Over the next few days, though, everything began to look familiar. I remembered playing volley ball, as a teenager, at the International Community School where I first spoke. Yes, some of the buildings were new. But I could recognize the old buildings, too.

The children at the International School greeted me in fifteen or twenty different languages, showed me dances from their home countries, and did a program where they shared what they think about when they think about the country of Ethiopia. In the Amharic class, one of the teachers gave me my first writing lesson in Amharic and taught me how to write my name. He gave me a sheet of the fidels (characters) to study and some practice writing sheets. Over the next few days, I visited every single classroom and talked about my books. I also asked them questions about my books. "Does this illustration look right?" I would ask. Or "Can you tell where this scene in my book is supposed to take place?"

My name is Alexander Monro and the wierdest thing about me is I love a slice of cheddar cheese thickly coated with honey. I am originally half German and half British and have been to many places including Zambia, Namibia, and Malawi.

During the lunch times, I had lunch with a small group of students each day. I asked them where they'd been born and where they had lived. One girl wrote to me, later and said this:

I lived in Texas, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and those are the countries I lived in. I hope you like where I lived. I like the books that you did. I love to make books, too. Love, Mary Strong

At Sanford School, I gave big presentations to children, in an assembly hall, and then spent a lot of time doing writing with 24 students who had been chosen to work with me. Some of the students whose teachers chose them as good creative writers. The students in that group were named Aditi, Sarah, Odi, Moses, Joyce, Deaglan, Michael, Heithem, Christina, Wibayhu, Clare, and Fabio.

Younger students were busy writing about what you can see, smell, taste, hear, and touch during rainy season in Ethiopia. The students in that group were named Ansa, Chiop, Natalie, Fasil, Fariyal, Abigail, Connie, Ijeoma, Ismail,  Teemt, Semhal, and David.

On the last day at Sanford, the students were supposed to dress up as some character in a book or story. One girl dressed up to be Almaz in Pulling the Lion's Tail. She was carrying a bit of yarn for the lion's tail.

I took this photograph at Bingham Academy. At recess, I liked to watch the students playing jump rope and swinging -- just the things I also did when I was their age. I remembered running a race at Track and Field Day on the field where some of them were playing. When I had a break I wandered out under the eucalyptus trees and picked up the pods, there, remembering how I used to play with those pods when I was a girl.

On the weekend, my sister and I were able to fly to the northern part of Ethiopia for a visit. We walked through the huge stone churches of Lalibela. Ethiopian stories say that angels helped build those churches and when you see them it's hard to imagine how else they could have been built! We also went through the castles at Gondar that have fascinated me since I was a little girl and walked up those stairs pretending I was a princess. For centuries, children of Ethiopia have had fun learning to dance the eskista and playing games. Here in the doorway of one ruined castle, I saw a game still played by adults and children in Ethiopia today. Our guide said it was from the time of the kings and that the king used it to teach his young students. I referred to this game in a folk story I retold about a young boy trying to stay out of trouble. (Note: You can read more about the game and the book by clicking here.).