"Exciting" Is A Relative Term

Their next album drops soon

If coming back from Asia and Kenya to Ethiopia had a sound effect, it would be like the sound of screeching tires.  Our first stop was to our bed and breakfast in Addis which - through no fault of its own - had no power.  No power means no water, since water pumps are electronically operated.  So we spent our first cold night in Addis without electricity or running water.  We laughed (just a little) and agreed that it was a good way to readjust to life in Mekele.  We landed in Mekele to find that our rooftop water tank had run dry and there was no running water in our house, either.  Azeb, who helps us in the house, had been drawing water up from the underground tank with a pail tied to some long cable.  Like a pioneer woman.  Ridiculous.  But hey, we ordered a tanker of water and the problem was fixed in no time.   Also, there is no 3G in Mekele, which means no mobile internet.  It makes checking e-mail regularly impossible.  Never mind blogging.

So I convinced myself that blogging regularly wasn't all that important, because really, nothing truly exciting was happening anyway.  But I looked over the pictures as I downloaded them from my phone and I placed myself back in freezing Silver Spring, Maryland.  In just six months, I'll be back there, and living a comfortable life with plenty of internet, water, and electricity.  Hot showers for days and days!  But I won't be able to hang out with hundreds of kids on Christmas day, slaughter a sheep, or climb the most treacherous trails ever conceived. So yeah, some exciting stuff has been going on, and I guess I should chronicle it while I'm in internet land, if only for myself.  And by internet land, I mean Addis Ababa, where I've come by myself for a few days of paper work.

Full disclosure, there is a gruesome picture of a sheep's head further down, so if you're squeamish or against the killing of animals to make delicious food items, you have been warned.

Let me begin with our return to Operation Rescue Ethiopia, where our time is marked by daily contact with the kids.  We teach them in class for an hour and then we play for another two hours.  If you ever visit ORE you will quickly discover that there are no strangers there.  The kids will come to you, put their arms on your shoulders, lean into you and look you straight in the eye from very close.  They hug you, hold your hand, demand that you play with them, draw with them, dance with them, sing with them, whatever.  In other words, it's the friendliest place ever.  Yes, those kids fight like crazed ninjas, but we've learned that if you give the rascals a few minutes, some kind of primal justice will prevail and they'll be arm in arm like siblings moments later.  Anyway, all this to say, there's a LOT of intimacy at ORE.  And if you're like me, it's sometimes hard to have that much physical contact and connection; you need a break.  So the return to ORE was something I admit I had to gear up for.  Also, I wondered if the kids would resent us for taking off for so long and just swanning back in as if nothing had changed.  So as we approached ORE's gate, I was a bit nervous.

Let me tell you, when they realized we'd come back, a whole mass of those kids dropped what they were doing and ran to us, arms outstretched, calling our names!  Can you imagine a welcome like that?  Scores of little arms around our waists, little hands pulling our faces down for kisses, questions, questions, questions.  I mean, it was absolutely magical, and erased completely that screeching tires sound.  We felt so unworthy and yet so welcome; it melted our hearts.  And my dad learned immediately that if you sit down and start to talk to one kid, you'll have an audience in no time, and you will feel like a hero for singing even the most simple song.  He absolutely killed with a song he learned from a female climber on Kilimanjaro a few years ago:

Tabitha, Tabitha, make me some porridge

First you stir it with your right arm

Then you stir it with your left arm

Then you stir it with your right foot

Then you stir it with your left foot

THEN YOU STIR IT WITH YOUR BUM BUM!

You can imagine the kids watching my dad do the actions and collapsing in laughter.

Dad gets acquainted

Anyways, just two days later, I celebrated my 46th birthday in grand Gebremedhin style.  This is the image my eyes confronted at the break of dawn:

I think a 46 year old should be allowed to sleep in, but it's all good

Later that morning, at a more sane hour, we all went to ORE where a grand Ethiopian Christmas (which is on January 7) was organized for the kids.  The staff had gone all out, organizing some really funny games for the kids and awarding some truly trailblazing prizes.

