Mt. Chilalo

Dex, a G6, is my walking buddy. We've spent hours tramping around the Arsi Zone. So I couldn't say no to one last walk before he leaves on Sunday. Climbing Mt. Chilalo.

Chilalo is the 4th largest mountain in Ethiopia, and Assella sits right at the foot of it. It's just over 4000m.

We left just after 7 am, walking with our guide and then the guard we picked up.  Guards a necessary, foreigners have been attacked before and hyenas live on the mountain. And there's no true trail so a guide is also a must.

We went through the country side first, past farm land, and apparently it's acceptable here to pull up plants to eat them while you go along. Our guide just pulled pea plants from the earth, picked off the pods, and gave them too us.

It was a long hike, more so cuz we went at a slow pace and stopped a lot. 11 hours of hiking!  But it was beautiful!  There's a wonderful rock formation at the top, and a holy water spring. We saw some deer, but no monkey's sadly.

Despite the longer than expected walk, it was a wonderful day.  I just crashed at the end, and woke up this morning tired and achy, but totally worth it. 

Halloween

I didn't really celebrate Halloween last year. I might have watched Hocus Pocus on my laptop or on the TV. Actually, pretty sure I did. But other than that, no celebration. Which was quite sad cuz it's always meant a party or some type of adventure in the past.

I think this year made up for it.

We made chili for lunch, but didn't have bowls.

The weird thing about celebrating American holidays in a country that hasn't even heard of them is that the local think you're a bit crazy.  I when to Carlin's house in Hossana with a bunch of other PCVs and her landlord was just fascinated with everything we did.

He had to get pictures of every costume possible (I went as an adorable jack-o-lantern, but I think the best prize when to Kat who made a bumblebee costume.  She sewed bubble wrap to a black shirt for wings, and then added strips of yellow fabric. And also made bug eyes from yellow tea strainers.) and insisted on calling him when we began the pumpkin carving.

Kat and I made a tree.

Honestly, I was surprised to see pumpkins, they don't exist in Huruta and I rarely see them in Adama, but they had them in Hossana!  They're a pain to carve here, the flesh is twice as thick and the knives just are carving caliber. Still, it was fun to do.  I haven’t carved a pumpkin in years and there's nothing like a holiday tradition surrounded by people who know it to make you forget you're living in a foreign country.  For a few hours, you can pretend you're home.

I think the crowning glory of the weekend was the homemade pumpkin pie.  Ok, the crust came from a mix, but we peel and chopped up the pumpkin ourselves and then made the filling ourselves to cook in a dutch oven.  Many thanks to Jackie for the pie pan.   I can't wait to make it in the States.

Made the hat myself.

The trip to Hossana was four buses and seven hours long, but it was worth it.  Having something planned each month is making this last year speed by.

Phonics

Today marked my third week of actually teaching in the classroom.  Sometimes I think my lessons are too easy, all the 2nd graders I work with know the shapes of letters and can recognize them, but then an activity trips them up.  For example:

Class, how many 'f's are in this sentence I'm going to read to you?

Five fish swam away.

*silence*

Oh boy.  They have no trouble listing words that start with a letter, and they're getting better at understanding the idea of phonetic sounds (B goes 'buh' not 'bah'), but listening skills are just, well. Not there.  But that's my job isn't it? I have the native accent!  Not that 'f' sounds different in Amharic, or Oromifya.  Still.

What really gets me is how excited the students are.  My first class is the first one after the recess, and as soon as they see me coming they're racing to their seats.  The second week, when I entered class I heard whispers along the lines of 'yay! she's back' and today it was the largest, most enthusiastic 'HELLO TEACHER!' I've ever heard.

I've also been noticing some of the secondary outcomes I was hoping for.  One teacher took time out to watch one of my lessons (though I wish he didn't arrive late to his own class to do so), and the second grade teacher I've been working with has 1) started looking into phonics on his own and asking me questions during his rest period  as well as 2) been taking a more active role in each mini lesson. It's no longer me doing a 7 minute phonics instruction, it's a 7 minute team-taught lesson.

I should have done this last year!


Also meet with staff at the secondary school today, I want to start a biweekly English music club.  My teachers' English club was supposed to start next week, but I'll have to push that back because apparently school will be closed next week so the kids can help with the harvest.  That's something that doesn't happen in America!

Well, at least not in my towns.  Maybe in rural Wisconsin? 

Language

I remember hearing once that you're considered fluent in a language if you dream in it.

The closest I've gotten to that was a dream in PST that was all in Peace Corps' weird phonetic language they use to teach languages that don't use roman characters.

However, I have noticed lately that I'll have conversations where I'm thinking in Amharic.  I don't have to translate in my head, I just say it.  Shopping, greetings, man, even the other day lamenting to a store clerk in Addis why I couldn't buy her cheese. (I need it for this coming up weekend, but hey, no fridge = no cheese.  Mozerlla can't sit on my counter for a week).  Of course, there are still times when I just stare at people and say 'algabunim' or 'I don't understand'. A lot of times actually.  But then later in the day I'll just spit out Amharic without thinking about.  Such as greeting other PCVs in the local lanuage and not English.

I think that freaked the newbies out.

Oh! Newbies!  G9 moved to sites the middle of September and I now have two new neighbors.  Both education.  I think there's only two PCVs in this entire zone who aren't education and one of them is leaving come the end of November.

Hanging around them also makes me feel like an Amharic goddess.  Good thing Dani's sister likes to bring me down a peg or two.