I feel like I’m being bitten, sat here at the computer but there is no sign of mozzies anywhere. It has really cooled down here lately – not so much that you have to wear jumpers but enough to make a difference to energy levels. Need to get back to running again but I’m waiting for Mike to recover from my cold!

I’ve got a new best friend! One of the college staff, the woman who cleans the offices, invited me to her house on Sunday. She’d asked me over a week ago but I thought she was telling me she was going to leave Awassa and go back to her family for a couple of months! Her English isn’t much better than my Amharic! Anyhow, I finally understood what she was asking and off I went. Getting to her house was a complex journey from college involving my first garry ride – it was fab! A garry is one of the main forms of transport here – on most of the roads in Awassa you walk, cycle or use a garry. A garry is a ramshackle cart pulled by a horse. On the three or four tarmac’d roads the garry is replaced by beaten up taxis. (Most of the garry horses look really badly treated so I haven’t rushed to use one before but this one seemed ok). I hadn’t realised that Awassa was so big, we took so many twists and turns I had no idea where I was. My friend and two of her sisters lived in the service quarters behind a house – two of them shared a room three metres by three metres that had last been painted probably when it was built about 50 years ago. There was just space for a bed and a mattress on the floor. It was one of about 10 rooms around a yard festooned with washing and heaving with small children. Inside, coffee cups were ready for the coffee ceremony and one sister was cooking on the kerosene stove – first a cabbage dish, then shiro. They had made their own crisps, there was popcorn, bread and injera. Once the food was ready we ate – in the meantime the coffee making was proceeding. This starts with washing the raw beans then roasting them slowly over charcoal. Once roasted, they were removed and ground and the jubena put on the charcoal to heat the water (Mike has a picture of a jubena on his blog). The coffee was divine as ever. I’d been worried beforehand about how we would communicate but I was told as long as you keep saying how good everything is you are ok! It is true! I took along a phrase book too so we spent some time reading it together and asking questions about family.

So humbling really, the whole experience. Here are people who have next to nothing and yet are prepared to share it so willingly. After a few hours I said I had to leave – I thought I’d been understood when two sisters stood and escorted me out but we ended up at the third sisters house where the coffee was ready. I had so much coffee that day, it took me a while to recover! Anyhow, eventually I was escorted back to a location I recognised and was able to find my own way home from there!

A vulture taking a break from football on the roof.

Seven pm. I’ve been standing on the terrace in the dark, listening to the rain and watching the sky. We’re at the tail end of the most enormous downpour we have had in a long time – I was working late (some things never change!) and heard the thunder. I hurtled down the hill on my bike and just made it through the gate as the drops got heavier. Outside, everywhere is flooded – I was hoping to go to the shop but it will be a mud bath out there. The weather in Ethiopia seems to be a bit mad lately – after all the drought in various parts of the country there has been really bad flooding – over 250 people killed and the same number missing in Dire Dawa in the east of the country, about 300 killed a bit further south from here and problems also in the north, all following flash floods.

Went up to Addis on Sunday for a workshop and back here on Tuesday. Re-learned the lesson that there is no such thing as a full line taxi. Fortunately on the way to the bus station I was wedged securely in to my place by a rather fat man. The only good thing really about the journey between here and Addis is the end. Well, that isn’t strictly true. It was interesting seeing how the countryside has changed since we first arrived – much more lush and green (and in some places, flooded); a contrast to the dry conditions of February.

The bed bugs seem to have taken off of their own accord thankfully and the nights continue undisturbed apart from the constant howling and barking of dogs, the irritating little dawn song of what looks like an oversized sparrow and the vultures playing football on the roof (that’s what it sounds like anyhow). We have a tin roof and vultures are very heavy footed. They are almost the ugliest birds I’ve ever seen – outdone only by the Marabou stork. I’ll get some photos and you can decide for yourselves.

Really enjoying my English group – not sure how much they are learning really but since I didn’t have any kind of decent course description I’m not too worried. They are doing lots of talking, learning different active learning methods and having fun. I’m still waiting for the ideas to flood in from those of you with any experience teaching English. Yesterday I took a bag of various objects in and we spent some time talking about a broken pair of scissors. You wouldn’t think there was much to say on the subject would you really? I also took a photo of Harry and Alfie playing on a Northumberland beach – this was quite difficult for them to talk about as they had no experience of the sea nor of children playing. The closest children get to playing here is running along the road with an old tyre and a stick. Anyway, they all enjoyed working in groups having conversations about these things.

