On Friday, the kids are grumpy. Seriously grumpy. Borderline bratty. In Ethiopia, when kids are pissed off, they shrug one shoulder, stick their bottom lips out and stare at the ground. We are getting a lot of shoulder throwing. It is not that cute.

A couple from Kate’s adoption program shows up to bring some donations, and they end up staying for the going away party for the little girl going to America. They’re named Amanda and Matt, are from the Midwest, and are young. Younger than us, but older than M, which makes them just the right age for us all to hang out with. They come to dinner with Kate and we all talk about AHOPE. Kate’s heard that we make the children eat off the floor and that they are all mistreated, which we find hilarious, if totally inaccurate.

When Matt and Amanda go home, we go out with Kate. We go to her guest house, which is a few blocks away and is full of glamorous golden couches, and drink beers on the roof. Then we call Kate’s taxi driver, Gonchu, to take us to a club called Harlem Jazz. Gonchu is older, and lives with his mother and sister. He also drives at a snails pace, weaving all over the road. At one point, a taxi flies past us, and Gonchu tells us that the driver has had too much to drink, because he is driving so fast. I consider giving Gonchu a vodka shot so that he will drive fast enough to get us to the club in the same day.

When we get to Harlem Jazz, its packed with people. Kate, being 22, starts dancing immediately as T and I sit awkwardly with our drinks, feeling exceptionally old and white. At one point, there is a dude doing the Gurage dance, making the hand chopping motion with one hand as he clutches an entire bottle of gin in the other. When the music stops, he tells us he is a tour guide and offers us a ride home. Thanks, dude. We’re all set.

On Saturday, Kate invites us to go to the Crown Hotel with Matt and Amanda and the one adoptive mother in town. They have a buffet dinner and some excellent dancing, including T’s favorite, the booty dance. The booty dance involves a hot woman shaking her badonk at a man, who sits on the ground and scoots either forward or away from her. In a nutshell, it is the greatest dance ever.

On Sunday, we go to Little AHOPE to paint the kids nails. It’s total pandemonium, and the kids go crazy for the polish. A bunch of them have us paint their fingers, and then they run away and remove it, coming back with the little bottles, and when we say no, they throw the shoulder.

The one exception is Sweet Girl, a kindergartener I don’t know very well. She sits next to me quietly as I paint her fingers and toes, and she is so good that I decide to try out my I love you in Amharic. I tell her awadashalo, and when I do, she lights right up. She moves closer to me and tells me she loves me repeatedly, and I know we are going to be good friends.

One little girl, Six, has just had surgery to remove one of the tiny sixth fingers on her hands. I ask to see it, and when I point to the hand that is now missing the finger, she grins at me and points to the other hand, which still has the extra finger, as if to say, Stupid ferenge, there’s still one on this hand! Then she holds out the remaining six-fingered hand so I can paint each nail.

Amanda and Matt come over for the finger painting, and when they arrive, a bunch of the kids immediately start wooing them. The reader starts doing calisthenics around the salon, Princess starts doing her adorable little princess routine, and New Girl cozies right up to Amanda. Their plan works, to some degree. A few days later, Amanda starts talking about adopting from AHOPE.

After B leaves, we feel a little guilty about moving into her room, but not so guilty that we don’t do it immediately. Its nice to have our own bathroom and not have to go in and outside, locking our doors every time we do.

We go to the CDC to paint again, and when we leave, a group of kids sees us and runs toward us, screaming, FERENGE! When they approach us, they shake hands with all of us and ask me for a photo. As we walk up the street, M and T hold hands with the kids as I take pictures.

When we get back to the house, Eyob the guard tries to teach me the shoulder bump. In Ethiopia, most people chest bump, shaking hands as they pull in to bump chests. The shoulder bump is exactly what it sounds like, but I have never done it before. I won’t lie—I am psyched to be shoulder bumping. I feel almost Ethiopian.

After class, we meet up with a girl who works for another orphanage. We get her number from an adoptive parent from the other program who comes to AHOPE. She tells us the girl, Kate, is lonely and needs friends. It turns out that Kate actually wrote us a note that said I have no friends. Please call me. Apparently, the woman decided not to give it to us, which is tragic.

When we get back to the house with Kate, Eyob refuses to do the shoulder bump. And I am sad. So sad.

At little AHOPE, the little boy with the chalk on the first day approaches me. Write, he whispers. I go to my bag and tear out a piece of paper, then fold it into quarters. I also take my pen and put it in my pocket. He and I sneak off to the corner of the room, where I hand him the paper, James Bond-style. He slips it into his pocket, then reaches behind my back for the pen. He skips off, thrilled with our secret exchange.

