Christmas Recap

We survived, perhaps even thrived, this Christmas holiday. With all of the anxiety built around the holidays coming and going without a family member in sight, it was amazing to see that we can, in fact, be adults and celebrate the holidays on our own. Of course, we missed our families immensely and had we an easy alternative, would have been making our annual trek between Charlotte and Texas with glee, but given our circumstances, we did pretty great (insert pat-on-back here).

Here's a quick recap of the Christmas festivities that surrounded our weekend:

December 23

· Perogi Party at our Polish friend's home.

December 24

· Linner with 13 others at a coworkers home

· Mass and caroling at the Embassy of the Vatican

· Long chat with Mark's family via Skype

December 25

· Opening presents (Ryan banked! He scored an REI fleece vest, Smart Wool bootie socks, Lion-themed bibs, baseball socks, a set of cardboard Dr. Seuss books, and a giant sock monkey. Lots of thanks and love to both sets of grandparents and cousins Kohen, Charleigh, Reagan and Maya for their gifts!)

· Church service at the International Evangelical Church - this is our "home church" in Addis.

· Brunch at the Sheraton with a few coworkers

· Cooking at home (including mashed potatoes with bacon and cheddar cheese! yum!)

· Long chats with the Taylors and my mom and dad

· Fancy Christmas dinner at a friend's home with three other couples

· An all too short chat with Meghan. It was about midnight our time and I was so tired I was slurring my speech! I'll have to call again this week to really catch up (and remember!) how her Christmas was!

December 26 (The Embassy had Monday off)

· Hiking Entoto Mountain

Take the word "hiking" lightly. We intended to hike the mountain, but this is Ethiopia so it's not like the trail was marked. Next time we’ll bring someone experienced with us to help us find our way. We ended up driving near the top and walking the road between one large historical church and another. Entoto is the largest mountain in Addis and it sits at the north end of the city. On the top of the mountain (about 10,000 feet above sea level) rests a small village. We arrived as school was letting out for lunch and made far too many friends along the way! The kids wanted pens for school and one little boy needed new shoes, we unfortunately didn't have any money on us (we were anticipating a quiet hiking trail, not an afternoon with shoeless children!) and Mark feels strongly that we should give to parents and the school rather than the children themselves. So we'll be returning to the top of Mount Entoto shortly. Along the way we captured a few pictures - they love the camera and wanted desperately to see pictures of themselves with their friends. We were happy to oblige, though the fight to view the digital proofs was kind of intense. Men here are generally smaller than most – blame a lack of adequate nutrition not a lack of physical labor - and their muscle mass tends to be very lean (remember, this is a land of runners. Long, stringy muscles abound.) so the little boys kept trying to punch Mark in the arm. They were in awe of his muscle mass. You can imagine how ego-boosting humbling of an experience that was for him.

NOTE: Blogger isn't letting me upload pics right now. Mark will try to do this from work tomorrow. Sorry for the tease!

Christmas in Africa

Merry Christmas, y'all!

While we won't receive our HHE shipment (i.e. the big shipment with the majority of our goods) until mid January, we did receive our smaller, UAB shipment just in time for Christmas.  Inside we packed a few important Christmas decorations to help us survive this season without close family and friends nearby.  It's been a great treat! Probably our most important packing decision was the last-minute purchase of a Christmas tree-scented Yankee Candle. Yum!

The garland shown below was used previously in our DC home down the staircase.  Our new staircase will require at least 5x as much. I'm hoping to grab a great deal online for additional garland after Christmas! Next year we're excited to go all-out for the holidays when my family comes to visit!

I picked up a gingerbread kit from Michael's about 3 days before we packed out.  We decorated the house this morning (Dec 24) after a healthy breakfast of JEWISH COFFEE CAKE!!! My grandma, along with rest of the Charlotte crew, sent us the greatest Christmas package we received: baked goods. My grandma's coffee cake is a Christmas staple in our family (don't ask what makes it Jewish - I have no idea - and yes, I get the irony). On Friday we were at the Embassy and I was complaining about the lack of coffee cake in my life and how it just didn't feel like Christmas without it.  Then we went to the shipping room and received our surprise care package! Perfect timing! 

Last Christmas we had two small trees flanking the entrance to our DC home. We packed out one of the little guys into our small shipment. Such a small tree required us to limit our ornament selection so we both agreed that an angel tree was most appropriate.  Each year my Grandma (yup, the same one that makes the coffee cake!) handcrafts an angel for each member of the family. When Mark and I started dating, he began receiving them, too! We packed out all of our angels and it makes for a small but very special tree.

This year my grandma made everyone an Ethiopian Farewell Angel! My grandpa cut out each of the waving bodies and my grandma painted and sewed their decor. Our maid/cook, Emme, got a kick out of this. She is from Amhara, the most traditional Ethiopian region of the country where people still dress like this every day.

We put up as many angles as we could, but we left off some of the more fragile selections.  With such a small tree, the cats can access and destroy anything they set their eyes on.  Frank has been extra destructive in the new home breaking two crystal wine glasses, one new candle holder (I found it at a pottery shop run by women with HIV/AIDS), and one vase.

This is the oldest angel I have, from 1989. 

This is the only ornament on the tree not from my grandma.  Conveniently, it's an angel too! When one of our closest friends Anna was diagnosed with cancer and the doctors thought she would no longer make it, her church held a prayer meeting. At the end of the meeting, each participant left the church with one of these angels in-hand. God worked a miracle and soon Anna will graduate college with a degree in Special Education. Anna's family sweetly sent Mark and I a great Christmas care package and included one of the angels for us to have. It's an amazing reminder of the miraculous nature of our God.  That He sent His only son to show us how to love, that He can cure everything from a bad cluster of cells to a bad heart and that He can give us a son to love and raise and hold each day. We're getting so excited to meet him! We pray that wherever you are this Christmas, you are safe and warm.  We'll be home for Christmas.. if only in our dreams.