These crazy kids volunteered to eat four bananas and down one bottle of water.
Filimon, the kid on the right won.

This team includes some of my most interesting students.  Anyone who knows
what a 15/16 year old girl is like will understand what I mean.

Kybra is the winner in a catch the rooster competition

Among the prizes awarded were kilos of tomatoes, onions, flour, and live chickens.
We should try that at school competitions in the US.  Oh wait, there are no winners
anymore.  Everyone is a winner.  That's way too much produce to award.  We'll stick
to those ribbons, I guess.

After the festivities, our family went to buy a sheep.  It was as simple as I'm making it sound.  We crossed the street, accompanied by Getachew - director of ORE - walked for a few minutes, chose a sheep, hired a man to slaughter it, brought it back and had it slaughtered at ORE where the facilities are better for this sort of undertaking.  Our house wasn't built with a little canal for blood, or a place to hang a sheep upside down to butcher.  On our way, we had to wait for a small lead group and peloton of racers to pass.  Bike racing is big in this part of Ethiopia.

We chose a really cooperative sheep who never complained about a thing all the way to his quick death.  Our butcher is a man who, like many others, carries a knife and little else with him, offering his services at these markets.  He can do the work of three men in a fraction of the time.  He takes the skin, washes the entrails (you need these to make dulet, a delicacy that is not to be missed), and you take your freshly butchered meat and make delicious beg wat (spicy mutton stew).  Azeb, our intrepid helper, cooked it and it was amazing and tender.  We now have a freezer full of mutton, and I even had to take a container of dulet to a friend's house to freeze while I was gone.  Something told me that the rest of my family did not consider a dish made of sheep entrails, liver, kidney, stomach, and a bit of bile a dish "not to be missed" while I was gone.  Actually, the dulet was probably not missed by them.  Shame.  They're not Habesha yet.

This was not the sheep we took home

This was the sheep we took home

Look at these handsome guys!  These uniforms and fifteen beautiful
soccer balls were donated to ORE by my wonderful Aunt Naomi and Uncle
Bruce, and sent from the states via my dad.

So Ethiopian Christmas was celebrated in high style; we watched soccer practice on Christmas Eve  and we even squeezed in a dinner and movie night at our friends', the Spencers on Christmas Day.  We reunited with some of the folks who I wrote about in one of my first blogs, entitled "Community".  We meet every Sunday for house worship, but every once in a while, Greg and EJ (and now their new baby Rowena), host a movie night by projecting a beautiful, shiny, clear movie on their living room wall.

How can anyone play cards when Ratatouille is showing?

Right after Ethiopian Christmas, our family set off to Gheralta where there are nearly forty cliff-hewn churches to explore.  I think I've written about Gheralta before (recall the priest-fighting saga), so I won't go into too much detail here.  But I do want to say the one hike I've been terrified of doing since we first went loomed large on this hike.  So terrified of this hike was I, that I saw it in my dreams, and could imagine my children tumbling down the side of the mountain, my screams following them all the way down.  The hike takes you up to Abuna Yemata church.  I've been assured that only one person has died up there, a university student who had vertigo.  And Mark and Eli - who had gone there on their own a few months back - assured me that it was safe.  They indicated the width of the ledge leading into the church with ever-widening hands.  Their hands were just never wide enough apart.

So I decided to take my 83 year old dad up there.  And my very nervous son, Micah.  I'm telling you, I've never been so frightened of a physical circumstance.  We got up there and I literally muttered under my breath each time we passed a dangerous point - a steep scramble, a climb over a boulder that had sheer 200 meter drops on either side of it, the navigation of that ledge which was narrow enough to be foolhardy - "Please God don't let him trip, Please God."

No one tripped.  I closed my eyes as my dad made his way into the church.  I yelled at Micah "You WILL do this!" and then closed my eyes as he was led in.  (Mark told me later that Micah's legs had literally been shaking the whole time).  And then I went in, leaning into the wall with my whole heart, refusing to turn around and look at the drop behind me, and the view of the valleys and ridges beyond.  And then inside the cave, I bawled like a baby.  You have to understand, I wouldn't even let my kids stand against the railing of a slightly elevated platform overlooking a duckpond at Brookside Gardens in Silver Spring.  I couldn't watch them stand on the glass platform in the Willis Tower in Chicago.  I have a projected terror of heights, certain that gravity will suck my loved ones down, down, down.

