I have found an apartment and am sharing it with a dear friend named Marichka. Marichka does not speak or understand English well. It has already been an interesting first few days together! Just last night we had a few fun misunderstandings that did not help the communication gap!

Scenario #1
Marichka enters asking if I want chai (tea in Russian). I said “yes, I would love some.” She asks me which kind of tea I wanted in Russian but with a tone of uncertainty. In my attempt to affirm her in my understanding Russian, I said “yes which tea.” She said “which?” I said yes. Hooray, English has been learned… or so I thought. Five min later, I finish what I was doing and go into the kitchen to discover Marichka looking at all my boxes and tins of tea. She looks up and says “Meggie, I no find which tea. I looking and looking, I no find.” Poor Marichka was looking for the fictional tea called “Which.” When I explained the misunderstanding we had a good laugh.

Scenario #2
Marichka wanted to use my laptop for a skype date with her friend. My laptop is a little slow and so I told her to wait, but I said it in what I thought was Russian. Marichka, very confused, stood up from the couch. I looked at her very confused and she looked at me very confused. Apparently I said the word meaning ‘to stand.’ So when I was saying “wait, wait” I was really saying “stand, stand.”

Scenario #3
I was going through my Russian vocabulary cards and came to the word car. I proudly said, again, what I thought was the word for car, but I guess the word for car and man are very close. I mean very close! Marichka just laughed at me.

Oh, the adventures we will have!

I have been inundated with Ukrainain humor being here. Sounds like it would be fun right? Let me just share a bit of the humor with you and you can decide.

#1 A doctor came to check on his patient and found that he had already died. He asked the nurses if he had sweated a lot before he died. “Yes! Yes, he sweated a lot,” they replied. “Oh good, good, this is very good,” the doctor said.

When they told me that one, I said “is that it?” Still don’t get it.

#2 In the congress in America, if I asked a congressman a question they give me an answer. If I ask a congressman in Russia a question, they will spend 15 min explaining why I am an idiot.

They got a half chuckle from me on that one.

#3 Once a student had to take a test on animals. Unfortunately, he had only studied about fleas. The first animal was a dog. He said, “well it has ears, eyes, hair, a tail and four legs.” The teacher raised her eyebrows.” And all dogs have fleas, and fleas…” The teacher stopped him and showed him a cat. Again, “well it has ears, eyes, hair, a tail and four legs. And all cats have fleas…” Teacher shakes her head, then smiles and shows him a fish. “Oh, fish, fish, fish. Well it has eyes, a mouth, it breaths, and… but IF it had fleas…”

??????

#4 There were two lines of people in heaven. One line was for men who were the head of the house and the other for homes where the woman was the head of the home. The line for where the woman was the head was going on for eternity (I added that bit.) There was only one man in the line for where men where the head. Gabriel thought this was weird and went to ask the one man why he was the only one. “Why are you the only one in this line?” “I don’t know, my wife just told me to stand here.”

I actually laughed pretty good here.

#5 A man heard someone knocking at his door and opened it find a poor man standing there. The poor man said “please can you help, I just want something to eat.” The other man said “well before I give you any food you need to drink 10L of water.’ The poor man thought about it and decided it was worth food. So he drank and drank and when he was finished the other man asked what he wanted to eat. The poor man replied “well I’m not so hungry anymore.” “What?! You came to my door asking for food, why did you lie? Why didn’t you say you were thirsty?”

I guess it has something to do with slavik hospitality, but that still doesn’t make it funny.

#6 A man came home from work and sat down at the table. He slammed his fist on the table and shouted “who’s the head of this house?” His wife came in with her hands on her hips and said with an attitude “What?” The man instantly cowered and said stammering, “I just wanted to ask, is it ok just to ask a question.”

Another half chuckle

When they see that I don’t find their jokes very funny they ask me to share some American jokes. I haven’t been able to think of any though. Anyone know some good American jokes that only Americans would find funny?

For the first time in my life, I got to wear a skirt and T-shirt on my birthday with out having goosebumps! I loved it, now I know what it is like to have a birthday in the summer. I’m envious.

The day started with finding the shower full of balloons and little cut-out flowers all over the bathroom mirror. The cut out happy birthday and taped it to the wall for me. I love my team!

One of these letters just doesn't belong...

The boys made me a yummy breakfast and everyone had a little gift for me. I felt so loved! We left to have lunch with our favorite Ethiopian friends. They took us out and introduced us to a traditional Ethiopian dish called kitfo. Sounds exotic huh? It’s raw ox meat.

Ahhh, I'm about to eat raw meat!