We are planning to go to the campsite on Saturday night for an Indian meal – can’t wait. In Addis nine of us went out to Aladdin and squandered vast amounts of money on fabulous food and wine. Such luxury. I have to say I much more content with things here now after having been home. We live really well here – my diet is so much better than it was in England.

One last thing - I can't ever get in to ready the blog so if you do post any messages it would be great if you emailed them to me too!

Bed bugs, had to happen sooner or later. They leave a line of intensely itchy bites and the book says the only treatment is not to scratch them – yeah, like that is possible! I haven’t time to count them (the bites, not the bugs) but the scratching keeps me pretty busy. Apparently if you leave your mattress out in the sun they will disappear – this would be great if we had any sun but we are into the rainy season so the sun doesn’t appear very often. Anyway, I haven’t had any new ones for a few days so maybe they have had their fill.

Been so busy lately. Today is Sunday (or Tuesday – I’ll explain later) and I’ve spent about half the day marking. Yesterday, I had a class to teach in the afternoon. We have this extension programme on at the moment at college – they call it the summer programme tho I can only think that is because it is summer in Europe because it certainly isn’t here – anyhow, it is the long break in between school terms so lots of first cycle (lower primary school) teachers are busy upgrading their qualifications so that they can teach second cycle (like middle school). Teaching isn’t that highly thought of here and first cycle is bottom of the heap - you can qualify to teach here after a one year training course. Second cycle, however, involves a 3 year course. Anyway, so all these teachers are training during their school holidays – the course was meant to be about 6 weeks but there was some sort of government training for teachers for a week after term finished and they all had to do that first. (People refer to it as political indoctrination but I have no details!). This meant our extension courses had less time (are you still with me?) so the college decided that we would work the first three weekends to make up. The students have classes from 8.10 to 5 or 6pm each day (with a couple of hours for lunch) and now it is seven days a week! So on Saturday we did Mondays timetable, today was Tuesday (fortunately I don’t teach on Tuesday!) and then tomorrow it will be Monday again. It is all a bit mad but no-one except me seems to think so. The Friday before classes started the timetables went up at 5.05 pm and people were expected to start teaching the next day!

Anyhow, I only have myself to blame – I did volunteer to teach a class on the summer programme. I have ended up teaching Spoken English – it was that or Calculus! I figured I ought to practice what I preach – on the Higher Diploma course we push active learning methods and the candidates are all trying to use them in their large college classes – I thought I should experience the reality. So I have a class of 46 and I am loving it. We have some trouble understanding each other but we are getting there. I am using lots of games and group activities and trying to get to know everyone’s names. This isn’t helped by the college policy of allocating students into teaching groups. They list everyone alphabetically by first name (because that is the name you use) and then divide the list into groups. Fortunately I have only 3 Tsegaye’s!

Had a busy, social weekend as there were a whole load of VSO volunteers down in the south doing a language course and we caught up with some of them in Awassa. Also had a fab meal last night – there is a campsite in town run by a German and an Ethiopian and they have a small restaurant – just a couple of tables on the terrace. It was fantastic – they cooked a Chinese meal, absolutely delicious. And we had chilled white wine sitting outside on the terrace!

Crashed my bike last week – it was quite bizarre. I was cycling down hill from college and I could see this guy coming up the hill towards me and I just kind of knew we would collide even though we ought to have been able to avoid each other. Fortunately I managed to slow considerably but I knocked him off his bike and we banged our heads together. Poor chap looked quite shell shocked, being knocked off his bike by some mad ferenji woman. I wonder if he just didn’t see me coming?

Apart from that everything is fine. We’ve run out of chocolate tho so if anyone is feeling generous….

Monday evening - couldn't get online for long enough last night to post this. Had a full day at college, I loved it. I am much better when I am busy. Such a laugh with my English class - we played"the cat with nine lives" - just hangman but you end up with a dead cat rather than a hung man! They loved it. Then we read a short story together. Anyone with any ideas or materials I could use do let me know! It was hard work to find a short story at the right level that was short enough for me to be able to photocopy it!