Dad is watched carefully by Kinfu, our trusty guide, as
he makes his way along the ledge.  I did not take this picture as I couldn't watch.

Inside the church, a painting of Abuna Yemata (Father Yemata, an early Egyptian saint) on horseback.  

To check out how thrilling this place is, you can skim this article in the Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2823326/Abuna-Yemata-Guh-church-sky-Ethiopia-world-s-inaccessible-place-worship.html

This article suggests that Abuna Yemata Guh is the most inaccessible place of worship on earth.  Well guess what, Daily Mail, we accessed it.  But oh, so did these people:

These ladies had gone up, no ropes (some of us used ropes), for a baptism.
The lady with gray hair peeking between two ladies is 80 years old.  Kind of
puts our heroism into perspective.

When we came down off the mountain, I was relieved as heck.  Our guide Kinfu - the same guide we always use in Gheralta - is from the area.  He calls the ladies above his aunties, and the men below his uncles.  He insisted that we go and greet these men, and no sooner had my dad doffed his cap to greet them than we were forced to sit down, drink tela (a local brew) and eat some injera.  Kinfu announced to them that we'd made it to the top and they looked at us like, "And...?" But they were very kind and reminded us of what traditional Ethiopian hospitality looks like.

Dad approaches the men.  The bowing begins.

Dad, Eli, Daniel, Kinfu, Mark, and Micah eat injera.  We were offered tela,
the traditional brew.  I love tela but was fearful of drinking it in such a remote place; I
was worried about contamination.  Dad later said that tela was the one thing you could
safely drink in such circumstances, and that the missionaries of old were permitted this
one indulgence if invited to partake, because it was safer than drinking water.

We had a marvelous time in Gheralta, including on this hike up to Mariam Korkor church.  I've written about this church as well, in the past, but it is one of our favorite hikes.

Descending from Mariam Korkor.  It's not as bad
as it looks.

And here's a picture of our exciting crew, taken with the expertise of a true mountain guide:

To top off all this excitement, I got to fly back to Addis with my dad and send him on his way to Nairobi, and then back to the chilly US of A.  Meanwhile, I've spent the last few days here in Addis doing some paperwork and catching up with friends and family:

My Uncle Hiruy took me out to dinner at a fancy French
restaurant called the Louvre in Addis.

Poppy and Sym Holben and Cleo the dog

with Zeb and his daughter Hannah

And to come full circle, I came back to stay at the guest house that greeted us a few weeks ago with darkness and a pail of water with a pitcher in it for bathing.  But this time my room is bathed in light, and water flows freely from the taps.  I've enjoyed staying here in my little room with the comfy bed, and my young Swedish neighbors whose days start as mine is ending (I literally saw them head out across the street as I was coming back in tonight after a day in the city).  It all feels good right now; sitting here and writing of the happenings of the last few weeks.  That screeching brakes sound is gone and I'm surrounded by silence.  I'll be back in Mekele tomorrow where internet woes will continue to plague us all.  But every once in a while, I think about what else is on offer here - the things we do when we're forced to disconnect.  I think about the views from Mariam Korkor, or the rush from climbing Abuna Yemata and I wonder, "Who needs water, electricity, and internet?"

Me.  I won't lie.  I need those things.  But it does make for a somewhat more exciting life, I guess.

PS, yes, I am back in Turkish soap opera land, but Hazal's non-biological mom, Gulseren, died of a bullet wound meant for her soon to be step-son (Hazal's biological brother), on her wedding day to Hazal's biological dad.  If you didn't follow any of that, know that one of the most intriguing characters of the show was killed off, and Hazal continues to be a terrible person.  So I don't care if I miss an episode every now and then.

Also, if you couldn't tell before, you should tell from that PS that this was Marta, and not Daniel writing, this blog.

