house sports

The Bingham kids are split into three houses for sports and other fun events. Our family are in the 'Carey' house, in the yellow.

We have had one inter-house sports event so far, which was so loud you probably heard it and wondered what all the yelling was coming from this part of the world.

The kids (and lucky teachers who got to join in) had to do a variety of different events including wheelbarrow races with bananas in their mouths, passing footballs down lines of people only using their feet without it touching the floor, fish potatoes out of a bucket of water with only their mouth and carry it to the other side of the hall...you get the picture hopefully. This was not a serious sports event by any means, but was a lot of fun and it started the year off nicely for collecting house points.

our apartment and the 'mountain'

 To continue giving an idea of where we live here are some photos around our apartment. This is taken from the top of the hill, with the gym on the right. Our apartment can just been seen at the bottom of the hill, the white building with the red roof.

 This is where we live, there are four apartments in the building. We live on the top floor at the back.

 This is the route we take each morning, from the bottom of the 'mountain' to the top where the Kindergarten classrooms are. And every day Josh moans because 'slow coach' is far too slow and needs to hurry up. I look forward to beating him one day - I am not promising that day will be very soon, as I might get slower before I get quicker, but one day I WILL BEAT HIM and call him slow coach.

This is the full mountain. In case you are thinking 'that is just a little hill', yes it probably is, but until you have lived at altitude while pregnant and have to walk up it a good few times a day, keep quiet ;-)

Groundbreaking

 (photo thanks to Jess Garnett)

Today saw the groundbreaking for the new high school building. The whole school came outside to mark the occasion. It is estimated that it will take a year to build, but will be a huge blessing as the high school has grown over the last few years and needs space to expand.

Josh and I went down this afternoon to join the rest of the school for a short ceremony. We can see the big digger from our apartment but it was fun to go and have a closer look and see where exactly the building will be.

Melkam Addis Amet!

or Happy New Year to those of you not so fluent in Amharic :-)

The Ethiopian calender has 12 months of 30 days plus a 13th month of 5 or 6 days. Today Ethiopia enters the year 2005. We (actually just Tommy) heard cannons fired at 6am this morning as the new day starts at 6am here, rather than midnight.

Ethiopian New Year is a big celebration for people , involving family gatherings and plenty of food from what we have heard. We celebrated with cinnamon rolls for breakfast, given we don't really know what is traditional, and are enjoying a day off school :-)

Pictures from Tommy (one for Roger)

It has been really fun taking pictures of the various different plants and birds that we have seen here. Am happy to spring for Coffee for any positive identifications of species!

Some flowers from our weekend in Bobagaya: