Site visit

Hello all, so first of all I am sorry for anyone who tried to reach me.  As I predicted there was no access to Internet at my site.  Plus the wireless network is next to non-existent so I was unable to stay in touch with anyone while at site.  I am going to try and describe my site as much as possible.  I did not take many pictures because I didn't want to have to deal with the crowds of people that you get when Habisha see a forenji with a camera.  I will try and upload some stuff later though.
We all arrived in Addis Ababa on Sunday afternoon for meeting our liaisons on Monday.  The liaisons are the HCNs (host country nationals) that are to take us to site, show us around, and make sure we get everything that we are assigned done.  On Monday I found out that my liaison is not going to make it to Addis until late that night so I would not be able to meet him until the next day.  Also he would be missing all of the introductory sessions that PC would have given him to introduce him to PC.  I was then introduced to another trainee's liaison because his town is relatively close to mine so I could ask his liaison a bit about my site and what to expect.  Four thirty in the morning Monday arrives and I find out that my liaison did not make it to Addis, and that I would meet him at my hub town Bali Robe.  On top of that there was confusion about who was supposed to be on what bus so one of the trainees did not show for the bus; we still have to pick up our liaisons from another hotel, and get to the bus station.  We managed to get there relatively on time though and it was still not a problem, because I was still with the other trainee's liaison and their hub town is the same as mine.  On the way to Robe we passed a field near an AG project I saw a flock of Flamingos, otherwise despite the HCN next to me waking me up constantly because I "needed to see the country" it was a rather uneventful bus trip.  So after nearly thirteen hours of travel with only three stops (one in a field for people to pee) we arrive in Robe.  The Robe town is relatively large, still nothing like most of the other hub towns though.  But there is a couple Jill and Davin living in Robe and they met us that night and took us to get lunch.  On the way they showed us where we can get forenji food, and what places are good to eat, etc.  They are also working on a bee keeping project which is something I am interested in so I hope to be able to use them as a good resource.  When I arrived I met who I thought was my liaison.  I later realized that he still was not my person, but rather someone who was sent to retrieve me and make sure I get to my site.  The conversation with him that night consisted of introductions, and then both the liaisons left to go to where ever they stayed the night, with only a "we will pick you up here at 5:30a tomorrow.  So the next morning it was ANOTHER bus ride to get to my town of Gasera.  It was a mud road, during the rain, in the fog, and it was COLD.  When I arrived at the town it was basically a big mud puddle.  As dreary as it was I remember thinking "what the heck am I getting myself into".  First thing we did was go to see my "house", it was in a rather large compound, surrounded by a sheet metal fense.  The landlord's family seemed very nice though.  But when I saw my room I was less than thrilled.  It is not finished, they still have to place some water proofing around the baseboards to make sure it doesn't flood, but that was not a problem.  The fact is it is SMALL.  It is only a single bedroom, I have to fit a bed, something for my cloths, a desk, and a stove top into a room that is about 20-25 square feet!  It is probably about the size of the room I had at my parents house without a closet or anything.  I have already been considering some space saving ideas, but I still don't know how this is going to work out.  So after seeing my house we went to the bank to set up an account.  But, since the power was out, as is usual in Ethiopia when it rains, we were not able to set it up because they couldn't get a copy of my ID.  About this time it stopped raining, we head up towards the AG office and on the way I met my actual liaison (this being the time I realized the guy leading me around wasn't him), together with another person named Melaku we went to the AG office for me to meet people, and the police station so I can introduce myself.  We then head to breakfast and are joined with my landlords brother (Sami) who also lives in the house.  The entire time Sami was around he absolutely refused to let me pay for anything.  After breakfast we head back to the bank, got my account set up, went to the post office and got a box and address (to follow), and then it was lunch time, about 2 hours after I ate breakfast.  So the four of us went to lunch, they seemed very impressed that I would eat the local food, which is the same as I have been eating for the last month, and would even use Injera.  Around this time I also realized something, absolutely everyone we talked to were speaking Amharic.  Now if you remember I am learning Oromifa and have completely stopped learning Amharic with the exception of tutoring my host brother.  I asked about this and they told me that in Gasera town they all speak Amharic to each other, many of them are bi-lingual, but Amharic is dominant.  However in the surrounding Kabele's they will likely only speak Oromifa.  That combined with the fact that I am pretty sure my landlord ONLY speaks Amharic means I will very likely have to learn BOTH languages.  So after lunch they took me back to the AG office where a training for the AG leaders in the individual Kabeles were having a training.  