Auld Lang Syne

Let me jump right in.  I feel like time is rushing by, suddenly, as we wind up our extended vacation and get ready to head back to Ethiopia the day after tomorrow.

Thanks to Wina, Donica's younger brother, my family has been able to browse through thousands of pictures from our past that were rescued from water damage and - in some cases - repaired after a leakage in my dad's storage room at his Nairobi house.  Wina spent hours and hours saving our photos, and since my dad keeps every single document that ever touch his hands, and since I spent a lot of middle and high school with a camera in my hands, there were a lot of pics to go through.  Thanks Wina, you're our hero!

Wina Tesfamariam

So I thought I could share pictures of some old faces that I love, and that we got to see again over the course of this vacation.  I just know that every single person in each of these pictures looks much better now than they did 30 years ago, and no one can tell me otherwise.  There were many pictures of dear friends that aren't included in this blog, only because I wanted to restrict my choices to pictures of people we were able to see again during our travels in November and December.  

Before I go any further, let me just share a picture I took of our Masai guide through Hell's Gate Gorge, a dramatic cleft in the Rift Valley of Kenya.  The guide was explaining that the Leleshwa plant produces a cotton-like flower that can traditionally be used to hold embers that the Masai tribespeople (herders) can carry with them to their next far-flung destination and use to start a fire there without much fuss:

At the end of this blog, I will explain the purpose of including this seemingly random picture up front in what is supposed to be an exploration of old friendships.  See if you can figure it out, shouldn't be too tough.

I think I'd better proceed in chronological order of our trip, starting with Addis Ababa, where we saw my friend Zeb Mengistu.  Anyone who went to school with Zeb will remember him as a low key but extremely funny guy.  Later, he became a calm, thoughtful fellow, and later still, an influential and gifted pastor.  But I knew him when.

Zeb, an early photo bomber, in the back.  Sixth grade.

Zeb leans against the tree, Eddie leans against Zeb.  8th grade.

Zeb sits next to me, across from Micah.  Last month.

I can't wait to visit Beza church in Addis on Sunday where Zeb will PREACH.  And then I can tell my Ethiopian students back at Blair High School that I saw Pastor Zeb in action.

One of the most lovely surprises while we were sorting through the pictures was Moges's voice shouting, "Stop!  That's Donica!"  Moges is my brother and Donica is his wife, and while they love each other dearly, they didn't really know each other as children at all.  But since we were part of the same extended Eritrean community, it was inevitable that we'd have been at some of the same functions.  And since, as I mentioned, Dad keeps every picture ever taken, it was likely that she'd show up somewhere in the Gebremedhin (my maiden name) archives.  Sure enough, I scrolled back and we all saw this cute face staring out at us:

Donica is in the center.

And here she is just recently, at a Christmas carol singalong:

Donica, whose dress closet I need to raid.  Just before Christmas.

Another great pleasure was being able to relive certain high school days.  Some of my funnest memories include a trip to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania for a sports/drama tournament.  You read that correctly.  This was in the earliest days of regional cooperation between international schools, and they were just figuring it out.  So we packed some theater types, hockey and soccer players, and swimmers onto the plane and everyone basically had to do a bit of everything.  So we had basketball jocks playing small roles in the play and some actors who'd never held a hockey stick try to get the ball going in the right direction and it was basically a hilarious free for all.  My room mate and buddy in all this was my best friend, Patricia.  Here's a picture of us taking a break between hockey matches, trying to cool off in the impossible Dar weather:

Oh man, we can still crack up about that trip.  Here's one taken of us about a month ago.  Peeking over my shoulder is her younger son Mark, who never fails to remind me of a particularly embarrassing incident from high school that Trish shared with him.  It had to do with a gluteus maximus cramp I experienced and the effects that were witnessed by the entire PE class.  I'll leave it there.  Thanks, Trish.