After the English classes at big AHOPE, we all decide to go to a local Italian restaurant for dinner. Genet joins us, despite the fact that she is clearly sick and exhausted. She is devastated about B leaving us, and keeps saying things like B gone, no laugh! We try to convince her that we are funny too, but she doesnt buy it. At dinner, she looks as if she is going to pass out into her food, but she manages to stay awake long enough to make it through the meal and take some pictures of B with her camera phone.

After dinner, Yidni arrives to take B to the airport. We all climb into the van, and its a quiet ride to the airport. We walk her to the security line and then, B is gone. We get back into the van and try to make conversation, to account for the rather deafening silence. We ask Yidni about his kids, and joke about B being wolfrum. When we compare her belly to The Bellys, Yidni turns to M and asks which kid she likes better: Happiness or The Belly. Before she can answer, he says, The Belly, right? M pretends to be horrified and says she loves them equally. (This is a big lie. She likes Happiness best.)

For Tuesdays program, we have Bs going away party. It starts with the typical crashing around the yard, dodging basketballs, chasing each other and getting braided. The boy who tried to drown me at the pool joins forces with the boy who called me wolfrum, and one will distract me as the other tickles me from behind. I name them Sneaky 1 and Sneaky 2, and they cackle and tell me I am Sneaky 3.

For the story, M tells The Wreck of the Zephyr. The kids are riveted, except for one. I sit next to a little girl who looks like my cousin Pip, and I tickle her back as M talks. I am two people away from M, and on her other side is the girl who told me I am not konjo. The Honest Girl leans behind M and raises her eyebrows at me in the way that Ethiopians do, as a greeting. Unlike the people on the street, Honest Girl raises them repeatedly, over and over, and I try not to fall off my chair laughing. I look across the room, and T shoots me a look like the ones I used to get in high school for talking too much. Theres nothing I can do, though, because every time I look at M, Honest Girl is behind her, eyebrows twitching.

For Bs going away, there are songs and the kids present her with a card. B gives the kids a speech about how much the kids mean to her, and how sad she is to be leaving. M tells B how much she will miss her, and I silently agree. T always says that B is so young and energetic, and I wonder what things will be like without her exuberance. I can tell the kids are wondering too.

One day at little AHOPE, B is talking with the office staff about Happiness and The Belly and how after three months in Addis, her stomach is comparable to the two little boys. The office people laugh, and Abebe teaches us the word for fat in Amharic: wolfrum. Its a word we come to know very well.

Since B is leaving, we host a thank you lunch at the house for the people in the office. Genet spends most of the morning cooking shiro and a couple of other stews, and we all end up eating like pigs. Then, we have a coffee ceremony and we all sit in the sunshine, drinking the thick black coffee.

In the afternoon, we go to big AHOPE, where we watch M and B teach their conversational English class. They are teaching above and below. The kids sit on tables, or lie on the floor, and B spends most of the class lying on the floor with them, to demonstrate being below the table. At the end of class, I am talking to two of the boys when one of them grabs my cafeteria lady arm flab and says, wolfrum. The kid behind him, ever the peacemaker, says No, strong. Sorry, peacemaker. Its wolfrum.

For dinner, the adoptive father comes over with his daughter. They have obviously bonded and the father is ready to get home. He is waiting for approval from the US Embassy in Kenya, where their papers have been sent, but because of Easter, the office has been closed. It is the first time he has eaten Ethiopian food in Addis, and he watches in wonder as his little girl puts it away. Unsurprisingly, we all chow down as well, shoving shiro in our mouths in our best attempt to achieve the wolfrum Ethiopian baby boy belly.

Saturday brings us back across town to the community center. We stand outside the gate for ages, knocking and calling the guard. A little boy stands at the next door gate, looking shyly at us and laughing. Two older guys show up to help us bang on the door, and the guard eventually appears, horrified that he let us wait so long. We paint the underwater scene and finish everything but the outlines, leaving just before we all pass out from the paint fumes. The kids repeatedly sneak into the room to giggle at the painting and yell, FISH!! before B chases them away.

When we get back to the house, Genet has prepared another buna ceremony, so we all sit on the porch in the late afternn sunshine, with Genet and Iope teaching us new Amharic words. We drink endless cups of coffee and crack up at our mispronounciations and Genets explanation of how one of our guards has a baby: Mifta touch woman…baby. After the coffee, I make M cut my hair, because I cant stand the snarls anymore, and at the end, there are piles of hair on the ground.

Since were going out for dinner, Genet gets all dolled up in a sparkly red dress, and she looks hot. M and I both do our best, and Genet tells me l look good with my new haircut and that I should wear my hair down more often, because it is more better. Were going out for dinner at Habesha Restaurant, a local place that has dancing. We order a giant plate of food, with injera and fasting food and shiro and some kind of lamb wat that Genet picks. I literally cant eat fast enough.

