Leaving Ethiopia
Sunday, December 31st, 2006Hello All! It should be about 11:20pm on New Year’s Eve in Edmonton right now! It’s 9:21am in Ethiopia. We left Ethiopian Children’s Fund Village yesterday… I cried quite a lot. It was really difficult to leave those children and they were crying too so it was just one sad day. I hope I will be able to return in a couple years to see how they are doing. They are all so optimistic and innocent. Sigh… The experience was really quite amazing and I will never forget it. We taught, we sang, we went for field trips to the mountains, we ate enjera until we were dreaming about it, and we just had an amazing time. I’m so happy this leg of the trip worked out so well.
Sigh… I will miss it… but the older kids can speak and write some english so I have given them my address to write to me… would anybody else be interested in exchanging letters with a kid from Ethiopia? I told them I would ask my friends. Man, I’m in such a strange state right now… on the one hand, I am so sad that we had to leave the school but on the other hand, I am excited that we will start our climb of Kilimanjaro in a couple days!
It’s almost new years for the people at home… it’s not new years on the Ethiopian Calendar so it’s just another day here. We will be going to the airport soon and then heading to Kilimanjaro.
Thanks for all the holiday wishes! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and are having a great New Year’s Eve celebration now! Talk to you again soon.
P.S. We were not caught up in any of the war stuff with Somalia here but thank you for the concerned emails. I believe most of the bombing is actually on Somalian soil.
cheng.ev