The Latest

 Last week we made a trip to Richmond to hang out with my friend, Wendy, and another friend who has a daughter from Ethiopia. I did not take one picture during our time together, which annoys me. I did take this picture after we split off from the group, and stopped at the museum that was the site of the largest Civil War hospital in the south. Why there is a Statue of Liberty outside of it is beyond me, but I took a picture.

We stopped at Alei's house on the way home for a bit. The kids enjoyed feeding the goldfish in her pond.

We spent last weekend doing some upkeep on a rental home before the new renters moved in. It didn't look like much, but took me a full day and JD about three. There are always tasks pulling him away from doing the taxes that so desperately need to be done.

When I have a few moments and a few milk cartons, I plant more seeds. The milk cartons are lined up in the first garden bed. I am planning on putting in lettuce, kale and spinach seeds straight in the ground in the next few days as well.

The kids and I also made an Amish run for animal feed and wheat. They always enjoy watching all the activity around the feed store. I need to make another trip for grass seed at a store near the Amish.

Tomorrow is our last day of CC before spring break. We all have spring fever, but are pushing on. Here is Selah doing some school while tending to her baby African style.

This morning we did school at the dentist while six children got teeth cleaned, one son got a small filling and another son had a chipped tooth fixed. The whole event was slightly under three hours, which didn't seem bad for basically eight appointments. I have a few more appointments next week and then we will be free for six months.

Doing Stuff

 There is a lot going on and I often forget to stop and blog about it; sometimes I even forget to take pictures!

We are happy, happy, happy that it is spring, at least feeling like it. We celebrated one nice morning with fresh donuts.

 Saturday was Tori's last weekend basketball game. See that blur going for the ball? That is her. She played really well and enjoyed the team. Her Saturday game was in the neighboring county that Alei lives in and Alei was hoping for her Dad to visit after the game with his drill.

I had a pressing matter that needed JD's attention more, however, so James and I showed up with the drill. James helped her with about three pieces of furniture and we installed a doggie gate across the kitchen for Toby to stay in while Alei is at work. Toby has never minded using the carpet if it isn't convenient to go out to the bathroom.

JD stayed home and built a cow stand that we can lock Mooster's head in for milking. I've been gored with her horns one too many times to even try to prepare her for milking without locking her in. So far, I have fed her the last three nights in the stand. After a week, I will start locking her in. Then I'll work to rubbing her and attempting to tie her tail to practice for when the calf comes and we need to milk.

We own too many fat goats at the moment and I'm pretty sure that Leia is close to having this springs babies. I thought I had bred her for a May delivery, but I think Vinny must have jumped the fence early as she is looking rather round and waddling.

Hans the pig, I mean goat

I have figured out that it's ok to have all the spring roosters live at your farm all summer; they basically just hunt bugs full time. What isn't a good idea, however, is to go into the winter or next spring with them. I had about 14 roosters move into the barn for the winter and poop on everything. Now that it is pretty outside, they are still living and pooping in the barn. A few days ago we put one rooster in the hen coop to fertilize eggs and a second snuck in. Turns out they spent the day fighting each other and we have two one-eyed roosters now. We are going to have to narrow down our rooster population, as there are more eggs in the incubator already that will result in a new pack of roosters along with the desired egg laying hens.

We haven't tackled cleaning the chicken coop yet, but it's close. We did rake all the gum balls out of the chicken mansion and put down a layer of fresh leaves for them to dig around in. Elijah was very helpful as you can see.

Today I finally started planting seeds in milk cartons. I sure hope they work out the way we hope and I get a jump start on my plants, so we can have an earlier harvest. Selah and Bella love to help plant.

A full day of classes and an evening of outside put the girls to sleep tonight by chapter two of our read aloud book -

Sweet Signs of Spring

 
 Spring is in the air, at least at the neighboring farm where baby lambs abound. We are looking forward to a baby calf in April and baby goats in May. Of course, we will have a few rounds of baby chicks also; I am saving some eggs for the incubator and we are going to do a Polish chick order online.