Yep, just a big ol slab on a big silver platter. There is a little bit of spicy sauce to go with it, but that’s all. I like to do something a little crazy on my birthday so yes, I did eat some. I could not pull myself to eat a lot since we were leaving the next day and the thought of sitting on a toilet at 30000 feet for 5 hours did not appeal to me. 

After eating kitfo, we went to a cafe for tea. Here, they all said a blessing for me, prayed for me, and gave me some Ethiopian chocolate.

We went home, had dinner together, and then my team surprised me with apple strudel from a German bakery!! Who knew there would be a German bakery in Ethiopia! They also blessed me and prayed for me again. A massage from Marichka ended the night. I could not have asked for a better birthday!

I had the great privilege of celebrating 2 Christmases, New Years, and the Ethiopian holiday Timkut while we were in Ethiopia, it was almost like Christmas everyday. We arrived in Ethiopia on the 22nd so Christmas was not that far away.

Holiday #1: Christmas

Christmas time was here and it was a little different for me being with a team of people who celebrate Christmas on January 7th. My Christmas is normally so filled with family you barely notice Christmas has come and gone sometimes. This year, I had no family.

Just me surrounded by great friends who…

don’t celebrate Christmas the same day I do. I was dreaming that I would be home Christmas.

We decided to still have a big meal and do a small gift exchange. We invited the German missionaries that we lived with for dinner and they graciously accepted. The menu consisted of meat (we love our meat,) stuffed peppers, boiled potatoes, bread, green beans, and belinchiki (basically crepes.) I managed to make a yummy gravy which was a big hit. We chatted about what everyone does on Christmas and ate until we were busting at the seams. The gift exchange ensued after we cleared the table. Yulia brought some corn for popping and we ended the night with a movie. Christmas here was certainly green and bright! 

Holiday #2 New Years

This was a fun time. For whatever reason my team thought it would be fun to have a fruit party. I did not understand this at first, but apparently we had to pick a fruit, dress up like it, and create a game to use the fruit. Kinda strange, but it was fun.

Mmmm, meat!

I chose an avocado since not too many people on my team had eaten them before. I got caught up in cooking dinner and did not have time to go out and find some so I asked Ruslan to buy me 6. Seems simple to someone like me who has bought avocados before. Ruslan came back with 6 bright green avocados. I had to revamp my game real quick. I basically did the relay with an egg on a spoon but substituted the egg for an avocado. We had a watermelon eating contest, race to peel a mango, and conversation starters with bananas.

We ended our time with communion and sparklers. Ethiopia’s New Years is in September so nothing special happened in the rest of the country.

You can see our Christmas tree up in the background!

Holiday #3 Orthodox Christmas

This was my first time celebrating an Orthodox Christmas. Nothing really different except for the day. We had almost the same menu as before but we had mashed potatoes, shashlik (kebobs), and fruit salad.

The highlight of the night was dessert, I got to teach my team how to make smores! Yulia had found some marshmallows when we were in Turkey so she had saved them this whole time until we had built the firepit and could properly roast them. At first they were trying to use skewers, then I cut down a branch from a tree and showed them the real way to roast a marshmallow.

I pulled out some crackers and we all shared chocolate to make as close to smores as we could. They all loved them and I was happy to have something that reminded me of home. We did our main celebrating on Thursday night and then on Christmas day we went to church where there was lots of dancing and singing. On our way to church, low and behold, here comes Santa Claus walking down the street. He was there mostly for the tourists, but it made me laugh! I think we had ourselves a merry little Christmas.

Holiday#4 Timkut

This holiday is supposed commemorate the day Jesus was baptized. This is THE biggest holiday in Ethiopia by far. People all dressed up in white and went singing down the street; there were parades everywhere. Streamers were hung over the streets, the majority of places were closed. We had a great time simply walking around and watching the celebration.

P.S. Did anyone notice how many different Christmas song lyrics I used in this post? Yes there are references to Christmas song. Can’t guarantee a prize, but you can always have bragging rights!

Yes I am still alive, contrary to what it may seem according to my blog.

Just to set the record straight about why I am so late in blogging… When you have to pay by the minute and every computer you sit at moves slower than a glacier, and after you have already been at the computer an hour responding to the kind people who spent time to email you (and letting your family know who were still alive) and you have a team of people waiting for you to finish, the blog had to take a back seat. Sorry, that’s life.

Now that I have that off my chest, I can update you on just about everything! I will try to ease you back into my blog, but I have a lot to update you on so take a deep breath. I will put up posts based on topics with a few random things to break it up. This is just the post to give you a head’s up.

And… I leave for Moldova for a week just to relax, so my posts may have to actually wait a week. I know, suspense!! I have to build the excitement! I will try to put one more post up tonight, maybe two if I feel like it. 🙂 There is just so much, where do I begin?!