But check out this other picture I found while looking at photos of that trip.  When I saw it, Mark was next to me and we both cracked up because we basically didn't care about each other one tiny fraction of a bit at that time (my senior year, his junior year).  Mark had come to Dar with the basketball team, and I'm pretty sure he was forced to play some hockey too, but we barely knew the other existed.  Clearly, I was tighter with his best bud at the time, Gary.  A year later all of that changed, but how hilarious to see this picture, which I totally didn't even remember existed:

Clueless Mark Woodward, Gary Ellem, Clueless Marta Gebremedhin

A really good friend in high school and during the college, post-grad years, was a guy called Max Kelly who we used to accuse of paying girls to say "Hi Max!" to him whenever we were out.  There were that many of them.  He was on that Dar trip, too, to play basketball and maybe play some random part in the play, who knows?

Max in the awesome uniforms of 1989

Growing up in Kenya means watching and learning from the best the country has to offer, and the best it has to offer includes the excellent poses Kenyans pull for photographs.  We replicated some of these one day at school when we should probably have been in class:

Max and Trish. 1989

Trish, Pablo, Max, Marta

As you can see, two important features are key for successful Kenyan poses; first, a thoughtful posture, and second, a closeness, if not intimacy with foliage of any kind.  Here's our modern rendition:

Mark, Marta, Moges, Max at Westgate Mall.  Just before Christmas

It seems to me that if you know one Gebremedhin, you must know them all.  So it is that Daire O'Reilly, one of Moges's best friends from high school, is like a brother to us (Mike and me) and the sort of guy whose house my dad even sublet for a bit.  So it was with great delight that we noticed his handsome face popping off the screen in a yellowed and damaged photograph from Moges's college days:

Although our time together this trip was extremely short, we drank some champagne, ate some chocolate, met his lovely girlfriend Sarah, got caught up a bit, and sent him on his way to Dublin for Christmas with his family:

Moges, Sarah, Daire, Marta, Mark

The wonders never cease.  For further perusal of Wina's rescued photos revealed how uniformly bad all pictures of me through the eighties were.  I had a bad afro, truly terrible fashion sense, and very thick eyebrows.  But every so often, a picture from that era would reveal a face that I maybe wasn't always so fond of in childhood, but which became about as well loved as my bros' faces.  And so it is that I move on to Hanoi, Vietnam, where we spent time with Nathan Belete and his wife, Kristi, who I've also known since early elementary school, but whose face was not among that old stash rescued by Wina.  So I have to leave Nathan's better half out of his blog and include only pictures of him:

Nathan, Mike, Moges, Moges's Members Only Jacket.  1987?

Nathan, 1986

I remember Nathan asking me to take the second picture when we were in 8th grade, and how long it took him to arrange that white scarf so it hung just right. Geez.  Anyway, like I said, he is like a brother, so my kids don't know him as the guy who used to make me really, really mad in 6th grade; rather, they know him as Uncle Nathan who works at the World Bank and knows a lot of stuff and is really smart.  He's humble enough to tell you that he is lucky to have Kristi as his wife, especially since a certain Zeb Mengistu (see above), was at one time quite keen on Kristi.  But then, so were a lot of fellows, as I recall.

Eli, Nathan, Micah, Daniel outside Nathan's office in Hanoi. Mid-December.

Alas, I don't have very old pictures from Nairobi to share of the other beloved family members we visited on this trip - the KL Woodwards, as they are sometimes known.  But the lack of old, mildewed photos of them does not indicate a less rich love and appreciation for them in my life.  It just means I don't have any embarrassing childhood stories about them.  Now that there's a new generation of people to share these stories with, it's especially tricky territory.  Take my butt cramp story that Trish chose to share with her kids, or those things I could say about some of the other characters in these photos, but which they're already jumpy about since I may have let some things slip to their kids, causing general unease and maybe even mild distress.   But we all turned out okay, didn't we?

Before I end, I wanted to share these last pictures.  I really wanted to write this blog about how Nairobi, and Kenya as a whole have changed.  Anyone who knows Nairobi and saw these pictures would never believe that these were taken on one of our periodic walks from our Lavington neighborhood to downtown Nairobi - a tradition my dad began and one of our fondest memories as siblings (I think).  Hard to believe there were fields to cross, and little streams to jump over.  That whole area we use to walk through is totally built up.