They took me in the room and had me introduce myself to about 50 people I have never met, in Oromifa, with the little language I know.  Basically I said my name, where I am from, and that I am Peace Corps, and turned to the speaker and told him "that is about all I know."  Finally they took me to "paradise." It is the place all the locals go to de-stress and relax.  I walk out through this empty field on the edge of town about 10 minutes walk from my house.  And in front of me opens up this ENORMOUS canyon.  It was truly beautiful, the area we were standing on was a side canyon to the main one and inside of it were numerous small houses with AG plots in the midst of the trees and lush valley.  They explained that it is one of the rural areas I will be working in, there are about 12 natural springs that feed the area and are used for irrigation, and that about two hours from me is a natural cave system with people who have traditionally lived in them for hundreds of years.  Up until that point I had been a little bumbed, it seemed like a nice enough town, but it was not really what I had asked for.  That though truly made me realize how nice of an area I am in.  That night my landlord made me dinner, I found out that she was kicking her son out of one of the beds and I would sleep in the house since my room wasn't ready, and I had several hours to just sit and read, something of a rarity since I have been in Ethiopia.  Then next day I met up with Melaku again, my liaison did not seem interested in helping me that day, and Sami had to go to Robe to get some supplies.  So it was just me and him all day, we went back to the AG office and I talked to some of the people there, we got the last of my important errands done, he showed me some of the rural area around town as well as his house, and even got some prices on furniture.  I learned a lot about him that day, and I have to say I am impressed and a little intimidated.  He is in the rural development office, already has about 90 permagardens (something that PC wants us to have as a primary project) going, he is self educated in local Flora, including the scientific name, is very well versed in politics, world issues, speaks six different languages, along with a slew of other things.  All of this with no access to the Internet in town.  I know he is going to be a huge help to me though, and I intend to ask PC to make him my community counterpart when I return to site.  Despite the rain that afternoon it turned into a beautiful day, the sun was out, the mud had dried, I met some important people, had coffee, and tea (within 10 minutes of each other), interacted with some HCNs in Oromifa, and learned the basic layout of the town.  The only other sad part to the visit was with my landlords family.  I am not sure because I did not know if it was culturally appropriate to ask, but I believe that my landlords new baby is very sick.  She would not bring him out of the bedroom, she was always tending to him, several people visited and sat with them, and most significantly the smell of rotted flesh was filling the house.  Still though when she dealt with me she was very cheerful, even though she seemed very disturbed when not talking to me, and she was very courteous.
On Saturday I headed back to Robe to meet Jill and Davin.  I arrived much later than I wanted due to the fact that my landlord would not let me leave till after they cooked and served me breakfast, then the bus tried to go down a side road and turned back because the mud was so bad we started to get stuck.  On a side note I want to say that when I use the word bus this is not the kind of bus you would ride in America to get through town.  This is a bus that is probably 15 feet tall with large all terrain tires on it, usually covered on all sides with a coat of mud.  And with all of this we could not get through that way.  It does not leave me with much hope of getting into Robe on the weekends during the 4-5 months of rainy season.  So after backtracking and finally making it to Robe, I managed to catch the second half of the lecture they were co-leading on bee keeping.  It was very interesting and a great introduction for me.  Yesterday we started the trek back to Addis, on the bus ride I was squished between two people and had absolutly NO room, when we finally reached Addis the road we needed was closed so it took about an extra hour to get where we needed.  But, we finally reached the hotel and were able to go to an expensive dinner with all the money I saved, and had ice cream after while playing with a couple of puppies, one of the first ones I have seen here that were obviously well cared for.  We finished the night watching movies with some of the other trainees and today we will go back to Butajira.
So to sum up: my site is rainy, cold, but very progressive and I think I will have support for whatever projects I work on; getting there  is a two day ordeal that I hope to not have to repeat often, I have no internet or cell reception (part of that seems to be my phone though so I might be able to improve that), my liaison sucks, but if I can get Melaku as my counterpart I think I will be in a good spot, I have about 10 other PC volunteers within about 6 hours of me so I should be able to meet with them often.  And finally I am within a few hours of Bali national park, the home of the Ethiopian wolves, baboons (which I saw) and a host of other wildlife and hiking.  So while my site might not have been what I had in mind, I should easily be able tin integrate, and make a difference in the community.
