Happy Halloween!

10/30
Happy Halloween!!!  Sadly missing another holiday, but I have been invited to a party in Bale Goba in order to celebrate Halloween.  I have also found some pumpkins and been cooking with that.  I am pretty happy how my cooking skills have progressed while being in Ethiopia.  Not only have I learned to make breads and pastries, but I have done it while using a dutch oven to cook.  I can't wait to get back to modern appliances and seeing what I can make.  I have just made some pumpkin pies, while not exactly what you think of when you say pumpkin pie in America, they were rather tasty and incredibly easy to make.  Today I will be making pumpkin bread to take to the party. 
We have really gotten into the rhythm of having a horse, it is rather time consuming and I can image it being hard to deal with in America with such a hectic lifestyle (at least compared to here). Most of the time is really taken by the fact that we have to take him to and from where he stays to my office every day in order to let him graze.  Still, it is a welcome distraction in spite of the fact that it means every day I have to be up and going by eight A.M. rain or shine, week day or weekend.  Spending the time brushing and cleaning him every day gives me something to do even if I have nothing else for the rest of the day.  I also have embarrassed the bareback riding.  It isn't really practical to carry the saddle to him every day, just to ride him the ten minutes to my office so once a day, assuming he isn't wet from the rain, I ride him up to the office without the saddle.  I feel almost more comfortable, not physically of course, riding without the saddle now.  It also doesn't really help that the saddle in Ethiopia are pretty terrible.  Then of course there is the time we ride him just for fun.  It is really relaxing and enjoyable.  Yesterday some friends and I took him up to the reforestation area around the gorge. It was beautiful, and when we got to the end we stopped and drank a bottle of honey wine.  We also got invited to a celebration of one of the bee cooperatives who has their hives in the forest.  They graciously offered us the sheep they were cooking as well as some gin.  Getting into the swing of everything, finding him a house, getting the food and such taken care of may have been a huge headache, but so worth it in the end.
On a less fun note, I can't even believe I complained at my midnight curfew as a teen.  Living in a compound in Ethiopia means you have certain rules.  You have to respect your landlord and their property of course, regardless of if their baby comes into your house, picks up and plays with everything, and occasionally pees on your floor.  You have to get permission for everything, even if that means that you do not get permission for things like making a garden.  But, I think the worst is a curfew.  It is an unspoken rule in Ethiopia that you have to be home at a reasonable time.  If you are not then the landlord will lock the gate and you are out of luck.  This means I have, for the last year and a half, been living with a nine P.M. curfew.  I honestly feel like a child again having to watch the clock and make sure I get home in time.  It is one of the bigger things I am looking forward to being done with. 
Seeing how today was the deadline for submitting the paperwork to extend my stay in Ethiopia, and I did not figure anything out, it looks like I will be leaving Ethiopia in five and a half months.   I am looking forward to starting the next phase of my life despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I will be doing.  Looks like I have a lot of research to do in order to find my next calling.