Maria - November 1st

Life here in Jimma keeps moving forward in its own slow pace. I can’t believe that I have been here for two months now and that my Amharic (the national language) is still as bad as when I came here. I still only know the phrases that I learnt from my fancy Easy Learn Amharic CD and how to order coffee, tea or tea and coffee mixed together (“sprice” it’s called and is actually – believe it or not - very delicious.) Hm… And I’m starting to think that it’s too late to learn anything now since we only have two months left here in Jimma.

Anyways, nothing much has happened since I last wrote a blog entry. We are still correcting English diaries and although some of the students have improved greatly and are being creative, the majority is still stuck in the listing of every single thing they do Saturday and Sunday. Some of them add a “I was happy” at the end of the list and are surprised to know that that is not being very creative.

Tomorrow there will be a small culinary revolution in our kitchen. The Ethiopian orthodox church doesn’t believe in eating pork, and since the other half of the population here is Muslim, pork doesn’t exist anywhere outside of Addis. But, a Danish couple who lives close by our house went to Addis this weekend and promised to bring canned cocktail sausages back. Uh uh, soon we will taste pork for the first time in months! Aske and I are also thinking about going to Addis soon. When we were there in September we didn’t know that we were supposed to appreciate the pizzas, the cheese, the ice cream and the hot showers. Instead we were just waiting to go to Jimma to see how our life was here. If we would have known what we do today, we would have enjoyed the commodities of the capital to the fullest and filled our suitcases with food and other things (such as knives for eating, they don’t exist here in Jimma). So yes, we might go there for a weekend and enjoy a more Western way of living and stock up for a first class Christmas celebration in two months. I bet we can even find a plastic Christmas tree somewhere, haha :)

That’s it for now, folks. Bye :)

Maria