1. We went to a fancy hotel that was a 3 hour drive away just to get wifi for an hour. They had a fruit bowl in the business center there so we helped ourselves. It made it worth the $5 we had to pay.
2. Almost everyday the women that worked in the kitchen, Yeshi and Buze, served us traditional coffee in the afternoons. I don’t know the whole process but it starts out with raw coffee beans and 45 minutes later they have roasted, ground, and brewed the coffee. They served it like espresso in these tiny little cups and sometimes they made us bread to go with it. On special days they decorated the floor with small yellow flowers. We would all sit on the ground around the coffee pot and just enjoy our time together.
3. Our ministry had a well on site. Every morning 2 of us would turn on the tap and help the locals fill up there water cans. Often times they sent their kids with donkeys to get the water. Sometimes little girls had to carry 5 gallon jugs full of water by themselves. One day I noticed a young man help a 5 year old girl carry her water jug home. It was so cute.
4. We had a camping day where we set up our tents on the property. The kids we were working with had so much fun hiding in our tents. We could always find which tents the children where in because of all of their giggles.
5. All of the kids had rain boots. So our first day off we went to the market to get some for ourselves, but they were sold out of adult sizes. On the walk back it rained on us.
6. Some of the orphans at our ministry had only been there for two months. We introduced them to many new things. One of my favorites was when we got out crayons and coloring books and taught the little ones how to color. They were so confused and didn’t know how to hold a crayon and to be honest they were really bad at coloring, but they loved it so much.
7. One of our last days at Hopethiopia we did a little gift ceremony. Each of us chose one or two kids to write a card to and give a gift. I chose Simachew. He ended up liking the drawing on his card of me and him better than the big plush bunny rabbit I gave him. He showed the card to everyone.
