Monday, Sept.15,2014
I happened to find a book called,"The Chains of Heaven" ( an Ethiopian Romance) by Philip Marsden on one of Michael's bookshelves. ( We are staying at Michael's house--it's his home when he is here and is used as a CH Guest house too). It is a travel narrative of a young British man who explores northern Ethiopia by walking. Many interesting proverbs are scattered throughout the book. One proverb stated" Step by step the egg starts walking"--meaning that one should persist through very frustrating times and eventually one will get there! When the author told his Ethiopian friend that he wanted to walk from Addis to Aksum, the response was," Farenji ( foreigners) don't walk--only Ethiopians can walk"!
There are some buses here for public transport and they have numbers from 1-10. One of our Ch support staff asked me if I knew what the Ethiopian's favourite bus number was. I didn't know. The answer-- no. 11 of course--it is the "bus" of our two legs:)! It is so true-- most Ethiopians walk everywhere since often it is their only option!
We did some heavy duty work in class on Christian perspective and curriculum planning. To provide some "fun" literacy work as a diversion from the "intellectual material", I introduced a game called Superspeed 1000-- a list of 1000 basic sight words in English. It is played with a partner and each one reads as many words as you can for one minute. You try to beat your record each time-- the class loved it!!! It is so good for their own growth in their second language-- English.
Power outages are very frequent here. Our teachers had no lights from 6pm till 7am- on Sunday --- total darkness-- due to a massive blow-out at the CH guest house kitchen. A generator was brought in till the problem was fixed, but the generator only ran for a few hours. When they arrived in class this morning they announced-- sorry no homework done--no lights:)
I happened to find a book called,"The Chains of Heaven" ( an Ethiopian Romance) by Philip Marsden on one of Michael's bookshelves. ( We are staying at Michael's house--it's his home when he is here and is used as a CH Guest house too). It is a travel narrative of a young British man who explores northern Ethiopia by walking. Many interesting proverbs are scattered throughout the book. One proverb stated" Step by step the egg starts walking"--meaning that one should persist through very frustrating times and eventually one will get there! When the author told his Ethiopian friend that he wanted to walk from Addis to Aksum, the response was," Farenji ( foreigners) don't walk--only Ethiopians can walk"!
There are some buses here for public transport and they have numbers from 1-10. One of our Ch support staff asked me if I knew what the Ethiopian's favourite bus number was. I didn't know. The answer-- no. 11 of course--it is the "bus" of our two legs:)! It is so true-- most Ethiopians walk everywhere since often it is their only option!
 |
| Playing the Superspeed 1000! |
Power outages are very frequent here. Our teachers had no lights from 6pm till 7am- on Sunday --- total darkness-- due to a massive blow-out at the CH guest house kitchen. A generator was brought in till the problem was fixed, but the generator only ran for a few hours. When they arrived in class this morning they announced-- sorry no homework done--no lights:)
No comments:
Post a Comment