Happy St. Patrick's Day! (3-17-12)

So today is St. Patrick's Day.  Yum.  Not surprisingly, there seems to be a lack of celebration in Ethiopia.  Unfortunate, as I could really go for a delicious St. Patty's dinner.  Though I suppose if I were even able to find corned beef here, somehow, I just don't know that I'd be able to trust it.  I swear, I get sick here more than ever in my life.  I don't know what it is...I guess living in Africa does take a little toll on the body.  In America, I think I'm a pretty healthy person.  I rarely get sick.  Here, I've become accustomed to feeling a little off most days.  In fact, I think I'm generally more surprised when I wake up without a stomachache.  I don't know if it's the water, the food, or what.   But something gets me here.  I mean, my doctor did tell me to swish mouthwash, close my eyes, and put vaseline around my mouth and eyes when I shower (vaseline to repel the water, eyes closed to keep water out and mouthwash to kill germs if any little droplets sneak in) which I admittedly do not do.  Whoops.  But really, we have running water so so rarely that I feel like this is not a problem to worry about.  How many real showers have I taken since I got here?  Probably less than 10.  When the chance comes, I guess I just get too excited and don't take all those precautions.  So...maybe I have myself to blame for feeling sick so often.  But like I said, I haven't taken that many showers (haha ew Deanna) so if that's the culprit, I should've only felt sick a few times.  Anyways, enough about feeling sick because that's just a boring and lame topic (sometimes I really get sidetracked and start talking a lot about unimportant things...Kendra has learned this about me, and often catches me talking and talking and talking without response from her, in which case she tells me to shut up).  So like I said, I'm actually quite used to the sickish feeling so it's all good!  On to something much more important...

Flies.  Woah, Ethiopian flies.  Is there anything more annoying in my life?  I think not.  I've told you how much I enjoy being here and whatnot, but these flies may drive me insane before I leave.  I'm going to try something here.  From now on, for this blog post only, I am going to let you know everytime a fly lands on me by inserting a little note like this: [fly].  Now, I will not be counting the times I can't feel...like when they land on my pants and it doesn't bother me.  Only the times when a fly is crawling on my skin or trying to land in my eye, mouth, ear, or nose.  Since this has happened at least 15 times since I started this blog about ten minutes ago, allow me to catch you up [fly] [fly] [fly][fly] [fly] [fly][fly] [fly] [fly][fly] [fly] [fly][fly] [fly] [fly].  Ok, now I'll continue.  I kind of hope this annoys you, because [fly] then maybe you'll understand just a little how [fly] much I want to kill all the flies in the world.  It's not just that they are constantly landing on me, it's the fact that I think they are an extra aggressive [fly] species of fly [fly].  I think they target faces.  Everytime I walk out of my house, it's like I'm assulted so badly that I can't speak to Kendra without risking eating a whole family of stupid, obnoxious flies.  Or breathe, without having five flies go [fly] up my nose.  I just want to kill them all. 

[fly] In other news, I know I haven't posted in a while so I'll try to catch you up.  Though there hasn't been too much excitement, so I hope I don't bore you. 

On [fly] Tuesday, I got a package from America.  Um, super fun.  My mom sent us a whole big bag of M&M's!  Oh deliciousness!  We we're pretty pumped for that.  It also had some [fly] supplies for the school, things we could bring to the kids at the day care, and pictures from my nephews and niece (cute!).  I pretty much loved it. 

This week, we bought Bingo at one of the grocery stores by us.  We were looking forward to bringing it to the after school group to play with the kids.  On Wednesday we did, and they [fly] loved it.  First of [fly] all, [fly] when we told them that we were going to play a game called Bingo one kid bursted out into the Bingo song.  Amare was our translator that day, and asked him to come up in front of the [fly] class and sing it.  He knew all the words, which was quite impressive!  And cute.  I've got a video to prove it.  Once we started playing, they all got super into it. [fly] Anytime they had a number we called, they'd high-five a bunch of their friends or cheer for themselves.  They were all yelling, "leyla leyla leyla" (another, another, another) pretty [fly] constantly.  They had a fantastic time, and we are looking forward to playing with them again soon!  I just love those kids.

Speaking of loving those kids...I don't know how I'm going to say goodbye!  Admittingly, there are certain kids I have gotten closer to than others.  There are a lot of kids who come and go in the after school program that I just haven't gotten the chance to really get to know.  On the other hand, there are [fly] kids who come [fly] every day who I feel like I know really well.  For example, the group of kids who walk us home every day, the two older boys who like to protect us from what they think are the annoying little kids (of course, we don't think they're annoying, but it's funny that the older kids get so protective of us), and our [fly] "brothers".  These kids I have spent a lot of time talking to and hanging out with, and I just think I'm really going to miss them!  The kids who walk us home are so fun, and funny.  I really enjoy getting to joke around with them and it's pretty fun to have a herd of children hugging us goodbye outside our door.  The two older boys I really like, because they think it's so important to watch out for us at all times.  They get so worked up if they think the younger kids are swarming us too much, and it's actually quite funny.  Plus, they are interesting to talk to since they know a little more English than most of the younger ones.  Our brothers I [fly (wow, it's been a while!)] just love.  I think it started out as a little joke, with Solomon asking me to be his sister and then his friend going up to Kendra and essentially being like, "hey what about me", but we've actually gotten [fly] quite close to them.  They always come greet us right away, they sit by us, talk [fly] with us, and even give us little presents.  By presents I mean things like drawings they made or something they picked up on the street...literally.  One day, my brother gave me a dirty plastic black necklace.  Of course, I kept it.  I'm sure I'll never wear it, but it's in my suicase to bring home with all my other souvenirs.  In all seriousness, the phrase "it's the thought that counts" is taken to a new level here.  This is another reason why I feel we have gotten so close to these two boys.  While many other kids will want to talk to and hang out with us at the school, they see us on the street and come up saying "give me money!" anytime we cross paths.  Sometimes [fly] even on [fly] the way into the school gates.  Now, I don't want to sound insensitive.  I understand that these kids are living on the streets, and that we are the "rich" Americans.  And I also understand that they all see this so, sooo much in their daily lives that it's not inappropriate to them.  But [fly] still, it's a bummer when a kid you see every day at school runs after you begging.  I don't know, it's hard to explain why.  I don't know what word to use.  "Annoying" is wrong, "sad" is wrong, I don't know.  It's just hard, I suppose [fly].  Anyways, back to what I was saying...one of the reasons I feel like I've gotten very close to our [fly] "brothers" is because

