home again (almost)

I've been away from Bahir Dar now for exactly one month (with a three day stop over back home in between). It's been lovely and refreshing, but I'd be lying to say that I wasn't excited to get back home.

I spent a week in Ambo with the new trainees, who arrived at the beginning of December. It was fun to recount my experience over the past year. They certainly had lots of questions. They seem like a great group (so excited to be here! so idealistic and un-jaded!), and it will be great to have some new neighbors and new energy. Five weeks into training, all 40 of them are still here, which is nice. Ambo was a great town, and it was fun to watch the trainees navigate it with their still-shaky Amharic and to realize how far we've all come in the past year or so. It was also great to get to spend time with the training staff (many of them back from last year). During our training, I think that both volunteers and staff were a little scared of each other, and it was hard to actually make friends with the Ethiopians. Not so this year--our staff is really incredible, and it was wonderful to get to joke around with them (in Amharic, no less!).

My parents arrived in Ethiopia on Christmas Eve morning, and we were together for nearly three lovely weeks. We spent time in Addis, Bahir Dar, and Lalibela in Ethiopia, and in Ruaha National Park in the Southwest and Zanzibar, in Tanzania.

Brief highlights:

* Christmas Dinner with Liz, Chris, and Chris's parents at the fanciest restaurant in Addis
* Visiting the monasteries on Zege Penninsula in Lake Tana with Tom, my friend the anthropologist, who lives there and consequently knows everything about them
* Seeing the rock-hewn churches at Lalibela (again). They were just as spectacular the second time
* Getting stuck in Lalibela (the plane apparently needed a "particle," which had to be shipped from Addis the following morning), and having a taxi driver from town appear at the airport shouting "Hana! Hana!," looking specifically for me to take me & parents back to town (ah, the benefits of speaking Amharic!)
* The van from the airport back to Lalibela breaking down on the road, and the Ethiopian Airlines car driving right past us without so much as a wave to make sure that we were okay
* Spotting two leopards resting in a Rainy Tree after killing an impala. Mom missed out on that one because she wanted to take a nap
* Drinking a gin & tonic by a campfire under the stars in Ruaha National Park
* Holding a baby bushbaby (less spectacular was having the baby bushbaby pee on me)
* Watching lions eat giraffe guts from about 3 meters away
* Snorkeling in Zanzibar--so many fish! I have decided that scuba diving is decidedly in my future
* Consistent access to cheese, non-Ethiopian food (though I did miss my injera fix somewhat), and hot showers for nearly three weeks

I'm back to Bahir Dar on Wednesday, after a much-needed, but potentially somewhat stressful, meeting with my UW advisor tomorrow here in Addis Ababa. It will probably be quite a challenge to get up and running again after having been away for so long, and I'm sure that I have dozens of exclamations of "tafash!" ("you've disappeared!", kind of akin to "long time no see") waiting for me in Bahir Dar. But my oh my will it be good to be home again.