fa la la la wha?

Christmas came and went with much ado about nothing. Christmas eve: nice dinner, went out to clubs. (Oh, before dinner I managed to whip up some cinnamon buns while the boyfriend tidied and put up the Christmas lights and transformed a sad looking cactus into a sad looking Christmas tree.) Christmas morning the boyfriend was hungover but still excited about opening plenty of presents courtesy of Dubai. They all looked odd wrapped in Amharic laden newspaper. Mao-ish perhaps. There’s a joke in there somewhere about the boyfriend hoping for mao presents. wawawa.

Then we did the typical Christmas day activities: napping and movie watching. The napping didn’t work out so well because we ate too much chocolate to come down from and unfortunately we didn’t have any Christmas-themed movies but squeezed in Finding Nemo “the seamonkey stole my money” and Gladiator “bang bang death” for good measure.

For the new year, we were in the Guragee area. The boyfriend and father-in-law were checking out a water drilling site and I was along to see new sites. There were huts lining the ‘street’ and kids would coming running out excited to see a car and then quickly run away – afraid of the car. We turned old people and went to bed at 11. I’m never excited for any kind of new year celebrations. It’s always a disappointment no matter what plans you make. Sleep – I know what to expect there.

Right now it’s the second round of Christmas celebrations – habesha style. Although really it’s just eating. Same as in Canada – you get together with lots of people; there’s too much eating; there are too many kids running around making too much noise. It’s all about excess. And, believe it or not, even a poor country is still about excess. I’ve never seen so many sheep for the purpose of eating rather than for mutton bustin’. And if you don’t know what mutton bustin’ is, well… “it’s kinda wei-rud”.

The best part so far about this time of year is all the time off from work. Teaching has been a lot more demanding than I thought. More and more I feel like I am the establishment. “Hey kids, x is good and y is bad.” How do you explain to 5 year olds who are just learning more English about the grey zone? I’ve been trying out yoga breathing and shakin’ out the sillies and other nonsense and it seems to be going well. I actually admire the kids who don’t listen very well. I definitely wasn’t like that when I was small. And really for me, the most they are is slightly trying. Every day is a new one and I treat each kid that way…there’s nothing they could have done the day before that will effect how I treat them today. Kids are insanely forgiving anyways. Even if I’ve told them they couldn’t play on the swings earlier and they fall down crying, they still give me a kiss goodbye at the end of the day.

We’re having a holiday barbeque tomorrow. The barbeque will actually be an old tire well. The beef will be beef. But it’ll be a full on barbeque in the middle of winter. Good ol’ Africa.