Letter from Erin ­ December 8, 2004

 

Hello Everybody,

Well, happy holidays to you all! It doesn't feel a bit like the holiday season here as it's usually 80 degrees and that really messes with my sense of time. "It's December? How can it be December? It's not cold!" but it's that time of year none the less. We spent thanksgiving with a bunch of other foreigners, some of whom I knew when I was here before and some who knew my dad and aunts when they were here as kids (for those of you who don't know our parents. Rebekah and Jon's and mine, grew up in Ethiopia and that's partly how we've found ourselves here. Coming to Ethiopia is a completely acceptable thing to do in the Kurtz family though it may sound strange and outlandish to some. Rachel Weller is the name of the woman whose house thanksgiving was at (she's one of the people who grew up with our parents) at she's been very sweet to us and great about checking in to see how we're fairing and Rebekah and I (I can't speak for Jon as we haven't discussed her) are quite taken with her. We ended the thanksgiving evening with a hymn sing and it was great to be musical with a group of people again. I'm thinking about joining, and will try to convince Rebekah to too, a choir once all the Christmas concerts are over and they're starting a new repertoire.

Our English classes are going really well. We've been doing review the past few days and it's been fun to ask questions and have the kids understand and know the answers. The kid's personalities are starting to come through now that they know us a bit better and feel more comfortable. There's one boy in one of our classes who spends the whole hour either laughing or trying really hard not to laughÐwhich gets me going as I can completely sympathize as I can remember having to fight laugh attacks many a time back in one of my classes in middle school (hi Jody). Ah, the good ol' days. We spend a lot of time laughing in our classes and sometimes it almost gets out of hand (which Rebekah blames me forÐand rightly so) but we always get it back under control with out too much effort. I would much rather teach a bunch of laughing hooligans than a class full of kids too nervous to talk anyway.

Rebekah and I have recently been put in charge of fundraising. So what does that mean? Well, it means we have to write a lot of proposals and deal with a lot of official embassy people "which is not too cool" but it also means that we get to schmooze. Part of our job now includes going to functions and chatting it up with people. Very fun. They're times when we feel pretty dumb just wondering up to people and starting conversations based on nothing more than "hi, we haven't met yet" or "I love your sweater" and there are always those people out there who don't seem too thrilled to be talking to us, perhaps because we're young people, but out of everybody at the book center Rebekah and I are the best people for the job so what can ya do but try you're darndest.

Believe it or not, it's rainy and cloudy today and has been for the past few days, very unusual for this time of year, and I think it's a present to me because I'm writing to you on December 8th and what does that mean? It means it's my birthday! I am now 20 years old. Good-bye teens. I was actually enjoying being a teen these past few years, especially this last one, and wasn't really sure I was ready to say good-bye to them but now that 20 is actually here, I'm all over it. =) I've gotten to take the morning off, I only went in to work from 9-10:00 to teach our class, and I taught in my bare feet and with a bright purple skirt on over my pants because when else do you have as good of an excuse as "it's my birthday" to be eccentric? So because it's my birthday I expect to get e-mails from each and every one of you telling me how wonderful I am and how much you love me. =) And no I'm not joking. Though it may look like I have a very long e-mail list I will notice if one of you doesn't write meÐand even if you think I know exactly why you like me tell me again anyway. That's what birthdays are for.

So I look forward to hearing from all of you! Ciao, Erin