I'm also starting seeds in milk jugs for the first time. This week I am pushing to wrap up a few projects in the house so that I can shift my focus outside for my favorite season.

Julia
 

School at the End of February

 Honestly, I think I would label last year as the toughest year of parenting ever. That's saying a lot, because we have done really tough parenting many years. The last thing that seemed logical was to bring the only three in public school home and add them to the already crazy homeschool schedule. The main concern was Julia, as she does much better with a strict schedule of her day and was excelling in school. I just really stuck with the fact that I felt like it was the right thing to do for everybody, including Julia.

All in all, I am happy to report as we advance towards the end of the year that I really think it was a success. Julia has done much better at home than any of us dreamed and Tori has finally given up, after about nine months, trying to convince us to put her back into school. That doesn't mean it has all been easy, just easier than we pictured back in the fall.

Part of the ease is having everyone on the same schedule and eliminating all the school bus time, paperwork, field trips, etc. A major stressor before was also the many days that public school cancelled for ice and yet the homeschool classes were still going. Now everyone is at CC together rain or shine.

 I always have bigger plans for the school year than reality and this year is no different. I am trying to lay my spring fever aside and focus on finishing strong - at least until garden weather!

Antique Shopping in Addis Ababa

 The last day we were in Ethiopia was spent back in the capital, Addis Ababa. We were taken to an antique "mall" by the friend of a friend that lives in Addis. It was beyond astonishing. There was no sign and the Ethiopians that were accompanying us did not know about its existence. It was in a huge compound with what, I guess, were only a few word of mouth shoppers. This is a huge collection of thousands of antiques from all over the country. There were probably about 12 rooms filled from floor to ceiling.

Our American friend said that it is called "the dirty store" because everything is covered in a layer of dust and your hands are dirty after shopping. It was quite true. After deliberation, I only bought an old bowl and a coffee table, which is a small table used on the ground to serve coffee on. It is going to hold candles in the middle of my table and I plan to do a little research to see if it's possible to find out approximately now old it is. I was also gifted a little milk holder, like the one shown in the picture below sitting in the bowl on the chair. They are made from gourds covered in leather with small leather lids to transport water or milk during the day or on trips.

After leaving the big, "dirty" store, we shopped at a few shops along the main street that also carried antiques. The huge tables and chairs that were hand caved from single pieces of wood were amazing. We found that the clean antiques in the small shops along the road were 2-10 times more expensive. Those shops may be the "dirty" shops main customers. It was all very fascinating to me.

One of the clean shop displays for sale

Ethiopian Meals

 Debs and I stayed at the same hotel I have stayed at the four previous trips I have taken to Adama. The nice thing is that breakfast is included and it was the same spread every morning. This is my sister's plate piled with rice, eggs and vegetables. Let's just say that Ethiopia doesn't do American breakfast food.

While I tolerate rice and love vegetables, they aren't something I can stomach too well as breakfast. The first few days I just ate the bread with some peanut butter, but by day three, I added some vegetables. The veggies are very good, but cooked in some serious oil, so we put a napkin under them to soak some of it up.

We generally only ate out one other meal of the day, and this was our usual spot. It was only two or three blocks away from our hotel, but had better food with a shorter wait and a smaller bill.

You can not judge the quality of the restaurant by the wandering cats; most had a few cats. This cat not only shared a bit of chicken under our table, it also drank from the pool. I was also surprised how many people swam at different pools, because it was like 70 degrees and not swimming weather in my opinion.

Another bonus about our favorite place was flushing toilets with sinks, and one of only two places I have seen in Ethiopia that had towels to dry your hands. Brooke wasn't sure what to do with them. To this day, when the paper towel dispenser is empty in a bathroom, Selah, Bella and I pat our hands on our pants and proclaim "Ethiopian style".

