Happy New Year!

We hope everyone had a very happy new year and that 2006 will be a good year for everyone.

Our New Years was nice but fairly peaceful. It could have been a lot rowdier, but the VSOers were all elsewhere (these young Brits tend to like to party!). Some were diving in the Daluk Islands and celebrating in Masawa while others stayed in their villages. So we celebrated with our favourite family and a few friends. Saba and her girls were there, all dressed up in their fancy clothes, as were our friends Dehab and Selam, two young women who visit us from time to time, as well as our student and Arabic tutor, Adem.

We celebrated by decorating up the house with our Eid bedspreads and hand-me-down Christmas decorations, and cooking up a few! sauces to eat with taita (injera), as well as a chocolate cake (thanks to my parents' shipment of cocao powder). All but our three kids sat around the big taita dish on the floor for a communal supper. I'm not sure how the Eritreans felt about our way of cooking their food, but it did all get gobbled up. No goats or chickens came to any harm in the process!

We were set for an evening of dancing, but Adem headed home early, and the girls needed to go soon after. Young Eritrean women can't walk through the dark streets alone, so Yasmine and I accompanied them on a 45 minute walk across town. It was interesting to say the least to pass the many very happy, slightly intoxicated Eritrean men wandering the streets, but they were respectful of the old white lady and left us alone. Then Yazoo and I had a long walk back and arrived at 11 pm to a house full of sleepers. Yasmine and Sabah went home and I went to bed witho! ut seeing in the New Year! That's okay. It was well past my 9 o'clock usual bed time.

We were supposed to spend the next morning climbing that mountain that we've been meaning to climb since we've arrived. We chose however to sleep in and put off the mountain climbing for another day. You have to start early or it gets too hot.

The other big celebration last week was Maya's birthday. This involved 10 happy, noisy girls eating injera and cake, playing party games led by Maya (like musical chairs!), hitting their first ever pinata, and doing some dancing. Up until now, I've only seen very conservative dancing, involving moving the shoulders a bit and nothing else. But Maya had a few friends who've obviously been watching American music videos as the hips and torsos were wiggling away to Lukas's hip hop music. Maya also got fed by several of her friends (one Eritrean custom that! we'll have to get used to). It was lots of fun.

Things have wound down at school after a very busy week of marking workbooks, doing last minute oral exams and preparing our final exams. Now, we have a week and a half off before final exams are given. This Sunday is Eritrean Christmas and Tuesday is another Eid celebration, so the whole week is off for Kim and me, though our kids' school may have fewer days off. We won't know exactly until they show up at school because these things aren't decided until the last minute. Maya, Lukas and Simon will have their final exams in a few weeks. The big scary ones are math and science because their teachers haven't really given them any practice questions. If you copy the teacher's example off the board, supposedly you know how to do math. I'm helping them out though, so hopefully they'll be okay.

We'll be spending Eritrean Christmas at Dehab's house and we've had a few invitations for Eid, so it should be a nice week with lots of good food and good company. Probably a few goats and chickens will be sacrificed for these occasions.

One sad bit of news. My favourite student, who has helped me since I've arrived, was expelled from school this week. She's a bright, friendly and mature girl who is also very devoted to her faith. I guess she talked a bit too much with her peers about her views (like wanting everyone to wear a veil and appropriate, flat shoes) because she was asked to leave. I tried to convince the headmaster that she should have another chance. She is a wonderful girl who has the possiblity of doing many things with her life as her father is supportive of her continuing her education, But I wasn't successful in convincing Abdelaziz to let her stay. I feel very sad about this as she has been a very good friend,! inviting me to her home for Eid, helping me to understand how things work around her, making Christmas cookies for me.... I just hope that she is able to get into another school so she can finish her education.

I've got to sign off now as we've got a couple of changes to make to our exam.

Take care!

Barbara