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 :)
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 :)
Hahaha US Embassy Happy Hour?? Interesting. Add "Call Lee Ann" to your list when you return too!! :)
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