There is about a dozen other details I could put in here, but honestly I am hungry and tired of typing so those will have to trickle into other posts.  For all of the families of the trainees reading this, you should know that everyone got too and from their sites safely (if not a little flea/bed bug bitten), and so far the worst stories I have heard were of worthless counterparts and nothing worse.  For everyone else, if you dozed off in the middle of this post I don't blame you, I am sorry for being so long winded but apparently some of you like that so I hope you enjoyed.

Site Announcment

3/19
It is weird how time passes in this place.  The long days of language and lessons seem to pass painfully slowly while the weeks fly by.  It is hard to believe that tomorrow I will be learning where I am going to spend the next two years of my life.  I am so anxious, will it be what I asked for, or will I be completely shocked.  I have tried to keep my expectations to a minimal, I am hoping to be happily surprised.  Before we get assigned a location we have an interview (a few weeks back), while they already have us assigned roughly, it may change due to requested conditions, or our skill as observed by the teachers and LCFs.  I asked for it to be an area with wildlife, preferably somewhere that I could work with animals, even if it was just bees; but there are few options with animals.  And somewhere where it isn't cold.  I could have listed a million things I would have liked.  But I know that the more you ask for, the less specific you are likely to get.  So by limiting what I asked for I hope I will come out on top.  Regardless of where I get, on Monday all the trainees are going to meet their temporary counterparts, then on Tuesday we will travel to our respective sites.  After nearly a week we will return to Addis on our own.  Believe it or not, this is the part I am most excited about.  Will I get lost, or go straight there, I will have little to no assistance so it should be quite the adventure.  After that we will return to Butajira for the remainder of our training.  We have hit the over one month mark in country.  As we get ready for tomorrow we also have to keep in mind that on Friday we have the "mock LPI" to determine our advances, strengths, and weakness in the language.  While not a test it still has many of the trainees worried.  We also have our interview with Dan the country training coordinator.  Finally we also have the soccer game between the trainees and the staff tomorrow.  From what I understand it is at the soccer stadium and the teachers have been practicing.  There is even a rumor that there is a teacher who almost went pro.  The ag group beat the health 5/0 two weeks ago.  I am not so sure they are going to do so well this week.  It promises to be an interesting day to say the least.
  It seems like yesterday we arrived in Addis, the time we have spent since then has been a blur, but without a doubt the adventure of a life time.  I look forward to the two years and two months remaining of my service her.  I know it will be a roller coaster, some days I will be dying to go home.  I will want to call PC and early terminate right then, and at other times I will be at complete awe of the country, people, and culture.  I have seen and heard the effects of peace corps service and I know no one is immune.  But I also know that the friendships and family I have back in the states, and the ones I am making now will be the only thing that keeps my sanity.

3/21
Yesterday was exactly what I expected.  Hectic and nerves were high.  We had language lessons in he morning.  We went over transportation.  I am glad we got to that because next Sunday I will be traveling back from my site on my own.  I am still excited to see how that part goes.  But I got my big news, where I will be going!  It is a new site, there has never been a volunteer there before, they really don't even know what Peace Corps is.  They are apparently excited for me to be coming though.  I am a little worried about the lack of expectations.  Especially if they have ever dealt with an NGO.  Some organisations like to come into a town or wareda and give handouts.  This is about the opposite of how PC operates.  I am hoping they are not expecting me to come in and start giving them things.  It will be an interesting experience trying to communicate the gaols and methods of PC in broken language.  I am excited to travel to Addis on Sunday.  We already have plans to go get some good forenji food.  The Ethiopian food is good, but VERY repetitive.  I am still being fed more than I can possibly eat, but the repetition gets a bit old.
After our sites were announced we got packets of information, usually about four pages of details about what the site is like, a little information about our houses, and what we should expect to be doing once we reach site.  I am not sure how big my site is, the woreda (county) has about 87,000 people in it.  The language is strongly slanted towards Afan Oromo (what I have been learning) but about 20% speak Amharic so there should be some opportunity for me to learn that as well.  It is about a 11-12 hour bus ride from the capital to my site.  I am not looking forward to that at all, but I expected it since I asked for a rural community.  I will be given money to buy a bicycle though so the area should be nice enough that bikes are not abnormal.  I am going to be staying in a singe bed room, I do not know how large it is though so I am not sure what it will accommodate.  There is some conflicting information about what I should expect about Internet.  One place it says that at my office I will have Internet, but in another it says the nearest Internet is two hours away.   Regardless I will find out on Tuesday, well maybe Wednesday since I will be on a bus all day, and will update either while I am there or when I get back to Addis.  Oh, and I guess you probably want to know the actual site.  I am going to Gasera, it is relatively close to the Bali mountains, and in the middle of the Southern Oromia region.
