"Hey Honey! Are ya bored over there?"

Today I dove back in to thinking about my time teaching English in Yetebon, Ethiopia.

What a rich time and what beautiful people.

A scene in Butajira out the window of a vehicle.

Ya know, some boys sortin' some beans.

Just chillin' and being awesome


The tall girl is one of my 4th grade students - I ran into her along the road outside the compound one day and she was REALLY excited to be in a photograph. Haha then she hounded me every day until I got a copy of one printed for her.



Babes taking care of babes.

Gorgeous view during a hike.

School time!

I had to come up with lessons where 1. Kids has to spell things out 2. Use correct grammar 3. Write out the sentences and I always tried to make sure ihad a visual aid. This was one day when I taught a lesson about my brother, Ryan.

Come on, how amazing are these little buddies? Geez...

Brothers herding flocks along the roadside. Check out little bro's hot green boots and prodding/herding stick. Love it.

Hey I know! Let's take school time to harvest teff!

This is an excerpt from a message I sent to Kaitlyn recently, who is still in Yetebon and will be until May...

"Most recently I have been thinking of this conversation we had and how it is so contrary to life in America... Remember when the 4 of us were sitting at some meal talking about when Scott sked his class "What do you do for fun?" and they stared at him blankly because, oh yeah, THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING FOR LEISURE OR PLEASURE! Their time is spent, ya know, surviving. And we wee all like, "oh geez," but laughed because come on, it's so absurd - the differences in lifestyles from the US and then we were talking about what dating would be like in Yetebon and I was joking and said "Hey wanna go dig up some rocks?" and we all started laughing again beause, what the heck else are you supposed to do? Soooo this comes to mind at different times. The most recent being last week because I was at my friends' house - they are my age and have like a real house - like with a 2 car garade and a big basement kind of house (this is all very unusual for any of my friends and te rest of us are all like 'woah grafton and beth have a house like all our parents - weird and very cool') anyway - there were 9 adults there - hanging out and when I got there they were all downstairs playing Rock Band. and I was thinking about how someone, somewhere has a job creating things like this - items whose SOLE purpose is the keep people from being bored. Kaitlyn! What?! But it's true. The reason junk like board games, video games etc. are invented is to 1. keep people from being bored and 2. to entertain people. And it occured to me that boredom is a luxury. Like, no one in Yetebon is getting bored. They are ya know, trying to eat, or dig up rocks or herd cows, or chop down sticks and put them in a bundle on their back and carry them to their tukle so they can have a fire in their mud hut. Life is so interesting. I think I keep coming back to like, this idea that honestly, the world is just an absurd place. Ha. Planes are like portals. You get in this thing in one location - in Addis for instance - in the throws of some of the world's worst poverty and human suffering, the door is sealed, you sit there for 8 hours, and then the door is opened and you exit into, in my case, one of the richest countries in the world, England. What? Oh life. I am not like angry or bitter about this sort of inequality - just like, "Really?" as I observe it. So interesting. and God sees it all. Is involved in all of it. So crazy to me. So I ask him to tell me what he thinks of all of it and what is my role in all of it?