Twenty-eight Days and Counting!

7/23

Only twenty-eight days till I fly out!  I am so excited to come home for a visit, I think about the beach (I mean my family...seeing family) every day!  I am also very curious if I put on weight.  My weight, even in Ethiopia, hasn't changed more than two or three pounds in years, not exaggerating, but all my friends that have gone home have ate themselves silly and gained weight.  I am a bit disappointed in myself, I was trying to get to a point where I had enough muscle to feel good about taking my shirt off on South Beach, but I would do well exercising every day, then go to a training and when I got back to site I would take a week or two extra before I started up again.  As you can imagine I still am not beach body ready, but not like that is actually going to stop me.  It is crazy to think I am about to be an UNCLE!  It is going to be a busy, and eventful month for sure!

But, before I even get back to America, I have a ton of work to do.  I still have one bee colony to transfer over to a transitional hive, I also am trying to strengthen the hive I already have, and I am happy to say I just completed another successful transfer.  That brings my number of modern hives to two, with one traditional still waiting to be moved over.  I also have not had any more issues with people disturbing my hives.  The Farmer Training Staff had to go out and talk to all of the farmers in the area, but it did the trick.  I wish it hadn't cost me 250 birr, but at least it is over.  I am really hoping that we get some good rains this year so I can get a good amount of honey.  Since people aren't listening to my training. I want to get a good harvest this year so I can put their faces in it and say "do what I told you and you can have this too!"  I also just got a grant approved by PC (THANK YOU,  JAMIE!) to do a small camp here in Gassera.  I am trying to get sixty students together to learn about gender equality, leadership, and sexual health/HIV prevention.  My site mate and I are also planning a bio-intensive garden training for women with HIV for the day before I leave to go to Addis to catch my flight.  Finally I am supposed to be putting together a training on how to run a proper stool test for the livestock office.  I have to admit, as easy as that is going to be I have been pretty lazy about getting it together.  Still, I feel like even if that is the only thing I do to help animals in this country it will at least be something.  So it is going to be a very interesting 28 days!

I also just finished a training on honey purification for international sale quality.  I think it went really well and I think the people I trained are really going to apply it, I hope.  While I was there I was shown a waterfall and of course I went for a nice dip.  It was amazing just to be swimming again!  Of course, I am still waiting to see what diseases I catch, but as of right now I am going to say TOTALLY worth it.  Don't worry though, when we complete service PC puts us on a regimen of drugs to kill every disease known to man so before I come home. It will be like a factory reset. 

So, for now, I am going to continue my back-breaking pace to get all this stuff done.  I am afraid that I am going to have to decrease my daily coffee breaks down to five or six now!

See you all soon!