 

3/14
Sorry I have not checked in lately.  The internet has been completly non-functional at the hotels recently, which is where I usually get on the internet.  Plus we have had next to no sessions at the hotels.  This week has been particularly stressful because it seems that Peace Corps decided to make all the extensive assigments due or starting this week.  We also changed LCFs (Language and culture facilitators) this week so our routine we were just starting to develop completly changed.  We found out that we are going to be doing a two day camp for some of the local children as part of our final assesment, the logistics of it are a little worrying though so it is going to be interesting to see how that works out.  Otherwise though it is buisness as usual.  Going to class for most of the day, having very short breaks although since we have not been doing many classes at the hotels that has gotten a lot better.  And trying to learn the language in the mean time.  We have actually had a little bit of free time the last couple of days.  It has been nice because we have been able to hang out together and de-stress a little.  We also visited the local market for the first time the other day.  It was Tuesday which is the slow day, on Fridays the market is much larger.  Still it was very interesting to see all the things that are available, plus we got to see our LCF haggle for prices and we got to buy/try some of the other fresh produce.  Afterwards we tried the Tej Bet (local honey wine house), the tej was sweet an pretty tasty, we split a small bottle between three of us so it wasn't much but even then the whole bottle cost only two birr, about ten cents US dollars.  Afterward we went and got juice, I got mango so it was basically just blended fresh mango and a bit of sugar.  It was amazing, It was only about fifty US cents, but it was still kind of expensive {about half my daily pay}, so I won't be having it every morning, but I will absolutly be having it on a regular basis regardless.  Last night was actually a really good night.  I had gotten most of the big work done so I wasn't too stressed.  A couple of trainiees got together and we hung out for a couple hours.  After I got home and had dinner my brothers told me they were going to go get my mother who was at a friends house to walk her home.  I told them I would go with them, it was just a short walk to the other house, maybe 10 minutes or so, but almost as soon as we got there it started raining.  When I say raining though I mean POURING down rain.  The mothers moved the food they had been cooking on an outdoor fire into a small kitchen seperate from the rest of the house, and by the time we were all inside the outside fire was completly extenguished.  As they continued to cook they kept trying to get me to go home when the rain occasionally let up.  I refused and told them I would go home when they all were finished.  So they made some tea, got some bread, and we sat around and ate and cooked.  They cracked up when I took the mace and pessle from one of the ladies and started grinding the spices, I am pretty sure they didn't end up using any of the ones I ground though, I think I didn't do it very well.  At one point the women and kids started singing, I have no idea what they were singing, but the power was out so the only light was from the one flashlight and the fire they were cooking over, there was only the sounds of the rain pouring on the tin roof, and the song.  It was awesome!  When they finished cooking it was about 10:30 pm, it was stil raining buckets, and pitch black outside.  We started walking home, there were a couple of umbrellas but It was more fun to just walk in the rain.  My brother was doing his best to keep me under the umbrella, but I wasn't making it easy.  On the walk home I was splashing in the puddles and walking in the deepest parts of the rivers of water.  I am sure my family now thinks I am mad, but I figured if I was going to get wet I might as well do it right.  It was a great night, and hard to do it justice in a blog post, regardless I hope I was able to give you a little bit of a mental picture of my night; I am interested to see what it is like when the rainy season starts.  P.S. I am REALLY glad I got you to send me those rain boots mom, my feet would never have gotten through the rainy season with the shoes I wore last night.
3/16
Yesterday I planned a hiking trip for a few of the PCTs, when I got up this morning though it was raining and dreary and I thought it wasn't going to happen.  I talked to them though and we all agreed that rain or shine we were going to use our free day for the best and go on the hike regardless.  Thankfully it cleared up early and we got a great hike in.  It took us throught the local gorge, through a few fields, around a couple people's houses, to the top of a small mountain/large hill, and finally back through the gorge to look at some hyena dens.  It ended up going very well, we made it to the top with minimal stops even though it was EXTREEMLY steep, the habisha children put us to shame though.  They ran up and then even more impressivly down the hill at full speed without even acting tired.  When we got to the top we had a fantastic view of the city of Butajira and the mountains surrounding it.  I hopefully will be able to upload some of those pictures but if the pattern holds the internet will not be good enough for that.