And then the dancing begins. It is hands down, the greatest thing I have ever seen. Two men and two women shake and snap their bodies in ways I never knew possible. I could take dance lessons for the rest of my life and never be able to dance like this. For hours, we are all completely riveted, until we finally leave the restaurant at eleven, crammed into a taxi that takes the long way home, down all kinds of bumpy unpaved roads.

On Easter morning, we wake up early to go to the Orthodox church, which is supposed to be the biggest Orthodox church in all of Africa. M is feeling sick, so B, T and Genet and I take the two taxis across town to get there. Before we go to the church, we stop to watch a run for womens rights, with thousands of pink-clad women running and walking down the street, with the occasional boy sprinting alongside.

The church is enormous, with a brightly-colored dome with murals in the center. on our way in, Genet stops to kiss the ground numerous times, and when we get inside, there is a woman kneeling with a small boy lying on the ground in front of the altar. B, Genet and I accidentally sit on the mens side, until a man appears and asks us to switch to the other pews. All the women in the church are wearing head scarves, except for me and B, and we watch as a devastated woman cries and rants in sorrow in the front of the church, completely inconsolable.

On the taxi home, a man tries to get in the front seat with T and B. He climbs into the back with us, and apologizes to me. I tell him no problem in Amharic, and he congratulates me on my Amharic skills, and is impressed when I tell him I have been in Ethiopia only a week. We talk about how he lives in San Diego, how the American Embassy is a nightmare, and how I should beware in Ethiopia. Most of the time, Im not sure exactly what point hes making, but I am glad that he recognizes that I am an Amharic Master.

In the morning, two new teachers come into teach the kids. They work at the American school, and they read Green Eggs and Ham just as they do at home, stopping to ask the kids questions and pointing out pictures. During the lesson, a new girl arrives. She is about three, with a white dress and an explosion of tiny braids at the back of her head. She carries a ziploc bag full of stuff, and watches everything seriously. She doesnt cry, and after a couple of hours, she just walks over to me and leans into my arm, saying nothing.

The other kids are good as well; I sit with one of the little girls in my lap and bounce her around as she cries with laughter. She looks like our friend Emily, and her laughter is a shiny thing. Meanwhile, another little boy plays hand games with T, happy to have some man time.

I finally get a little boy who looks like my cousin Charlie (but with molluscum) to let me hold him, which he does with a smile, and Ms friend Happiness has cheered up enough to blow me kisses when we leave. It is a good day.

We go to the Melting Pot for the African buffet, and the restaurant is packed with people. A table full of African women in brightly colored dresses sits behind us, and suddenly one starts to bash her glass with her fork, calling for the waitress. When the waitress doesnt immediately sprint over, the woman begins to yell WE NEED THE BILL! We watch her, horrified, but secretly pleased that she isnt American.

At night, we get in a series of taxis to go to Charlene and Owens house in the suburbs. Charlene and Owen are missionaries from the West Coast with an Ethiopian son. They have come to Addis for a few years to work at AHOPE, and Charlene teaches the older kids English. On the bus, I am sitting on the back wheel, and I whisper to M that my $15 Malaysian jeans are a little low-cut and that Im worried I am flashing the back row of the bus. As if to confirm my fear, the woman behind me suddenly pulls down my shirt and pats my back. Yup, Im a creepy ferenge flasher.

Owen and Charlenes house is out in the suburbs, where the city is spreading rapidly. There is construction everywhere, and in a few years, the neighborhood will look entirely different. We have dinner with them and their sons family—his beautiful wife and adorable daughter, who is a studious-looking little thing with wire-rimmed glasses. (I am unable to resist children with glasses.) After a long conversation and some delicious homemade Ethiopian food, we go upstairs to see their new porch. We stand on top of their house, with Addis spread out like a blanket and a furiously glowing moon, and I start to worry that I might never want to leave Ethiopia.

So I have been blogging my brains out lately, and today I brought our memory stick to the internet cafe for the purpose of uploading said blog posts, and I realized that I forgot to save them to the stick, and they are all still on the stupid computer. This is bad, very bad.

Tomorrow, we go up north to Bahir Dar, Lalibela and Gonder. With any luck, I can upload them there, but if not, you’re out of luck until Thursday, when I will upload 43987592834798798 posts for your love.

Happy Ethiopian Easter!

The Muslim holiday has finally arrived, though we dont know what it is or what it’s for. What we do know is that it would happen either on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the moon. It comes on Thursday, and the big kids have the day off from school. Because they have no school, we take a field trip to the Ghion Hotel pool. Yidnicacho comes to pick us up in the red van, full of kids. They run around the house for a while, and then we all get in. Me, T, M, B, Yidni and 18 children.

