May 19, 2009, posted by Karen

It’s funny how life out here in Ethiopia is beginning to feel “normal”. Driving down dusty, rutted roads with cattle wandering across and people trudging along with their water pots, hunting down groceries in the various shops in DZ, eating meals in the dining room with the students.... Life here is certainly different but it has also become normal.

We helped lead chapel yesterday morning. It was a novel thing for them to have someone who could actually play the key board that is sitting on stage. Very few people have any musical training out here. There is only one guitar on campus (the students had a fund raising drive last year to purchase it) and there seems to be only one student who is able to play it. He has allowed our kids to borrow it so Abram and Sol had great fun playing it yesterday. We really regret not bringing along one of our guitars since the guys have so much spare time and would probably have made more use of it out here than they ever do at home.

I spent the remainder of the day shopping for groceries with Dianne, doing laundry which is basically a full day enterprise and various other domestic duties. The excitement of the day came when Ernie helped the guys invade a huge termite hill outside our house. Ernie was a biology teacher in his earlier years and he loves to explain the ways of nature to the kids. The other encounter we had with nature was a home invasion of some very large, winged creatures we call “sausage flies”. They look absolutely ugly and intimidating although they don’t pose any real danger. Richard, Abram and Sol did some hunting and killing in the living area while Isaac and I took refuge in the bedroom.