I may work on that this year….no promises.  Our internet connection is still rubbish, and then there’s the dilemma of having a friend blog and an “I’m a missionary” blog.  In a perfect world, I could swear equally on both, thus removing the need for separation.  A good number of my students are “Facebook friends,” which eliminates the possibility of using that as a medium of self-integration.

Whatev.

I am on holiday….I haven’t had this much free time since the fall of ’04 in Grand Rapids, when I was unemployed and sold my plasma for grocery money.  If only I had TRL at my new house in Addis I could have some more structure to my day.  Kidding.  Sort of.

My new  house is awesome….and FREE….and I’m sitting in front of a lovely fire, since it’s cold and rainy outside.  Still teaching at Bingham, although this year it’s only Music and ESL.  Planning to be in Addis for several more years. 

I finally got into The West Wing, which was awesome except for a) I have no way to find out who gets shot at the end of Season One and b) every time they show The Mall, I get a little homesick and want to run my seven-mile loop from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial.  I also just watched “Dan in Real Life,” which made me homesick for the East Coast, which I admit is a bit bizarre for someone from Nebraska living in Ethiopia.

This last year was really difficult, and exhausting.  Not bad, and actually full of great things, just busy and draining.  I’m still processing a lot of it.

No big updates on the social front.  It has been confirmed that I am intimidating, but my level of bad-assness is unextinguishable, and I can only anticipate that it will increase.