(Vasara writing) Hurray! I am participating in the Alice in Wonderland performance at the British International School. I am very excited, nervous and can’t wait until we show it to others. We perform for the primary school on Tuesday. After that we perform on April 8 at 6:30pm (or 2:30 o’clock Ethiopian time). There are 5 Alices because there are too many lines for just one. I’m one of the Alice characters! I am Alice 1. I perform at the beginning and the end, and I say my lines with a British accent. All of us in the school play have [View Full Entry]

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Kovas writing…One of the students in our computer class that Vidas and I teach on Satudays asked my mom if she could visit her school. My mom agreed and set up a time and date. On the agreed date my mom was too busy herself to go to the school. I received the honor of skipping my own school for the day and going to this school as a guest speaker. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was glad to help. In the morning I got ready to go to the school, although I was a bit nervous about [View Full Entry]

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Ruta witing……I am a firm believer in the power of play. When playing simple games with kids, you show by your actions that you want to spend time with them. You like who they are. You share your time, your game pieces, and your turn to win. It’s also fun! When we visit the Safe House each weekend, we usually bring donations or candy, and we play. The kids play checkers or a variation of it. The boys play volleyball or soccer. Volleyball is very popular; even the older women join in the pick-up games. They put down their laundry, play [View Full Entry]

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Vasara writing… At last, I got a puppy! It is a female, just like our wonderful dog, Zuza, at home. She is black and her name is Tesfa, which means “hope.” Our neighbor who is from Germany has 6 dogs. She was walking 2 of her dogs and we started talking. One of her dogs loves to play ball, so we threw the ball for the dog to catch. Our neighbor asked if we would like to have a dog. We thought about it, but in the meantime the dog got pregnant. When the puppies were born, we came to visit [View Full Entry]

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(Ruta writing...) Ruta writing… Another organization in which our family is involved is Hope for the Blind & Handicapped Rehabilitating Association. I have been deeply impressed and amazed by the individuals in this organization. The association is over 30 years old, providing work for the blind and physically challenged, who make rugs, shopping bags, brushes, and brooms by hand. The management is blind and most of the workers are blind, with several seeing people supervising for quality and safety control. From the pictures you can see the people at work - to see them in action is fantastic. The rugs are [View Full Entry]

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continued... The people with whom we spoke became blind at ages 7 and 9, from measles and small pox. Measles - a disease that to me simply means remembering to take my kids to the doctor to get a measles vaccination. Yet here we see firsthand the devastating effects of these diseases that caused this blindness. Heavy sigh. How many difficulties and trauma is suffered that could theoretically have been prevented. One man became blind at age 8 from a disease locally know as “Metch”. After 2 years his father died and his mother left the family. The grandmother took care [View Full Entry]

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(Rytas dictating…) I am six years old and I rode a horse all by myself! My guide had to run beside me to hold my shirt or my arm while I was on the horse. We rode for almost 3 hours. The first 1.5 hours, I had a horse whose name was Bruno, and the guide’s name was Sisay. The second horse’s name for the second half of the trip was Cha-Cha, and the guide’s name was Nebuy. The horses did not have big saddles like in the US. They have pretty cloths on their backs. There was a piece of [View Full Entry]

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Ruta writing…. I was honored to be asked to be a guest speaker at a friend’s school that teaches English to adults. The class is taught by a private for-profit institution, catering to university students and young adults seeking to improve their conversational English skills. It was an eye-opening, amusing, fun experience. During the first half of the class, the Ethiopian teacher taught the 5 classes of nouns (sorry - I can’t even name the 5 classes myself) and taught via a tongue twister. The class perfectly repeated faster and faster, “Mr Kantta can tie his tie. Why don’t untie an’ [View Full Entry]

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Ruta writing…Taking advantage of Brendan Thompson’s visit, we toured the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa center, the headquarters for the United Nations in Africa. Observing the activities and results achieved by the many UN programs, I have to agree with an oft-heard assessment of the UN. The United Nations really is a vital organization needed by the world. As the world’s nations economies and livelihoods become more and more interconnected, the UN needs to exist to foster communication, multi-lateral support, and peace-building. The UN provides critical opportunities for countries to talk to each other, understand common challenges and work together. [View Full Entry]

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(Lukas writing) Ethiopia has 80 different languages. The official language is Amharic. Ethiopia uses the Arabic alphabet so we can’t read it. It’s really hard to learn Amharic so we are mainly trying to learn how to speak the language. In school Vasara and Rytas are learning how to write the letters in Amharic, but for Amharic they don’t use letters for the alphabet, they use 2 sounds. Their alphabet is pa-pe-pi-po etc. For example there is something that looks like a P, and there is something else that looks exactly the same except that this one has a line, and [View Full Entry]

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