Update

Hi everyone!

We're still in Nazret, soaking in the culture and language here.  I've been battling a cold, so we've been resting a lot too while we're here.  Happily, it's almost gone.  I suppose we need to stock up on rest while we can!  :)

Yesterday was Genna (Ethiopian Christmas), and today we found the general area where the kids are from and walked around.  We had both the digital and flip cameras with us, but it's so difficult to take pictures because it feels so intrusive.  Jeremy and I have decided to go back another day and offer to pay people to take their pictures.  Today, we just took it all in (and took lots of notes of our observations).  The houses in the neighborhood are made of either mud and concrete or corrugated metal.  Some nicer houses are in groups with fences either made of sticks or metal.  We saw lots of kids.  Some boys were playing soccer with a softball-sized ball.  Other kids either shouted "Farengi! Farengi! Money! Money!" to us or wanted to shake our hands.  "Farenji" literally means "French", but it's also the name for foreigners here.  There were also a number of garis in the neighborhood on both paved and dirt roads.  A gari is a horse or donkey cart used for transportation.  It's difficult to imagine coming from this neighborhood and culture into our neighborhood and culture.  It will be quite the culture shock for our kids!

We still haven't found the school or orphanage, but we'll try again on Monday.  We're getting closer to figuring it out.  It turns out that there is more than one branch of the kids' school, but one of the recent Nazret travelers has shared photos with us that have been helpful.  The orphanage will probably be even more difficult to find, but we'll try.  We won't be able to go inside of either the school or the orphanage, but it would be helpful to know where they were for future reference for our kids.  If for some reason we don't find them, CHSFS will take us to them next week.

Hope everything is well with everyone and that you are all staying warm!!!

Love,
Sarah & Jeremy