A couple of the trainees said that their mothers were reading my blog, I find it hard to believe that anyone would find this interesting enough to read, but in case you are there: Ryan, Kelley, Naveed, Nakil, Sam, Allie, Nara, and Kaylene , your kids say hi.  We are all doing well, the excitment and nerves are high right now, in four days we will find our site placements and have a rough idea of what we could be doing.  Then we will be going to Addis, and on to our sights to get our first view of our homes for the next two years.  We will have a couple of asigments, like opening a bank account, finding the bus station, and the post office, etc.  But between now and then is more training, as usual.  Next week we have two days with four language classes; we also have another day with three, it is going to be a long week.  But for today, we are going to relax, this week has been a lot to deal with, and everyone is glad it is over.  Today, is for hiking, eating, internet, and maybe some bottle cap poker.

3/8
So not much has changed since my last update.  I am still in classes for about 10 hours every day.  It is overwelhming to say the least.  The language is supposed to be the easiest of the three to learn, but I still feel like I am not learning it well.  I have never been good with languages though so that probably plays a big part of it.  On top of having to learn a new language though, we are in an area of the country that speaks another language entirly so it makes it hard to practice.
I was sick for the first time this week.  It wasn't as bad as some of the other trainies have been dealing with but it still sucked.  I felt nauseous for about three days, on the third day around lunch I didn't want to eat, but since in Ethiopia not eating is NOT an option I did.  After my last class around 5:30PM I felt like I was about to vomit so I rushed home.  On the way home I made sure to ID places to loose it if I had to.  I made it home, but just barely, without vomitting, went straight to bed, and slept for nearly twelve hours.  I did wake up around 8pm to go to the bathroom, my parents almost made me go to the hospital because they were so worried, I had to insist that I was fine, and that if I didn;t feel better in the morning that I woul call the PC doctor.  I battled a fever for the first part of the night, but the next morning with the exception of a little nausea, and general tiredness I was back to normal.  I am pretty sure it was just a common cold and feel good that this was all I had to go through.
I have come to realize that PC has a hard time telling time.  For every meeting we end up leaving about 10-30 minutes late.  When our breaks are 30 minutes with the exception of lunch, and we often have to walk half way accross town, this can be a real inconvenience.  More than a few trainees are frustrated with this, I have to keep reminding myself that it isn't that big of a deal, but it is really frustrating to spend 10 hours each day in class with no break (when you count the travel time).  Once I am finished with PCT I will have three months to acclimate to my community before the work REALLY starts though, so I will soon be faced with the opposite problem.  But in Ethiopia we say "chigerillum" (no problem).
Today we learned that our language group is changing.  I still have one of my classmates studying with me, but the other one is switching to a new group.  We are also getting a new LCF (language and culture facilitator); I am pretty bummed about the change, but hopefully it will be for the best and I will learn even faster.  A few of the volunteers also went to watch the sun set at the nearby canyon.  It was beautiful scenery, but unfortunatly we timed it wrong and arrived just after the sun went down behind the hills.  It was still a good time, listening to music, and eating guacamole.  Tomorrow my assignment is to learn how to cook one of the common local dishes.  It will be interesing to see how they take a guy trying to get leasons on how to cook, but since my family has hosted a PCT before I don't think it will be too big of a deal.  I also am going to try to post this, upload some pictures, and Skype with some people.  So if only this get's posted don't say I haven't tried to get some pictures up.  I am trying to email, and facebook them so hopefully at least a couple get through.
I have made some great friends, and do consider my host family as part of my extended family.  Everyone here is kind, generous, and happy to have me here.  But I really miss you guys too.  So as you read this pretend I am giving you a big hug.  And to Mema, in cause I can't get anything through closer to your Birthday, know that I wll be thinking of you, and wishing you the best birthday ever.  Love you.

