VOTE!

We're getting down to the wire on the US election. It's big news here
(and has been for several months). Many of my friends, both Ethiopians
and ex-pats, are asking about it and thinking about it. A great new
café in Bahir Dar opened up a couple of months ago—Obama Café and
Restaurant. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite haunts. I even
(thanks to friends and family back in Denver) brought them some
additional Barack paraphernalia from the convention last August (which
the proprietors were exceptionally excited about). I got my absentee
ballot in the mail a week or so ago, sent it back, thanks to the Peace
Corps, priority. While my vote isn't going to change the situation in
Washington State, it still feels like such a privilege to be able to
make a choice (at least symbolically) from so very far away. It's
really overwhelming to see how many people here care, and how deeply,
about the results of this election. I'm inspired to see people without
a lot of access to international news media who know more about the
repercussions of this election than many Americans do. A great new
café in Bahir Dar opened up a couple of months ago—Obama Café and
Restaurant. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite haunts. I even
(thanks to friends and family back in Denver) brought them some
additional Barack paraphernalia from the convention last August (which
the proprietors were exceptionally excited about).

If you haven't already, PLEASE make sure to vote in this election. Do
it for yourselves, for me, and especially for those millions of people
in Ethiopia and elsewhere who care deeply about what happens in
America and don't have that privilege.

A year?!

Happy Halloween! My pen-pals (elementary school students from North
Carolina) had lots of questions for me about what Halloween is like in
Ethiopia. They may be sad to learn the truth that there are no
costumes or trick or treating here. Though I can imagine that my
neighbor boys would be absolutely nutso for Halloween if they heard
about it.

We just passed the one year anniversary of being in Peace Corps.
Amazing. We finished our Mid-Service Conference (complete with lots of
interesting--and a few less interesting--presentations, a bowling
outing--human pinsetters!, physicals, a slightly-too-aggressive dental
cleaning, and an eye exam at an Ethiopian clinic that turned into a
join appointment--Kristen and I had our eyes looked at
simultaneously), and I've been hanging out in Addis for the week
taking advantage of some time to get stuff done in the capital. It's
been a nice break, but actually, for the first time in a while, I did
in fact feel sad about leaving Bahir Dar. I've been feeling *good*
there these days. Incredible! I'm making real friends, enjoying my
work, and trying to get started on the thesis project. I've finally
been able to cobble together about 10 different projects at I-TECH and
elsewhere, and have been (can you believe it?) _busy_ these days. So
it felt like bad timing to be away from home this week. It has been
lovely, though, to get to spend time with the other volunteers in a
big group. I haven't seen some of these guys since April. We're down
to 29 of us now (lost another one just last week), and so the group
feels particularly close knit (that's code for small...). Our Country
Director resigned last week, meaning that nearly every single member
of our original senior staff has turned over since we arrived. Ah, new
programs. We've been an experiment from the very start.

So things are looking and feeling up. I'm moving out of my house next
week into a beautiful new place, complete with indoor toilet and
(gasp!) kitchen counters. I'm hoping that my new landlord will have
arranged to turn on the water, fix the windows so that they actually
shut, and get the kitchen door to unlock in the week that I've been
gone. Too much to ask? Potentially. Anyhow, the place is great, and
I'm excited about the move. It's a bit farther from work and town, but
I'll no longer be living on a compound by myself, which I think will
be great news for my (currently struggling) Amharic. The family also
has two adorable little kids, Tsion, who is in second grade, and
Biniam, who's in first. So given how much I love kids, this is going
to be a perfect situation.

My parents will be coming to visit in just 8 weeks. I'm already
counting down. Excited to get to share Ethiopia with them, and also to
get to see a little corner of Tanzania. Many of the volunteers have
visitors over Christmas and New Years or are going home. It feels like
a really big milestone in our time here. I'm sure that the next year
is just going to fly. The new volunteers--Group Two--arrive on
December 4th. We're all excited to get to meet them. There's lots of
speculation about what this group will be like. If it's anything like
ours, then *unique* might be the best descriptor.