June 12, 2010

10:40AM

Is it really June 12th? Wow.

Just got up to the room from tea time with all of the Ethiopian workers and the various guests…Such a big part it plays in the rhythm of their days. We are working it into our new rhythm as well. So nice to pause and have some conversations over tea (well, coffee for me) and leftover biscuits and waffles and muffins every day. Josie enjoys getting a spoon to stir/play/be naughty with her cup of milk for 30 minutes. She also enjoys the multiple pairs of dark black eyes admiring her naughtiness for those 30 minutes!

EVERYONE breaks for tea time. We were walking down the hill to the grocery a couple days ago and even the beggars on the streets had a small glass out for tea time. Women were coming out of the little brightly painted shops with small thermuses filling cups.

I remember LOVING tea time during my summer in New Zealand. We would work so hard making cement and making curbs from the minute the sun came up and anxiously await the 10 o’clock bell for tea time. It was a little more romantic in New Zealand, but the relaxing pause is the same. Maybe those New Zealander’s accents are what added to the romance…yes, probably so.

In Kenya, I remember (I think, E&A correct me if I’m wrong) the workers drinking chai more than tea at tea time…but no one seems to know what that is here.

It’s naptime in our room as we are planning to head to the Lion Zoo right after lunch! Mini bus taxi rides here we come! It will be interesting to say the least to try to navigate to a destination that is, by all accounts, unknown to us. We have promised Josie we would go see the lions since we bought our plane tickets, so it’s a must. And better now than later, since classes start on Monday and I’m not sure what that will really mean for ample family time to travel about the city. So today it is!

I hope to be able to post some pictures soon of our time thus far – maybe when we move to “our” house in a week I will be able to. It just doesn’t feel right to take up the one internet hook up here for as long as it takes to download a picture!

Oh, we passed out last night after getting the girls in bed – literally, passed out. Lucy woke up soon after, and that was, naturally, fun.

Josie slept hard from 9PM-4AM and I wish I would have been rested enough to rejoice in that. Instead, I beat on Jeremiah’s back begging him to take her downstairs so I could sleep at least until breakfast.

And that he did.

And that I did.

3AM-7AM…it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing!

All of the single and/or married without children guests here ask me each morning with such hope in their eyes: “how did you sleep?!” It pains me each time to tell them the truth. In some way I will feel responsible if they all decide to a) not have children and/or b) have children but never return overseas with them. I woudn’t be surprised, but I would be sorry. Unfortunately they are seeing us all at our less-than-brilliant jetlagged state.

Brilliant. That’s a word I’d like to incorporate into my vocabulary. It’s so cute when our new friend Heather, from somewhere in the UK, says it. She is here for two months while her husband, Kim, teaches at the graduate school in Addis. They have come a couple of summers for him to teach at Bingham, ETC and now the graduate school. They are currently studying at Cambridge. She is 26 and looks like she walked straight out of Anthropologie (how you pull that off here is beyond me), works in radio for the BBC, cared for years for her father who had Alzheimer’s until he passed a year ago, says things like “dodgy” and “brilliant” and “rubbish!” and has the driest wit. She has been showing me the ropes of laundry and the rest of the ways of the guesthouse and she LOVES holding Lucy during meals and I love her for that! We are fast friends, she’s making me laugh, and I’m so glad she’s here the whole time we will be.

Time to go grab the laundry off the line before the showers start. Here’s to hoping for dry diaper inserts!