We don't live in a hut

Ethiopia is no stranger to wealth disparities and it's an apparent trend when you check out our new diggs.  This is what it looks like when you're a Saudi Princess with African taste...or at least what I think it looks like. There's no telling, really.

Pretty nice, huh? The house comes with 4 bedrooms, a den, office, dressing room, living, dining, kitchen and 3.5 baths. I can't wait to get our own furniture in the house (HHE is set to arrive late January!) and add touches of home.  Of course, such ostentation is not without design mishaps. Welcome to the small pool in our Master bath...

If you're curious: there's not enough hot water in Addis to fill this tub.  I'm not sure what it's purpose is and let's just say there are some interestingly placed jets.  I won't be bathing in this any time soon! Still not convinced? Why don't you come visit us in Addis? The upstairs guest bath is just a delightful shade of pink!

Yup, that's a pink sink, toilet, tub, shelving unit and wall.  Did you see that sexy mirror? It graces every one of our bathrooms. Any suggestions y'all have one what exactly I should do to "tone down" this bathroom are welcome.  Right now, I'm thinking a white waffle weave shower curtain and a long white curtain on a suspension rod covering the shelves (if you click on the picture and view full size, you can see just what terrible shape these shelves are in).  Any other ideas?

Of course, I can't talk about our home without also discussing the nursery.  It's the thing I'm most excited about.  Mark and I have come up with some pretty creative solutions to the problems you can see below.  I think you'll like them. 

I'm not going to share all of the details just yet, primarily because I'm running out of battery and my *darling* husband ran off with the outlet converter, but see that terrible wall of dark built-ins? We're covering them with this amazing removable wallpaper from Trendy Peas:

except in this fun turquoise color:

Not sure what to do with an all-blue bathroom.  Any suggestions?

So we're slowly settling in and getting acquainted with our not-so-humble abode.  More updates (and fun pics!) so share soon! 

Lots of love,

Laurie

Best. News. Ever.

We are getting a house! Here's the run down:

• Tomorrow we're kicked out of the Hilton because ICASA is taking over Addis and there is no room here.
• We aren't sure where we're moving into yet. That's a little frustrating, but we can endure. The cats, we know, will move into a co-workers home for the time being.
• By NEXT FRIDAY we should have a place to permanently hang our hats. Well, at least for the next two years.

Here's what I know about the house:

• It's in a part of town called Meganenya which isn't exactly where we were expecting to live. Most US Embassy employees live either in Bole (for those that are single or have small children) or Old Airport (for those that have school-age children). Our neighborhood is near Bole, but more convenient to the Embassy and we will be less likely to have American neighbors, which I think is great news and will encourage us to branch out even more.
• It's a house that is approved for a family of 4.  That means there are at least 4 bedrooms and a study. The original plan was to put us in a house approved for two and then we would have to reapply after Ryan was born for a larger home.  We're thankful that this tedious step was avoided.
• It's reported to be a very nice home.  We haven't been disappointed with any of the homes we've seen here in Addis, even those described as less than standard, so we're anxious to see what very nice even means in this context.
• It's 500x better than the Hilton.

All of this means that I'm about to spend the rest of my day packing, I'll be offline for a while (not sure if there is internet where we're going and there certainly isn't any at the house), and it's time I hire some staff. I wish I could explain how difficult it is to accomplish, find or purchase anything here. Without being a local, you have to hire someone who knows who you can buy safe chicken from, where to go for pastuerized milk, how to get safe carrots. Each item you eat, use to clean your home or organize it, requires vast knowledge of the resources available in Addis.  Even more, each item has two prices: a Habesha (Ethiopian) price and a Ferenji (foreigner) price. Ferenji prices for consumables are typically twice what they are in America so in the end, it's a cost-saving measure as well.

We'll be busy packing/upacking (our air shipment is set to arrive next week as well!) and doing the new-house dance in Addis for the next few days. I'll update as soon as possible!

Laurie

Bump Update

5 weeks

12 weeks

20 weeks

Sorry - I know the pic is blown out. We had a hard time getting pics to not be over exposed.

There you have it, folks.  Little Ryan is growing. Now that the top of my uterus is up near my belly button, I'm no longer shaped like a mountain peak which, we think, has the effect of making my tummy look smaller than before. I wish we had captured weeks 15-18. The good news: these cute stickers occur at smaller intervals as the pregnancy progresses so the next pic is only 4 weeks away.

Last night Mark went to watch a documentary as part of a week long series to end violence against women in Ethiopia.  The documentary followed two city-dwelling 20-somethings as they spent 20 days in the Ethiopian countryside living out their gender role. The film was interesting, but even more so were the reactions of the audience viewing the film (I was the only foreigner in the room - thank goodness for English subtitles!). The discomfort among most audience members was apparent with their nervous laughs, much like school children watching a sex-ed video, when the host mother discussed how her husband abducted her into marriage. Her family didn't fight the abduction as they had already promised her to this particular man since birth. "Why fight something when you know you've already lost," she said. The audience also had a few good laughs as the city-dwellers struggled miserably to keep up with their hosts during daily chores. That, however, was really funny.

Today we are applying for driver's permits! Yahoo! The taxis are manageable here, but they aren't like America.  You have to first ensure that your driver is sober and hasn't been chewing chat.  Then you must negotiate prices before entering the car. The cars do not come with seat belts or air conditioning.  The diesel exhaust that the old cars spew is thick, black and intense. I can't wait for my own car with rolled up windows and A/C running. All taxis were manufactured during the Soviet era by Lada.