they are not like that.  As I said, they are always excited to see us, they love [fly] sitting with us, talking with us, getting to know us and everything, but they never ask for anything, let along beg for money.  And it's not a matter of them having more money than the other kids, it's a matter of respect.  I can tell you just from seeing him every day, Solomon doesn't have much.  He wears the same clothes every day.  By "every day" I mean I have literally only seen him in one shirt, and I usually see him five days per week.  He wears a pair of flip flips that are not only too small, but also broken.  He fixed them with a nail.  In fact, when he was playing soccer on Friday with the other kids (in his broken flip flops, because he most certainly doesn't have soccer shoes), his nail contraption fell out so he stopped playing and came to sit by me instead [fly] while he tried to nail his flip flop back together again.  While he was hanging out with us watching the others play soccer, he mentioned how thirsty he was because he had been sick.  I had a giiiiiant plastic water bottle that I had just refilled at home with nice, cold water.  When I told him he could have it, he looked surprised.  He checked with me about five times before actually taking it.  Then, he thanked me profusely ("oh, very big thanks!" he said).  The look on his face was a look of extreme thanksfulness, seriously, and it was just a bottle of water.  It was the same look I would expect from my nephews if I gave them a new Wii game, or a bike or something.  But instead all I gave him was water.  Not even water I paid for, just water I refilled [fly] for free at our [fly] house.  Oh my goodness, serious tangent again.  Getting back to the point, Solomon doesn't have anything more than the other kids at the school who run after us on the streets and beg for money, but he never, ever asks for anything and is even slow to take what we offer him though it was only a bottle of [fly] water.  Alright so, I just don't even know where to go with this anymore.  I'm actually just frustrated that I can't explain all of this better, and almost feel like I just shouldn't have tried to write about it because I think I just failed miserably (haha) but I'm gonna leave it all in here anyway.  Just know that I think my stupid attempt at explaining how much I like these kids and how much I'm going to miss them is, well, stupid.  And it's not a description that I feel is good enough to get my point across. [fly] I wish I was better at writing so you could understand what I'm trying to say, but I'm no author so I suppose I'll just have to try to tell you all about it in person when I get back to America.  Perhaps that will work out better for me :)  Sorry for this extremely long and maybe pointless paragraph.  Moving on...

We got some pictures of our kids at the day care on Friday!  They are quite the energetic bunch, so photos were a little tricky...especially when they saw the camera and got [fly] super pumped.  I'm going to try to put them up on Facebook tomorrow...we'll see!  The good news is that the little one that was really sick last Friday is doing much better this week.  Phew!  We've started recognizing these kids on the streets, too, which just gives us even more people to say hi to.  Fun stuff!

It's really hot here, and we don't have running water again.  Just thought I'd throw that in there.  It's like I live in Africa or something.  Weird.

We've taught our peeps at home how to play BS, the card game.  We [fly] were getting bored of [fly] playing the same two games over and over every night with them, so we decided to teach them something new.  They love it.  Amare thinks it's hilarious and just so exciting, and Amen is actually a very good liar.  Masresha, not so much.  Anytime he lies, he cracks up right away.  So that's been fun.  We also got super into "The Terminator" one night this week, which was odd.  I don't know if I actually like the movie, or if I was just excited to watch an American movie on TV in English.  Either way, Kendra [fly], Amare's two younger sisters, and I were all transfixed.  And the two sisters don't even know much English...and they certainly couldn't read the Arabic subtitles either.  They were still on the edge of their seats with us.

Oh I know!  I bought more souvenirs!  That was pretty thrilling.  Masresha took us shopping at a place where they sell lots of souvenirs.  He said he had to take us  because it was safer that way (Masresha is very protective of us...the other day, he wouldn't even let us walk down the path from our house by ourselves.  Silly guy!).  So he took us, and we found a few more things to take home.  Super exciting.  One of my suitcases is getting full already!

You know what else is super exciting?  Amen told us he would take us to ride camels next Saturday.  I'm holding him to this, and am planning on reminding him every day this [fly] week.  I've waited so long already, and I don't have much time left.  Three weeks, people!  I can't even believe it.

Desta made us shiro a few nights ago and it was ever so tasty!  Apparently he used to live on a farm in the countryside?  I guess his parents send him shiro and everyone always told us that Desta makes such good shiro.  And they know shiro is our fav.  So Desta so generously shared his shiro powder with us, and made us a yummy meal.  MMMmmmmm.

Well I believe it's time to wrap this up.  Kendra asked me like 20 minutes ago if I was stilllll blogging.  I think I got a little sidetracked a few too many times in this post.  My apologies.  Next time I'll try harder to stay on task :)  Time to find something for dinner...there seems to be no food in this house.  On the menu for tomorrow: French toast from Kaldi's for breakfast.  Can't wait!!

P.S. Good news - the flies seemed to have backed off a little for a bit, have you noticed?!  ;)