3/1/14
Ok, so everyone is asking for pictures.  Well I haven't had time to upload them so I will get to it when I can.  To explain why I am busy I am going to explain my typical day.  I get up around 6:30 am or 1:30 habisha time.  I eat breakfast, this is usually bread and peanut butter or jelly, two pieces of fruit a banana and avacado (they pict the avacados off the tree in my compound), and tea.  Sometimes I will get scrambled eggs with onion and tomato, and sometimes they will serve me a "biscuit" basically a fried dough ball that has been cooked to crunchy about half of they way through.  I don't have the heart to tell thim that the "biscuit" isn't to my liking though.  After that I do the daily stuff, take my anti-malarials, brush my teeth, rinse my face off, sometimes if I have time do my dishes.  This actually is a really long process though, often on Ethiopian time it takes till about 7:30.  I have to be at class at 8, this is sometimes in the class room on my compound, and sometimes it is at the local primary school where we learn how to create a permagarden.  After the first class, this week we have been going to one of the hotels.  We are supposed to get out at 10am, then have thirty minutes to walk to the hotel halfway across town.  My language teacher Abera is good about getting us out on time, our gardening teachers to NOT follow that exmple.  They often let us out ten to fifteen minutes late, so when we get to the hotel we are often about ten minutes late to class.  This means that the next class cuts into our lunch break from 12:30 to 1:30.  After lunch, which at the hotel we have been at the last couple of days is not very good, we have another class, that means we trudge up the stairs to the sixth level of the hotel, on full stomaches, to a hot room with very little air movement, with almost 40 people in the room.  It is very hard to focus most of the time on the lesson, although we have had a couple interesting lessons.   After a two hour class we go to the next class, again, often getting out 10-15 minutes late, and we have to walk back to our house for lessons, or to the school.  If we are in permagarden, this class will sometimes run an hour over, leaving us tired, hungry, and still having to spend the afternoon with our host family who wants to know how class was, how the food was, and all about our day.  When we get home it is time for a snack, coffee, and often fruit.  I can not stress enough that I AM getting enough food.  Some host families have straight up told us that their goal is for us to gain five pounds before we leave.  Some people have told their families that after eight they are going to go to their rooms and study, so I suppose I could probably make time, but I enjoy my host family and they are very determined for me to learn the language so it is good practice and I don't want to hide in my room.  I don't remember if I have introduced my family so I will here.  My father's name is Abera, he is an electritian for the Ethiopian power company, Genet is a stay at home mother, the family serves food in the compound, I would not call it a restaurant because they prepare the food and you basically get what they have cooked, but it is really good food and I enjoy eating it.  Genet make sure that the food gets cooked, and often cooks it herself, Alumt'si helps with the cooking, cleaning, and general upkeep of the house.  Mentesent is the oldest son, he is also the best english speaker and often helps interperate for me.  He was explaining the school system to me, which I am still not completely clear on.  But basically for two weeks some students go to school in the morning from about 8 am to oneish, then they switch and the other students attend school till eight pm, after two weeks they switch.  After fifth grade the students learn all the lessons only in English.  In case you did not know English is Ethiopians secondary language.  T'sadkan is the oldest daughter, that also means she helps a lot with the cooking and cleaning.   There is also Yamlaksira, and Sosina, the younger daughters.  Finally there is Andualem, he is as old as Mentesent but in Ethiopia it is common in the rural areas not to know your birthday, so there is some debate about who is older.  He is Genet's nephew, he lives and works here in exchange for being able to attend the local school.  We also have a cat, she did not have a name so I am calling her Sophie, she has recently had a kitten wich I guess is about 4 weeks old and is female.  We also have a "guard" dog, his name is Machal (problem fixer) he stays only in his house though, which is a steel kennel near the back of the compound, he also does NOT like me.  In my compound there is an Avacado, Mango, and two coffee trees.  There is also another women named Leah, a police man (today was the first day I saw him so I have not met him but his name is Akale), and my LCF (language and cultural facilitator).  I have started tutoring Andualem in English before bed each night, he knows a lot of the basic words so we are just polishing those, and I am getting an English language clubs manual so I can have something more to go on.  Before you ask I will get pictures as soon as I can!
I am lucky because I have another PCT living right next to me, Alex (Alexandra), so we are able to easily exchange things, and study after class.  Today is one of the PCT's Birthday so we are going to meet at my compound, have some lunch, then go into the nearby gulch to play some soccer, frisbee, and things.  In Ethiopia only the big birthdays are really celebrated, so that will probably be about the extent of the party, but I have heard rumors of a cake, I am not sure how they will make it though because there are no ovens that I have seen so far.  In a few weeks I will learn exactly where I am going, but for now I just know I will be heading to the Oroma region.  It consists of one third of Ethiopia's land mass though, so that really doesn't tell me much.  For now I will continue to have four classes a day, they will differ in what they are though, and I will try to continue to learn Amharic with my host family, and Afan Oromo with my LCF and my host father.  Sometimes I wish I could concentrate on one language, but I want to be able to talk with my family better, so I will continue to learn Amharic on my own; it will also be helpful when I have to travel back to the capital for in and midsevice training.
There is so much I could say, about the culture, the sights, and smells, the food, and wildlife (one of these days I am going to go see the Hyenas that live nearby), but I don't feel like typing any more so that will have to wait for later.
Love and miss you all.