Days are going

It is Thursday morning, 7:33 am to be exact, I have been awake for about an hour. I fed Max at 6:30 and he fell back to sleep; I am a bit envious of him as I wish I could close my eyes as well. Instead, I lay here in this hard bed staring at the bare white walls and listen to the sound of children screaming in the near by home, a baby crying in the room next door, dogs barking, and the faint chanting from the nearby mosque which is actually soothing. Breakfast will be ready soon, I only know because I can smell the wood, which will heat the oven, burning. The smoky smell  fills the house up every morning at this time. You never know what breakfast will be, but you can always count on it being tasty and spicy. On that note, everything in Ethiopia has a kick of spice. Just when you thought jalapenos were the staple food in Mexican food you realize it is actually the staple for Ethiopian food; I feel as though I have been lied to all my life. One morning, I woke up to find they had made omelets, excited to be able to eat some protein (and because omelets, outside of waffles, are my favorite breakfast meal) for breakfast I stuffed my mouth with a huge bite to find a chunk of this ‘spicy pepper,’ as the Ethiopians call it, and it burned my mouth. Seriously. It was super spicy. Another time, like an idiot or maybe a show off, no definitely like an idiot, I saw one of the kids pick off --what I thought was a bell pepper off his pizza. Eager to show him you should never waste a perfectly delicious piece of vegetable, especially a bell pepper, I took a huge bite of the pepper. Instantaneously, I regretted my decision. I must admit the next move I made was embarrassing to my ego, but very amusing to the kids; I spit out the chunk of spicy pepper from my mouth and cried out for water. Never ever will I argue with an Ethiopian child about an uneaten piece of vegetable. There have been many incidents such as this one in the past week and a half. One incident it was clear they were trying to deceive us, because many of us thought what they had served us was guacamole (which we thought was weird they served with pizza), but turns out it was minced spicy peppers. It looked like guac 100%. I have learned my lesson by now. I make sure to smell it or let someone else be the guinea pig; I have embarrassed myself enough.

Last night was the best night of sleep in all my days here in Ethiopia. Max also slept the best he has slept. It has been a long, sleepless process to get him out of his old feeding routine of every 2 hours to every 3 ½ to 4 hours. It has been so great. Little guy has had a nasal infection. I am pretty sure he has some sort of tummy problem like parasites because his belly has been acting crazy, but he really has been great for me. I can feel God’s presence and I know you all are praying for us; thank you, we need them.

Today we went to immigration, it was a successful day! We were able to convince the official to give us the passport on Monday instead of having to wait one week. On Monday we will go in for medical stuff and hopefully be able to submit to the US embassy no later than Thursday. Pray to God we can be home the second week of July, sooner would be better, but I will take what I am given.

This week I had the opportunity to meet a lady from Tennessee by the name of Brenda. She really made my week go by faster by sharing our personal stories and mission work we have been doing. Brenda is adopting a baby girl named Berkie and already has 2 gorgeous girls from Ethiopia. The opportunity to meet new people here has been amazing and I am very thankful for it.