A candid shot of me, GezaHAGN, Yewbidar (Ema), and Desta.
A thumbs-up shot where Desta is distracted.
A candid shot where everyone is happy! Gezahagn is a star. Added siblings include Nati, Kademt, and Sosi.
I saw Desta making this face out of the corner of my eye, so I copied it. Added sister: Gilliane.
The quality on the rest of these is poor because they're from my phone. I'm sure you're all happy with whatever you can get, though. This is a science lab followed by a dope library in Yirg Alem two places that I visited within the first week of being here, and two of the only places to give me immediate homesick pangs.
Happy Birthday for Benjamin!!! Aug 5, 2013
This was my first dinner. Don't neglect the popcorn!
I don't remember what I was worried about here. Sosi was being pretty funny taking a picture of it though.
I wasn't worried about anything here. Everything was right with the world.
Gilliane jumped in front of the kids. She always steals the spotlight. These were the kids who were in Butajira at Mekicho school for our two-week practicum. See how many other foreigners you can spot!
Dinqo taught us Afan Oromo. I'm so excited both my thumbs are up. Gilliane makes that face in every picture she has adequate time to prepare for.
This is Daniel Okubit. He has all the answers. Those are maps of the four different regions in Ethiopia that Peace Corps Volunteers go to. We are all eagerly awaiting our town placements.
That's me putting my picture up on the Oromiya map, right up there next to the border. Dara's on the right, looking on curiously. You should really meet Dara.
Sometimes we would have language session on the third story of unfinished condos. Sometimes it would rain.
This is the first crater lake I went to, south of Butajira. It's really a baby lake compared to the one near Wolisso.
These are some pictures of our classroom. It was pretty tiny. If you study these enough you could become as good in Afan Oromo as I currently am!
I made a family tree!
This is Kidane. And way in the distance is Mendida. We're about a 45 minute walk away at either Yeyi or Tiyo school. I never remember which one is closer. That outhouse building was built by Glimmer of Hope, who's also building two new blocks of classrooms at my assigned school.
These are some mannequins in a shop in Debre Birhan. They're crazy for this one.
"A- Why not other days?
B- It is possible - every day
-every time, too!
Well-Come Mendida elementary"
People say "It is possible" a lot here. This is hidden in the Director's office, so no one really knows about English Day.
That's a cow outside the staffroom. That's a ping-pong table that's used as such. More toward the beginning of the year, though, when no one has any idea what's going on.
This is Asfaw. He's the vice-director and does a lot of the paperwork.
The high school football (soccer) team won a woreda-wide (district-wide) competition. I got invited. This is what they ate.
This is Fekadu. He is my Once and Future Afan Oromo tutor. He has the cutest daughters. We are waiting for the high school football celebration to start.
This is lens-flare. This soccer game was fun to watch. One goalie had zero experience and would just bat the ball back out to the opposing team, not realizing that he could catch it.
This is the school that's not Yeyi or Tiyo from before. I mean, it's the other one. It's one of those two.
It looks like have of this picture didn't upload. But this is a visual aid hung up in a classroom.
This is a sunset on the way back from Deneba.
I don't know if this has audio or not. But it's me walking to language class on my last morning in Butajira. Or halfway, before it gets boring and I shut it off. Sorry there are no cute babies running up to greet me to look at.
a) YES I love all of these most recent blog posts!
ReplyDeleteb) Your host family is even more adorable than I imagined.
c) That is a seriously incredible library.
d) I laughed for an unusually long time at the whole English Club poster and the "it is possible" caption. I am still laughing a little.
e) I cannot wait for "I Left My Harddrive in Tullo Bullo."
f) I just looked at the English Club poster again, and I'm laughing again.
I am attempting to learn the Afan Oromo from those pictures, but it is difficult because they are SO FUZZY. It looks like "fuuldura" is "car?" THIS IS SO HARD.
ReplyDeleteIn other linguistic news, I am taking American Sign Language. It's super interesting, totally different grammar from English. If you're referring to someone in the third person, you kind of put them in a particular spatial location, like to the right or left, and then can gesture to and from that location to refer to them and to show subject-object relationships. So if I wanted to say that a cat bit a dog, I could sign the cat over on one side (or index it by signing "cat" and then pointing to one side) and then the dog on the other, and then do the "bite" sign from the cat's position to the dog's. So word order doesn't matter as much, because it's really heavily inflected. There's a lot of verb agreement and tense information embedded in how you do the signs. It's tremendously succinct, one of those languages that can express a whole sentence in a single word, like that one Inuit language."
In other language news, I've learned to program computers, using CodeAcademy.com. It's pretty easy, though I feel like it'll get harder once (if) I get deeper into it.