Maria

Hello everyone.

So, the first of December has arrived and Aske and I are doing our best to get into the Christmas spirit. We have made an erm… “adventskrans” which I guess is a part of a Scandinavian tradition (basically just four candles and then you light one every Sunday for the four last Sundays before Christmas). Because of our limited Christmas resources, we had to be creative and succeeded in being so by making it out of a round metal plate for roasting coffee on and red ribbons which we used to hang it from our ceiling. To my surprise, it actually looks good. We have also bought a big candle which we are going to write numbers on with a permanent marker and use as a Christmas calendar. Yes, Christmas has definitely come to Jimma. My mother has also been as kind as to agree to send us coloured shiny paper to make Christmas hearts out of as well as strips of paper for making Christmas stars out of.

Other than that and the whole hippo affair which Aske will tell you about, not much has happened here in Jimma. At the moment our students have their mid-term exams, so we spent 3 hours as invigilators last Monday and have had Friday, Tuesday and Wednesday off. We haven’t done much. Yesterday we spent looking at fabrics for my Christmas present: a tailor made dress.
Yesterday we ordered Aske’s Christmas present, a tailored suit for the modest price of 750 birr – 400 kr. One might argue that knowing what you’re going to get for Christmas is boring, but we decided that since we had both wanted something tailor made for a long time, but never really had the conscience to spend the money on getting it done, Christmas was the perfect excuse we had been waiting for. So, today the lady of the house took us to her favourite tailor so that he could make me a dress that I had drawn. I don’t think that my dress will look remotely similar to what I drew or that he understood what I wanted, but I’m going back next Thursday for a fitting and then we’ll see if I can make myself clearer then. Moreover, the fabric (3 metres) was 60 kr. and the tailors wage 35 kr., so I guess it’s okay if it doesn’t look completely like a Channel dress, I’ll survive and so will our wallets.

Maria