Nicky on August 13th, 2010

A few words from Spice about her yellow Ethiopian scarf, and scarf wearing in general. You get a sense of how she talks. (Although she is more verbose when not being taped. Aren’t we all…) She got this scarf at the women’s weaving cooperative near Entoto mountain, in Addis Ababa.

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Nicky on August 10th, 2010

Of all the strange places in the world, I finally bought my very own injera pan in… wait for it… New Norway, Alberta. Look it up on google maps and you’ll know why I was surprised. 
Jrock and I were taking a round-about way home, wandering through the secondary highways looking for antiques, when we pulled [...]

Continue reading about Finally! An injera pan!

A friend posted a great link on one of discussion boards all about Ethiopian nutrition and medicine.  This excerpt is from a research report entitled “The Traditional Foods of the Central Ethiopian Highlands” .. it goes on to have a detialed desription of the preparation of injera, descriptions of foods and spices… it’s a delicious report! [...]

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Nicky on July 23rd, 2010

Well it isn’t the Naramata Bench if you don’t do a little wine tasting, now is it?
We did slip away to see a few wineries… our favourite that we tasted at was La Frenz - everything was good. Somebody there obviously knows what they are doing.  And the prices were great. Kettle Valley had respectable wines… I [...]

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Nicky on July 20th, 2010

Harambee was a chance for the girls to spend some time with their new and old friends… I found they did more socializing than I did - maybe in future years I’ll get a chance to relax a bit more. But it was neat to see.

Sugar, in typical fashion, hung out with her Swazi friend [...]

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Nicky on July 17th, 2010

I thought I would break up the pictures from our week at Harambee thematically, instead of by day or something. After all, it was a jam-packed week of activities, friends, learning and winetasting!
For those of you who don’t know, Harambee is a family camp in its 16th year, for families with children of African heritage. [...]

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Nicky on June 27th, 2010

Only 163 people have seen this beautiful video of Ethiopia - the videography is stunning! So let’s make it many many more…
It gives me such warm memories of the bright, colourful dusty Ethiopia I got to know.

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Nicky on June 4th, 2010

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been getting more involved in supporting Faya Orphanage in Ethiopia. For those of you who haven’t heard much about this great home for HIV+ and HIV- kids in Adama, Ethiopia, you can see pictures in my previous post or on the Faya website. In the past, I’ve organized a [...]

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Nicky on May 23rd, 2010

I’ve been setting aside clothes and collecting items to be sent to Ethiopia in a container over the next couple of months. The girls know I’ve been doing this but have’t paid much attention. But last night we were talking about how lucky we are as a family, and how lucky they are to have [...]

Continue reading about So proud of my little girls

Nicky on April 12th, 2010

We learned last week that two directors from YMCA Ethiopia were going to visit our preschool today. They are touring BC YMCAs as part of a leadership exchange with YMCA Canada. Another Ethiopian mom and I volunteered/were asked to help organize some welcoming activites, and it was our pleasure to do so.
Today M brought all the stuff [...]

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Nicky on March 26th, 2010

There is a recent article in National Geographic magazine with beautiful pictures… click on the picture below to see more of this remote region in Ethiopia.

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Nicky on March 18th, 2010

Since we got home, we’ve had quite a few conversations with parents traveling overseas to Ethiopia.  A couple nights ago I had a great telephone conversation (ok, so I just babbled on and on!) with a lady who is soon off to pick up her daughters. She actually was calling me on behalf of a [...]

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Nicky on February 14th, 2010

We are so very lucky - at the girls’ pre-school there are five families from Africa, including one Ethiopian family.
We got invited to their son’s birthday party today, and it was so great. There were 5 or 6 Ethiopian/Eritrean families there, as well as a Kenyan family (the only one we had met before.  The girls were a little overwhelmed [...]

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Nicky on February 8th, 2010

I was at my grandpa’s funeral and a nice lady came up to me and said how much she enjoyed my blog.  We’re used to this happening in adoption circles, but not in that circle! Anyway, she said she especially liked all the posts on Ethiopia and how much she had learned.  So since I [...]

Continue reading about Adama - 2 hours south of Addis

Nicky on December 9th, 2009

Today the girls told us that Santa is called “Da-MEE-na” in Ethiopia. 
Can anyone with older Ethiopian kids confirm this?  Their language sound ability is a lot different from this time last year and I’m wondering if they got it right; plus I’m pretty surprised they had word of Santa at all in ET-
Thanks for your [...]

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