An Early Thanksgiving

Here are a few pictures of our time in Addis while the girls got to play with the four other down-country families who were visiting. There were 18 kids in all and it was so fun to watch them play together. The kids weren’t limited by playing with their own age range, but were great at playing whoever was around.

We had a slumber party

One of my favorite things we did is celebrate an early Thanksgiving (well, late for the Canadians). Buying a turkey here runs between $100-200 but because one of the other woman has served in the US military, she gets to shop in the US embassy shop which has prices similar to the US, so she contributed two butterball turkey loaves. Turkey is my favorite meat and so it was no little joy for me to have it again!

The girls made decorations

And had a really precious time as we all shared something we are thankful for. One of the girls said, “I am thankful that we get to take showers at HQ!” I felt so bummed for her when the next morning, the water was out. Ha!

Most of the kids.

Here’s where The Littles walked out of the picture. We don’t stick out our tongues in our family at all. (Little A explained to a friend, “In our family’s culture, we don’t show our tongues.”). I am not against sticking out tongues but because, where we live, showing your tongue is extremely offensive, we just don’t do it. This works well until we are with other expats and the classic “silly” picture is requested.

Once, they reported to me that a teacher at a conference had, gasp, STUCK OUT HER TONGUE AT THEM during a silly song.

The Littles can’t differentiate that in this situation it is appropriate and so they literally run out of the frame. ;) 

Talking with the other families who are walking similar journeys was encouraging and humorous. We are so glad for our community God is building here.