Mike, Moges, Marta. 1985?

It doesn't look like Mike could have made it...

Typically, we would walk all the way to the Hilton Hotel and have a burger
at the rooftop restaurant.  Dad must have decided to pack a picnic lunch.
I think this is outside the Serena Hotel.

So, as I said, I really thought I'd write about the changes I've seen in Nairobi over time.  But as I looked through these photos, I realized that the old saying is really true; the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Yes, Nairobi has changed a lot since I was a kid, and in recent years I have sort of dreaded visiting, a little bit.  But rediscovering these pictures has been grounding. In a rapidly changing Nairobi, it's so good to see these faces and be anchored by the friendships they represent.  I've been struggling for a long time, like any third culture kid, to figure out what Home really means.  I've decided that it's many different things for many different people.  In fact, for most of us, it isn't just one thing, and Home is rarely just one place.  But the friendships Kenya has generated and fostered through the years make me feel rooted - and not in a geographic way, but in a...soul way, for lack of a better way to put it.  This sense of home will perhaps go with me as I return to Ethiopia, and eventually back to America, kind of like the embers held by the Leleshwa flower.  These early friendships and relationships were the landmark ones, the ones that have taught me what friendship can be.  So I take their blessings and pray I pass on some of their warmth to spark other, equally deep and meaningful friendships. 

This entire trip - from Ethiopia to Kenya to Southeast Asia to Kenya and then back to Ethiopia - has been a reminder of the richness and importance of old friendships.  But when I stop to think about these friendships, I am reminded of how vital our American friendships are, as well, and the comforting tug back there we feel when we think of them.  

So, in the spirit of the New Year, I hope we all raise our glasses and sing Auld Lang Syne with gusto!  We should all pull out some old pictures, thank God we all look sooooo much better, and relish the gift of friendship, old and new!

PS.

I lied, I have one more picture.  When dad said a lot of the pictures were damaged I thought this one might be lost.  It is a picture I think about every time one of my boys - usually Micah - wants to cook with me, and it reminds me of what a wonderful mom I had and how much I miss her.

My mother, Mehret Samuel, and me.  1978

Miracle

passports, vaccination cards, page one of the itinerary

The title to this post is probably a bit dramatic, but on this last night of our Asia trip, I have to say I feel like pulling the trip off has just about been a miracle, at least to me.  Because I didn't have anything to do with it.  I just went along for the ride.  The guy who made it all possible is this guy:

Mark has done what I could never do.  I just don't have the patience for it.  He's arranged for:

Ten flights
4 van rides
1 bus ride
5 hotels
4 countries
Plus pick ups to and from the airports, day trips/excursions, research on restaurants and evening entertainment, currency exchanges, and the list goes on.  

This list doesn't even include the Africa portion of this trip, which is quite a thing all by itself.  I watched Mark struggle for hours with the internet in Mekele just to make one hotel booking.  Then he'd go at it again the next day, and the next.  And once we actually made it to Asia, somehow, he even managed to give me three days all to myself, one in Thailand and the other two in Cambodia.

Am I spoiled?  Yeah, duh.  But as I look across this lounge (the Miracle Lounge in the airport in Bangkok, where Kenya Airways sends all its customers that have been screwed kabisa, which means completely in Swahili) by such things as 8 hour delays, I see poor Mark stretched out over two chairs trying to get some sleep and I'm sure he'd agree that in spite of how much work he did to get this trip off the ground, our entire family is more than a little spoiled to have taken this incredible trip.  And even now - as we spend the whole night in Bangkok at the airport, when we'd hoped to be somewhere over the ocean and on our way to Nairobi - I look around at this comfortable lounge with the buffet of food and the mostly sleeping people and babies and am filled with a sense that this has been something of a miracle.  That it all came together as it did, and that no one got hit by a scooter, sick from eating insects, or wounded from a skirmish that you'd think would be inevitable when five people spend almost every waking moment together navigating...well, just look at the list in bold above.  

