Testing 1, 2, 3

Hello all,

I apologize for the long interval between posts. It appears that blogspot has been blocked by the Ethiopian government for some weeks, so I'm trying a secret route posting via email. If this doesn't work well, I'll try to set up a livejournal or something else.

 

Things are going really well here. I've been in a small town about 100km away from Addis for the past couple of weeks, starting my training. We'll be here for the next 8 weeks, living with host families and learning the language and technical information about Ethiopia, HIV, and culture. It's been exhausting so far ( 5.5 days a weeks, 8am - 5pm), but instructive. And the other PCVs are phenomenal.

 

My host family is great. It's an older woman, widowed, who is mother to 8 children and a couple of nieces/nephews. There are currently 4 living at home, but others are in and out. We communicate in a patois of English, Amharic (which I am working hard to pick up, but which is decidedly difficult), and charades. The other PCVs and I joke that we could win the world championships at charades! We have 24 hour a day electricity and an outdoor tap, but no indoor plumbing. We watch alot of ETV, the national TV channel, and Uno and frisbee have both met with huge sucess.

 

We get a lot of attention on the street. Most of it is positive--the kids follow us around a lot. Most just wave or repeat again and again "what is your name?" or "how are you?" Some shout "you! you! you!" or "money!" We are definitely a curiousity. My host family is also perplexed by some things I do, but we're learning to get along and to communicate.

 

The big news of the day is that we were divided up by region today. I found out that I'll be moving to Amhara region after we swear in on October 15. That means that I'll continue learning Amharic language, rather than switching to Orominya. I feel good about it, and am looking forward to finding out in a month or so specifically where I'll be.

 

I received some mail yesterday at mail call. We LIVE for mail, and everyone was very jealous of my letters (and *package*, thanks to Reed!), and it made me super happy. So thanks to all who wrote. It looks like padded envelopes and packages take about  2 weeks, while letters take about 10 days or so. Not bad.

 

That's enough for now. Hope that you're all well. I miss you all and am thinking about you lots. Denaderu (goodnight)!