March 9th, 2011/ Trisha's Journal Entry

It’s three weeks today since we took custody of Sitina. She has grown so much. She is so talkative and playful. Da, da, da is common. Ma ma ma is only once in a while although I am working on it. Sitina can manage to push herself to a toy but she is not up on all 4’s yet. We can tell she has a sense of humor. She loves to make a goofy toothless grins and watch us all laugh at her. 

Last night we boiled some water with our kettle and mixed a chicken noodle soup package with two Mr. Noodle type packages for supper. It was very good. Interesting how something so simple can be such a treat here. We picked up three loaves of braided bread at the local bakery for 6 Birr/ .18 cents to have with the soup. We also ordered salad from the GH. Delicious! The salad is so good.  So fresh. The red onions are super sweet here- totally different from home.  The green peppers are so hot! I really think they are some sort of hot pepper although they call them Ethiopian green peppers. Anyway, I really hope we can remain healthy regardless of eating the fresh veggies because the books say “cook it, peel it or forget it”. I’m not daring enough to order salad at any random restaurant but here at the GH they know we are scared to be sick from it so I’m sure they take good care with washing.

Home schooling is going better with the kids. Gary is an amazing teacher! He is really making sure Wesley & Chloe understand basic concepts they seem to have missed along the way. Today Gary mentioned to me that Wesley was encouraged with how he is coming along in math. Wonderful!

Last night Tigist braided my hair. She is one of the girls that lives here. I think she is a relative to the owner somehow. It makes sense to have your hair braided. The woman work so hard. They have so time for fussing with their hair. Yesterday I watched as one of the girls ground salt with a pestle and mortar. It took her a very long time. Grind, then sift out the larger pieces. Grind again. Sift, grind, sift, grind. Unreal...