In the dark

We're on day 7 with no power here in Hawassa. Apparently the transformer for our exact area blew during a pretty bad rain storm. The positive thing about it just being our transformer is that there is power on the compound where we work and where several other missionaries and volunteers live. This means we were able to save most of what was in our freezer and refrigerator. it's funny the things you realize when you in without power for so long. First of all I'm pretty spoiled, my first instinct is to complain that there is on power, complain and be grumpy. When in fact there is internet at the other compound so I still get to charge my phone, go on the internet and marvel at the miracle of light! In reality I have it so much better than many of the people I live among and yet I still want to complain. Secondly, you need power to wash your clothes! We are starting to get to the bottom of our clothes piles. Thirdly, evenings in Ethiopia without power are very long. I tend to go to bed around 9 because the darkness just makes you so tired. The fourth thing I've learned is that people are incredibly generous and helpful when you don't have power. We've been invited over countless of times by the missionaries and volunteers that live on the compound with power. It has given us a chance to get them better, and for that, I am thankful. Furthermore, you can do many things without power, especially when you own candles and a headlamp! I've read a lot, crocheted and in Thursday we had 15 people over for prayer meeting in the dark, and our guests helped prepare the food! Lastly the amount of food you can cook on one gas plate is pretty limited, but it is most certainly better than not having gas at all! And Ethiopia has lots of wonderful fruit that you can eat without having to cook it first. I must be honest and say though, that despite having learned many things through this power outage, I really do hope we'll get power again soon!

The picture below has nothing to do with what I just wrote, but I wanted you to see some of our "wildlife"

  

Scenes from our garden

Here are a couple of scenes from our garden 

We have a whole tree with these flowers!

These two pictures are of our house

I'm pretty fascinated by our garden monkeys!

My first week of teaching English

I know it's been too long since I last wrote! Everyday life is kicking in and as it turns out that means (surprise, surprise!) I have less time to blog. Add that to the fact that we don't have internet at our house you've got quite a bit of excuses! The truth is that I've missed blogging, so I'll try to get started again!

I had my first week of teaching English last week. It was incredibly challenging, but it was also really nice to just get started. I was so nervous the week upto so it felt good to just take the plunge! My students are fairly good at English so we will focus a lot on reading and writing whereas some of my colleagues have groups where the students hardly understand as simple words as man, woman, chair or dog. The students are all incredibly appreaciative so that makes it much more enjoyable. It's really nice to know that they aren't just annoyed that they have to learn English, but that they really want to! It's really interesting (and a but frustrating) to observe how much the way they're used to being taught influences them. They have an incredibly hard time using their imagination and responding to my "do you understand?" questions. They are however, incredibly at memorizing and very fast at copying things from the board. I did expect this a bit, but I'm still surprised at how severe it is! Most of all I love that we're teaching English at a Bible School so we're using a lot of Bible texts and using a lot of the new words in a biblical context. The first time I met my students, we prayed together. Even though the only word from the prayer that I understand was "Amen" it was beautiful and so touching.

Salt shakers, french fries and pizzas!

blog 18-9 the other day, malene and I decided we were craving burgers. I had been shown a burger place in town, and was pretty sure I'd be able to find it again so we set off. After walking for about 20 min, however, we realized that we'd been walking the completely opposite way of where we should be going (so much for knowing the way!) so we turned around and I was finally able to figure out which way we should go. finally we found the burger place and went inside, there weren't any other costumers so that worried us a bit, but we decided to give it a chance anyway. However when we ordered our burgers we were told that they had run out of french fries! We decided that we couldn't eat burgers without fries and left. We remembered that we'd heard about a pizza place not too far away, so we decided to try and find that. It took us quite a while, but eventually we found it. Here we got our french fries and some very interesting pizzas. turns out they didn't have the salami that was supposed to be on our pizzas, so they substituted it with ground beef. My pizza was also supposed to have Italian ham, but instead I got some sort of chicken sausage, gotta love eating in Ethiopia! suddenly Malene noticed that our salt shaker looked kind of funny and after a closer look we realized it was and old role-on dove deodorant bottle where they'd drilled holes in the lid! We got a good laugh and I, of course, snapped a picture! All in all trying to have burgers for lunch turned into quite an adventure, but we got to see more of hawassa and laugh some more of this wonderful country we're living in!

Our walk home - in pictures!

Since we live on the same compound as the kids, we walk them to and from school every day. There are always lots of kids shouting “foreigngy” (foreigner) and “Give me one birr” (the Ethiopian currency), as well as goats, donkeys, lambs and birds. Often we can also the Orthodox Church on their loudspeakers. The other day I decided to bring my camera on our walk home, and it turns out it was pretty popular to be photographed by the weird white girl. The mountain we walk by is called Tabor Mountain (which is why the college we will be teaching at is called Tabor Evangelical College) and is a prayer mountain, on all hours of the day you can hear people praying up there. At the end it started to rain, so I didn’t get the very last part of our 10-15 min walk. Anyways, here’s what a walk home might look like:

Yes, we're still alive!

I wrote this blog last Thursday, but didn't get a chance to post it before now

Hey guys!

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last posted, but we’ve been very busy. Malene and the two other missionary families got here on Saturday, and since then we’ve been busy moving into the house, planning lessons and teaching the kids. The kids are wonderful and I feel so blessed to get this opportunity. That doesn’t mean it’s completely easy though, it takes a lot of energy to have to start a new job, in a new country, surrounded by new people. Luckily (for me) the power’s been going on and off a lot, so that makes it easier to go to bed early.

Yesterday night we had a movie night with one of the missionary wives, sadly we didn’t get to finish the movie because the power went out, we did get some good conversation in though! Tonight we had a prayer meeting with the other Norwegian/Danish missionaries, it was great to gather around God’s word and pray together, over big and small matters. The lady who lead it shared about how we are saved by grace alone, no amount of (or lack thereof) praying or Bible reading can change that. We do however need to read the Bible and pray in order to stay full, otherwise it’s easy to slowly drift away from God. It was great to be reminded of this fact.

The house is slowly coming together, we laugh because none of us has ever had to decorate anything bigger than a room, so having an entire house is crazy! We have plans to let ask our students if they will help fill the walls with some homemade artwork. I will post pictures soon, I promise J

We don’t have water in the faucets quite often, so whenever we have water we make sure to fill up some big buckets that we have in both the kitchen and the bathroom. I was filling one of these tubs in the bathroom, when I accidently turned the nub so many times that it came right off, and water started squirting right out of the pipe! You better believe I panicked quite a bit (and the floor got a thorough rinse!) I did many screw it back on, but not before I had been completely drenched! Guess that’s what I get for trying to do something the fast way!  

It seems so crazy that in four days we’ve been here a full month. In some ways I feel like we just landed, but in many other ways it feels like we’ve been here forever. One thing is for sure, in the short time I’ve been here I’ve come to care for Ethiopia and my colleagues greatly. Nothing has been as I imagined, but I mean, this is Africa!