I spend most of the time at the pool pulling the girls around by their arms so they can float and kick. None of the kids really knows how so swim, but we’re all in the shallow end, so it doesn’t really matter. I drag the girls around, trying to avoid all the other swimmers, who all seem to be in the shallow end. Eventually, they get bored and my legs start to hurt from squatting down to stay in the water. Then, they all get cold.

We are all sitting against the wall, me and about five little girls, and they can’t stay warm: partly because they aren’t moving anymore, and partly because they are far skinnier than I am and don’t have that useful fat to keep them from freezing. M is huddled with another bunch of kids against another wall, and I bring the girls over there, where we find a hot water spout. One boy especially is freezing, and eventually he gets so cold that I call T over to bring him to the men’s showers, which have hot water. He stays there for about an hour.

In the meantime, one of the older boys is stealthily swimming around and dunking me, M and B. He sneaks up behind us, grabs our legs and drags us into the middle of the pool, where he pulls us underwater. B handles this the best, standing in the middle of the pool, throwing kids around. The boys jump on her back and try to dunk her, and she rears back up, roaring at them. One of the little girls with me leans over and says, B is crazy! I laugh and nod, watching the boys’ delight and wondering what the locals think of these white girls with all these kids.

And speaking of white girls with strange kids, I notice a boy sitting further down the wall from me. I ask the girl in my lap, MIss Congeniality, what his name is. I don’t know, she says, shrugging her shoulders. Huh. So maybe he’s not with us, I think, feeling better about the fact that I have been snuggling all the AHOPE kids and have completely ignored this boy. But then she starts speaking to him and tells me his name is Itzak. So then I am completely confused. I ask him if he lives at AHOPE. He says yes, and the guilt kicks in. I tell him to come sit next to me, next to the spout, and he does. I rub his arm to warm him up, but feel funny about hugging him, since I am still not sure if he’s one of our kids, and I don’t want to look like some creepy ferenge, molesting the Ethiopian children. Then, Miss Congeniality looks at me and says bacca, which roughly translates to enough, I’m done, get me out of this pool now. I turn, and all the girls are decamping to the shower. I turn to Itzak and tell him were gettng out and going to the shower. He says, me? No, I tell him. Well, unless you want to. It’s up to you. And I get out of the pool, with him still sitting there by the spout, all alone.

Later I discover that, of course, he is not one of our kids, and I am just a fool. Thank God I didn’t hug him.

My humiliation at being a stupid ferenge is mitigated only by one thing. B is completely addicted to Mama’s milk, an Ethiopian milk that comes in a plastic bag. She drinks it ice cold, straight from the store, with the bag hanging out of her mouth as if she is actually suckling from a teat. We tease her about it until T and I try it, and it is completely delicious. After the pool, T and I walk around the corner to buy some. On our way out, we ask our guard Eyob if he would like some. He would, and so we come back with a bag for him. When I give it to him, he gives me the Ethiopian chest bump greeting and tells me, Thank you, sister. I spend all night crowing. I am Eyob’s sister! I may not know our kids and may be a weird ferenge but I am Eyob’s sister, and that makes it all okay.

The next day, we get three taxis across town to the Child Development Center run by AHOPE. The CDC is designed to let HIV-positive kids remain with their parents, by giving them a place to spend their days. The girls have been painting the bedrooms there for days on end, and we are going to paint the last bedroom and two classrooms.

The CDC is a one-story yellow building in a large dusty lot. When we come through the gate, kids emerge from nowhere to come greet us. They throw their arms around our necks and kiss us, or solemnly shake or hold our hands. When we paint, they peek in the door and whisper until we turn to look at them, and then they all scatter. In one of the classrooms, a couple of boys repeatedly come to the door and yell hello! before running away and returning a few seconds later to start all over again. They give us lunch of shiro and beets and I am shocked to find that I love beets, after years of thinking I hate them. At the same time, I should admit that you could soak a rat in shiro and I would still eat it, so maybe my discovery isn’t as valid as I hoped.

We get the buses back across town, stopping at Piazza and Mexico to arrive at big AHOPE so the girls can teach English class. While they teach, T plays basketball with the boys and the guard, and I play more tatare with the girls. I quit playing before I shame the ferenge race forever, and one of the little girls starts braiding my hair while another tries to fix my bangs. She pushes them all over to one side and then pulls them all the way back. Konjo? I ask her. Am I pretty? She wrinkles her little nose and shakes her head. No. I am not pretty. As if to reassure me, she pulls the bangs back and then pats my cheeks.

By the time we leave, it’s dark outside. M’s flipflop has broken and she is walking up the hill, dragging one leg behind her so her sandal doesn’t fall off. By the peak of the hill, we have decided we need a taxi home, but none come. Instead, T takes his shoelace and ties it around her ankle, Roman-style, so she can at least make it home.