks out the bottom. And runs down the sides. I'm not sure why they wet their cakes, because it pretty much ruins it and makes you want to vomit. In fact, Kendra took a bite of one once and nearly did throw up right then and there. So I really just want a piece of cake, from a box.

Today, we were walking back from school with Mastasha and he asked us if we'd ever had sugar cane. We told him that we'd had sugar...does that count? Evidently not. Apparently eating sugar cane is very different from eating sugar. He bought a piece of sugar cane (stick of sugar cane? branch of sugar cane? Who knows.) for each of us. We took it, and stared at it. It looks like a giant piece of bamboo and Mastasha just kept saying, "Okay, so just bite it." But, how do you eat something that really looks like a tree? He took some, a took a nice big bite. It legit looked like he was eating a branch. He just chewed away. We soon had a large audience of strangers out on the street watching to see what we would do with this supposedly delicious thing that looked like a piece of wood. We tried a bite, but well, it looked like wood. It was an odd sort of thing to chew. Confusing to the senses, most definitely. People kept laughing at us, and Mastasha kept enjoying his piece. When we got home, we handed off our pieces of sugar cane to Desta, who gladly took it and started eating. I don't know, evidently it's good stuff. A delicious dessert. In my opinion, it's no Betty Crocker chocolate cake.

Okay there's something I've been meaning to write about. Giving things away to the kids here. Several times, we've brought things to the orphanage or the school...small toys to the orphanage, bubbles and bouncy balls to school, things like that. When we give toys to the kids at the orphanage, it's usually fine. We bring something for the toddler room, or something for the 6-12 month room, etc. The school, though, is a lot harder. This week, we were teaching the after school program because the normal school is on break. The kids we are working with are from the streets, and obviously don't have much. Kendra and I brought bouncy balls one day, for the kids in our group. We had younger kids, so it made sense. They were super excited, and so happy. They all kept hugging us. So for a minute, you're all pumped because the kids are happy. But then, as soon as word gets out, every other kid in the area runs up to you asking for something. Most of the kids were older, maybe 12 or 13 years. They were all over us, asking and asking. We told them we didn't have any left, but they wouldn't give up. It's really kind of a bummer, because we just don't have enough and we can't make everyone happy. Even if we did, as soon as they see us reach into our backpacks they all start trampling each other to get to us. It's literally dangerous for the smaller kids. I understand that they don't have anything, and that they would all be so excited to get their own new ball, crayons, bubbles, anything really. And we end up feeling so bad that there are so many kids and we can't make them all happy. I don't really know how to explain it. It's so confusing, because is it better to bring what we can and see what happens? Or is it better to just leave them all blissfully unaware? Obviously we're going to give away as much as we can, it's just hard to figure out the best way to do it. Some way that doesn't initiate a mob of 90 children, leaving 50 of them more bummed than they were five minutes before. Maybe we can only bring things to the orphanage, where we can hand it out in smaller groups. Or maybe we just hand things out to kids we meet on the street. There are at least ten random kids each day that walk up to us to say hello, and we usually give them a sucker. We could start handing out other things, and at least that would only be to a couple kids at a time, thus eliminating the mob issue. Who knows...hopefully we figure out a good strategy.

On a completely different note, we're sitting at the hotel using internet right now and are pretty sure we just encountered an African killer bee. Those exist, right? Cause this thing was crazy! The hotel people all laughed at us as we tried to avoid it. Scary!  I hope we make it out alive.  If this is the last blog post, you know what got me...

Megabuses and Flying Dicks: Inappropriate!

Woah! It's not as inappropriate as it sounds. You see, yesterday Kendra and I made a fantastic investment. While looking around in the "children's toys" section of a supermarket for some entertainment (for ourselves, yes) we came across a couple things that could provide hours of joy at our house. We purchased two badminton rackets and a birdie, and a frisbee. Super exciting. Obviously when we got home, we had to play right away. We went out front and whipped out our brand new frisbee, only to discover that this was no ordinary frisbee. It was, in fact, a flying dick. Right there on the front in nice big letters is "FLYING DICK". What a fabulous English mistake. I mean that's just kind of epic. Soon, I'll have a picture up on Facebook for you.

Anyways, we had a wonderful time with our flying dick. Amare and Desta joined right in, though they weren't so good at it. Desta may have never thrown a frisbee in his life, I'm not sure. But he's getting better. What he is really good at it getting the frisbee when we accidentally throw it over a giant concrete wall or on top of his "house" (see the sheep blog post for a description of where Desta lives - we're big fans of his place). After some frisbee, we busted out the badminton rackets and started playing. We only have two rackets, but Desta decided to use the frisbee as a third. This is why we are fans of Desta - he just jumps in at random times and when we're doing stupid stuff (i.e. sheep stealing?), no questions asked. Not that he could ask questions if he wanted to, because he doesn't really speak English. Like at all. We use a lot of sign language, broken English, and the few Amharic phrases that we know to try to explain things (okay, but really Kendra and I know a lot of Amharic. Soon we'll be fluent, thanks to Amare and Ready!). So, long story short, we're very happy with out badminton and flying dick. In fact, tonight we played a mean game of Monkey in the Middle with Ready and Amare and our flying dick. It got intense. I may have some injuries.

