Who knew Sophie had such motherly instincts! I'm in love with these children. Screw college, I want to take them all home with me and be a full-time mother of little Ethiopian beauties.

I won't say I have a favorite, but I've grown particularly close to one seven-year-old boy. His name is Faren and he is relatively quiet but incredibly smart--he's been my main Amharic teacher here and his English is excellent. He came to AHOPE only a month ago, and apparently he was only about half the size he is now. He came from another orphanage, and before that he was living with his grandmother. Last week he was sitting on my lap in the van on the way to visit the clinic, and he had been gazing out the window without speaking for awhile when he suddenly pointed outside and said something to the nurse sitting next to me. She pointed to a little mud hut--only recognizable as a home because of the door and the laundry hanging outside--and told me, "He remembers where he used to live!"

Last Sunday was Family Day at AHOPE. A few times a year, the orphanage invites any relatives, old friends or neighbors of the children to visit them for a day of celebration This was to celebrate Christmas. There was a small program, when a few staff members and older children spoke, followed by two short skits from the children of the Big and Little compounds, and other than that the day was devoted to playing and enjoying each others' company. It was a very bittersweet ady for everyone. When children are brought to the orphanage, they are often brought in by relatives who are simply unable to support them. The orphanage collects the addresses and contact information of any family members or friends that exist, but for children, there is no one at all--some of them are found living on the streets before they are brought to AHOPE. The children who were reunited with family and/or friends obviously had a very exciting day, but it was another story for the children for whom no one was there. Still, all of them were engaged in the skits and almost all of them joined in the games and the dance party that broke out after lunch, when the children took over the stereo system that had been brought out for the day. Overall, we tried to ensure that everyone had a good time, and the day was definitely a success.

One of the regular AHOPE volunteers is a woman named Karine who comes from Philadelphia and has been living with her husband here in Addis for a little over two years. She volunteers as an English teacher at AHOPE, but she also works at a hospital where her husband is a surgeon. Yesterday--Friday--she took me and the other two volunteers to visit this hospital. It's called the Cure hospital, and it's run by an American organization that works to offer free health care to children in third world countries. This particular hospital specializes in healing children who are born with deformities such as cleft lips/palates and club feet. For children who are still rather young--under 5 or 6 years, one of the doctors told us--club feet can usually be cured simply by manipulating the bones and casting the feet for a few months, followed by physical therapy. For more severe cases and older children, they can usually fix the problem with surgery and physical therapy. Apparently the success rates are between 85 and 96 percent--most of these children will be able to walk normally. Cleft lips are fixed with surgery. This hospital has a team of full-time doctors and surgeons, and they often bring in doctors from out of the country--we met a group of South Korean doctors and a photographer the day we visited. In some tribes, children who are born with deformities are said to be cursed, an often they are simply hidden away from the world. They are not sent to school and they are not let out in public, and with time their problems only get worse. However, being at this hospital made the outlook appear promising--people travel great distances and make immense sacrifices to bring their children to these hospitals, and they success rates are high.

We also drove to the top of a mountain overlooking Addis, and visited an Ethiopian Orthodox church. It was a beautiful church, painted with the colors of the Ethiopian flag and built next to the home of the Ethiopian leader who established Addis Ababa as the capitol. As we climbed the mountain and got further and further away from the city, we saw women--from teenagers to at least 60-year-olds--carrying immense loads of wood down the mountain, apparently to sell at the markets in town. Karine told us that one of her American friends, a man who worked out regularly and had always been in decent shape, had once tried to lift one of these loads and couldn't. Why they don't use carts or wagons I have no idea--these loads were huge.

This past week has been an interesting one for us at the AHOPE guest house. The electricity here is a bit spotty; once in awhile it turns off for a few hours in the afternoon, but most of the time we have a steady flow of power at the guest house. Tuesday afternoon, Camille and I heard a loud bang around 2:30 p.m., and the power went off and didn't return until about 11 that night. We were unable to cook, so we ended up eating peanut butter and sugar--the peanut butter here is extremely salty by itself--sandwiches for dinner. We played around in the dark with candles and flashlights and cameras before finally giving up and going to bed around 9. Wednesday afternoon we had a thunderstorm, and the power went out at around 3. This time we were in bed by 8:30. Thursday the power was out between 3:00 and 8ish, and we had almost given up on cooking and showering when the lights finally came back on. We cooked up a huge hot meal and enjoyed the hell out of it.

During our long hours of darkness, however, we ended up having a few interesting conversation. At one point Camille asked us what things we miss the most. We thought about it:

1) Cheese/milk/yogurt/meat. They don't sell refrigerated dairy products here.

2) Fresh air. The pollution here is pretty terrible and I feel as if I've been smoking a pack a day.

3) Fitting in. Ooooohh my gosh how I miss fitting in.

4) Internet. It'd be nice not to pay 25 cents per minute to talk to you people!

5) Safe, free tap water. You know you're in a sketchy place when the water bottle I bought yesterday has the label "AquaSAFE." Great.

...That's about it. And those are mostly just luxuries that no one reeeally needs to get through their day. Even without those little details, we're still living an incredibly luxurious lifestyle compared with most of the people around us. The phrase "Appreciate what you've got; there are starving children in Africa" really has a whole new meaning when you're seeing those children up close and personal.

We also had a conversation about little random things that have caught our attention. There is one man we see almost every single day at the top of the hill we have to walk on the way to the orphanage. He always stands on the sidewalk, usually talking to someone--almost always a different someone--and he always wears the same grey blazer, a pair of purple pants, a cap and he carries a cane. We have affectionately named him Michael Cane.

One thing I've noticed is that a large number of people do actually give money to people begging on the streets. I've been giving away quarters and granola bars here and there, but it's not uncommon to see people giving out 1 Birr bills to a woman sitting on the sidewalk holding a child in one hand and a cloth to collect coins in the other. It's slightly different from the US, where most people seem to more often than not turn a blind eye to the poverty on the streets.

The people here are very patriotic and proud to be Ethiopians. For example, I've noticed that whenever I make friendship bracelets with the children, 99% of the time the first three colors they ask for are green, yellow and red, in that order--the colors of the Ethiopian flag. A lot of the adults and older children speak at least a little bit of English, but they are always very eager to teach us Amharic, if only to increase our vocabulary a tiny bit. Amharic is an extremely difficult language to learn--not only are many of the sounds completely foreign to us Americans, but apparently the grammar is very different and complicated as well, and it has a whole different alphabet. Still, I've been carrying around my little red notebook and I try to record the new words I learn each day. I'd like to say that I plan on really picking up the language while I'm here, but unfortunately I highly doubt that's ever going to happen.

So, all in all, it's been a very eventful third week here in Addis Ababa. It's been extremely hot here, and I'm trying to enjoy it a little bit extra because I hear America's been experiencing some crazy winter storms lately. I'm not gloating, I'm just appreciating :)

Love to everyone! Th-th-th-that's all, folks!