The goats normally come by here

I am beginning to hear and say things that sound completely normally in Ethiopia, but in any other context people would think I’m crazy. This applies to things like “They told us to give the bananas to the goats. Should we just leave them out here, they normally walk by here?” Yup… Completely normal in Butajira, Ethiopia.

We started practicum teaching this week. We still have language in the mornings for 2 hours, then we go to lesson planning, come home for lunch, and then go back to the school to teach. This first week we co-taught with a fellow trainee, 2 lessons a day. However, starting this week we will teach by ourselves, but only 1 lesson a day. We switched classes, to give us a different experience for each one. I found out that I will be teaching the class I have been for the rest of practicum, which is a relief to me because the kids are great.

I don’t have any girls in the class I will be teaching, but the boys in there are very smart and eager to learn. This is a voluntary summer program, and so the boys (and girls) that come either don’t have anything better to do, or want to get ahead for next year’s English class. I am teaching 9^th graders (well, they will be in 9^th grade), although their ages vary by a couple of years. I am doing my practicum at the Primary School, which is about a 7ish minute walk from my house and language class.

I got packages this week! All 3 of the packages my mom sent me got delivered to me on the same day. It was a welcome gift, with lovely things from home including a family picture, socks and flip-flops, deodorant, cooking things and OREOS! :D I know a lot of people have been asking what they can send me. If you are reading this on my blog, know that I would love care packages, but to not send them to me until I get to site and get a PO Box there. I still have to get all of my stuff up to site, and no real room to put anything else in my bags.

Tigrinia is getting more difficult as there is more and more things to learn, but at least we are practicing those more and more as well. Intensive language training and immersion is definitely the way to go- although having to switch between learning Tigrinia and then speaking Amharic in the city is difficult.

My host house pretty much has BBC News and CNN on 24/7, with the exception of some really bad American movies that I didn’t even know were made. I have been catching up on the world news even more than I did in America.

The kids on the streets are still coming up at fist bumping us, and most of us have followed two of my fellow trainees and have started “exploding” our fists after we fist bump them. It definitely makes their days and seeing their smiles and hearing their laughs makes me laugh and smile as well.

My final thought for the week, I feel like I have been here much longer than a few weeks. Friday is my month anniversary of arriving in Ethiopia. We are all very excited for the continuation of our training—but we are already looking forward to being sworn in and starting our 2 years of service.

Over and out.