And now for the megabus story. Mom and Dad, I know hitchhiking is bad. And please remember that I'm a smart girl, and I don't do stupid things (not dangerous-stupid, at least). Remember the minibuses that Kendra and I take everywhere? Well, sometimes, just on the rare occasion, a minibus is actually a megabus. Meaning sometimes the minibus comes in a slightly larger size. Hence, "mega", according to Kendra and I. You ride these the same way, but they hold a few more people. So, Kendra and I were leaving the hotel we've been frequenting to steal wifi from (by "frequenting" I mean often enough that all the employees know, love, and get excited to see us) a couple nights ago and we walked across the street to find a minibus. At night, when it's getting later, it's sometimes harder to catch one and it's times like these that we've come across the megabuses. We cross the street and there's a megabus with about five or six guys getting on. They ask us where we're going, and we say Mekanisa. They tell us to come on. We listen. This is how the minibus works - you wait, a guy either shouts the destination or asks you where you're going and then when you answer he tells you if his bus is the right one. Okay, so we hop on the megabus and commence talking about many really important girly things in English like two American girls would. The Ethiopian guys kept speaking in Amharic, turning around, looking at us and laughing. We noticed, but weren't surprised because this happens a lot. We also noticed the bus wasn't stopping anywhere to let people on and off. But, no worries, we knew we were going the right way. And we have a cell phone, and Pat taught me how to punch. So, If something happened, Kendra could call 911 and I could beat people up. Just kidding, just kidding. When the bus arrived in Mekanisa, Kendra and I said "Wadach!" because that's what you say to stop a bus when you want to get off. All the guys turned around at once, looking shocked. One said, "You speak Amharic?!" and they all started laughing. They pulled over and we asked how much we needed to pay. They laughed some more and said, "This isn't a minibus, you don't have to pay us." Whoops! Not a minibus. Or a real megabus. It turns out it was not a running megabus, and those guys were all friends. They decided to give us a ride, which is very common around here. Hitchhiking happens all the time, and it's like, legit. People just do it to be nice. Kendra and I never do it...except this one time on accident. We figure the guys pulled away, cracking up about the stupid American girls who thought they were a minibus. I really hope this isn't one of those "had-to-be-there" stories...

Now I'm going to jump to the happenings of today. This blog is kind of all over the place but I don't have time to make it all orderly and creative right now, so you're just going to have to deal with it and enjoy the stories in whatever order I decide. Or don't enjoy them. Today, Kendra and I got up and failed at Ethiopian life for about the fifth or sixth time. We're supposed to go to the orphanage three times per week. The orphanage is far, far away and takes two minibuses to get to. Trying to catch these in the morning during "rush hour" is a very tricky task. Every orphanage day, we get up at 7:00 and leave by about 7:20 (yeah, when you don't have running water, the morning routine is really quick) to get to our orphanage by 9:00. Unfortunately we have been having an extremely rough time with this and, long story short, haven't been able to catch buses. Either they're too full, they don't come, people beat us onto the empty ones, or they just drive right by us without stopping. There's no orderly way about it - no schedules, specific stops, or lines. People just run for it anywhere. And Kendra and I fail. We were dissapointed, because we failed again this morning and couldn't make it to the orphanage. We really like the kids, and therefore were bummed (Dundee is trying to work out a way to make it easier for us to get to an orphanage...we'll see). But then, when we went home defeated, we got a happy surprise!

Amare asked us if we wanted to go with him and a bunch of other people to a "place" outside of Addis. They didn't really tell us where we were going, but we haven't gotten to leave the city yet so we were excited. We ended up at a lake a little over an hour away. We hung out there all day putting our feet in the water, climbing trees, playing on an old rusty merry-go-round, and just laying around outside. It was a fun day! The lake was pretty, and the area was much different from being in the city. You can tell there are even less of people like Kendra and I (aka white girls) outside the city, because everyone was coming up to us to talk to us. Or asking to take a picture with us. We're a pretty exciting sight. All in all, a good day. Not that any day in Africa hasn't been good...so far, I love them all. It's just a delightful place, really.

This blog was intended to be a quick little something about the megabus/flying dick tidbit, and turned out a bit long, and I am just running right out of time! So I better get myself going before there are no more minibuses to take us home tonight. Peace out, my friends!