So thank you, Mark Woodward.  You're our hero.  And thank you to our amazing hosts.  It's funny (and a little sad), every single city we visited ended with my asking Mark a little wistfully, "Don't you think we could be happy here?"  And he'd always reply by reminding me this was VACATION.  Maybe, but our hosts sure made us feel like we were right at home.

The Christmas tree goes up in the Woodward house
way later than it goes up in the shopping districts of KL

The guys and Reeve

Mike and Caroline on the Mekong River. 

In front of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi with Nathan and Kristi

Markus, Eli, Daniel, Matias, and Micah in Hanoi

Anyway, somewhat miraculously, the fun times aren't over.  At some point we will exit the Miracle Lounge and board that elusive Kenya Airways flight and go back to the motherland.  

Kenya, here we come!

For more pictures and a little photo tour I made on google maps, check out the old facebook page.  I tried to include pictures that aren't just the usual travelogue pictures and I've tried to embed the map here but no can do, and at this hour it seems my brain refuses to figure it out.  

Oh, and first place in last week's quiz goest to Jannie Armstrong, who came back to claim his rightful place as head honcho of all Southeast Asia knowledge, being a former resident of Laos, himself.  Second place goes to the amazing Nancy Woodward, faithful reader and loyal grandmother.  Alas, there can be no third prize, for there was no third entrant.  

PS, Forget Hazal.  We saw Star Wars!!!!!!  On opening day!  And it was goooood.

Another Quiz!

In Cambodia with our host

Since we've left Mekelle, the theme of this blog has changed significantly, mostly due to Mom now writing about seeing beaches and temples rather than encountering new experiences or undergoing adventures, which was the theme back before November 9th. Well, with me back in charge this week... I won't write about wild goose chases or thick skin or taking on a difficult language (references you'd understand if you were a regular reader of our blog). Those days are behind us and ahead of us, as we will return to Mekelle on January 1st. Even though we are living a very laid-back, easy life here in Southeast Asia compared to in Mekelle, the typical "here's what tour we did today" or "look at these mushy family pictures we took" - tourist things- will not be included in this week's edition. Instead, we're going to take another quiz! Yay... 

1. Who did we see in the capital of Cambodia? Give the capital's name and our hosts' names.
2. How many people were killed in the Khmer Rouge-orchestrated Cambodian genocide of the 1970s?
3. What is the largest city in Vietnam, by population?
4. How many U.S. troops were in Vietnam at the war's peak in 1968?
5. What was the name of the Khmer king who oversaw construction of the temple Angkor Wat?
6. What are the respective names of the Cambodian and Vietnamese currencies?
7. What European power was the main colonial influence on Cambodia and Vietnam?
8. What are the respective colors of the Cambodian and Vietnamese flags?
9. Name both of the insects that we ate for desert in Cambodia.
10. What is the official language of Cambodia?
11. Why is Ho Chi Minh City called Ho Chi Minh City?
12. What is the name of the delicious noodle soup Vietnam is famous for?
13.  What is the name of the French inspired sandwich that Vietnam is famous for?
14. What is meant by the Ho Chi Minh Trail?
15. How many Vietnamese units of currency is $100?

Bonus Question: Through which countries does the Mekong River flow?

1st place prize: A pair of elephant-themed fancy pants
2nd place prize: A short lesson in the language of Cambodia from our host there
3rd place prize: Fresh, deeply fried insects (to eat)

If you're not too lazy to take our quiz, just post your answers in the comments either on this blog or on Mom's Facebook post. Special thanks to Micah, my younger brother, for helping me with the quiz questions.

Just to make friends in cold D.C. jealous...This is
Lazy Beach, near Sihanoukville, Cambodia.  Mom
took a day to herself there.

Us boys snorkeling in
Sihanoukville, Cambodia.  We also cliff-jumped and went fishing
with Dad that day.

Cruising on the Mekong River

Our hotel in Saigon is in a little alley that has a busy
market in it.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Saigon

View of the Saigon River from the Bitexco Tower

P.S.: I could care less about Hazal.