Ethiopia has many places with brick ovens that produce good pizza. This one was at the German hotel named...German hotel. It has fancy cushioned chairs, chandeliers and no cats, but still no towels in the bathroom!

Most places serve rolls, but not with butter - instead these three sauces are standard. The green is hot!

We also found it humorous that all the glass bottles of varying size are marked 300 ml; clearly, they are not equal. I think Coke is up to something fishy since their bottles were always the clearly smaller.

 Brooke literally did not eat anything other than the standard injera with chicken and a few different sauces and vegetables. This whole pile of dishes is an injera order. I don't think it is intended to be a one person size serving and she barely eats more than Bella. Deb and my choice then became to eat injera every meal or keep giving it away on the streets. This is why it wasn't tough to turn down injera by the end of the week when it was offered in homes that we visited!

This in Amharic for Coka Cola - turns out that they don't commonly use the vowels, so this ck cl. At least that is what I think I learned in my brief Amharic lesson.

A Lot of Ethiopia Crammed in One Post

 I posted this picture on Facebook of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when I first landed. People commented that they had not idea that it looked that way. Well, it does, and yet it doesn't. This is the view from a friend of a friend's home; she lives in probably the top 1% of Ethiopia. In fact, the grass looking down is the Chinese embassy. Behind it is the Burkina Faso embassy. Walking in the neighborhood, I passed the Indian embassy residence. Everyone here has guards, etc, and most are foreign inhabitants of the country.

I have had the privilege of spending time in the average Ethiopian's home also. These homes are in Adama, a few hours outside of Addis Ababa, where the cost of living is more affordable. The average Ethiopian in Adama lives behind a compound gate such as below. A wealthy person would have their own compound, but the average lives behind it in one of about six to ten rental houses. There is almost no home ownership among the middle class, since there are no mortgages; you must be able to build debt free.

 We went and visited where Brooke lived with her mother before she passed away. She lived in the home with the dark green door. They are made of either mud or concrete and usually have two rooms. There is generally a living room and a bedroom. The cooking is done outside. They often have electricity, but not plumbing. I have not figured out where the bathroom is for this compound, but I fear it is one less than desirable squatty potty for the whole compound. 

Ethiopians are very welcoming people. We were invited in by Brooke's former neighbors for tea. Something I can't figure out is that my first three trips to Ethiopia, we had coffee everywhere we went. This trip was tea every time. I don't know why the change, but I loved the tea! I did not take pictures at the tea time but they also invited us to stay for injera (dinner). We kindly declined dinner and told them just tea, because we wanted a few hours to play with the kids back at the orphanage before dark. We talked with the translator between us and the man of the family at one point looked so confused and said, "why no injera, why?" like he could figure out how we could turn down such an offer.

I don't know who may remember Hanna, but she is a little girl that has been in Brooke's orphanage as long as I have been visiting. I inquired about adopting her four years ago. This time I found out that she had been returned to live with her mother, with financial help via Unicef. I won't get into all the Unicef debate but I am not a fan! The orphanage offered to take us to see her and we rolled right up to her compound. It was first thing in the morning and she was still asleep. I was unable to meet her mother, since she was working, but it was so good to see Hanna. She is 10 now.

Hanna, Me, Aunt Deb and Brooke

We were invited in for tea by Hanna's neighbor in the same compound.

The two little girls on the right were the lady's daughters and the girl in the red shirt was a neighbor. Hanna was seated on the couch with us and served tea since she was the visited guest, but the other children knew to take a seat on the mat on the floor and not request tea. On a funny note, Hanna tried to decline the tea, but was informed in Amharic that she would be having some with us and politely drank the tea.

I have so much more, but I will end here for today.

London

We are on our way home. I will have a lot to blog about at home after not having much time or internet opportunity in Addis Ababa. We had about a nine hour layover today in London and did a really awesome bus tour of Central London. I'll show a few poor quality phone pictures through glass.

First, Debs and I repacking for security in London -

Big Ben, which is actually only the name of the bell, not actually the clock. 

Buckingham Palace -