Puppies at Tamara's Place

Tamara is the other North American MCC’er here in Ethiopia and she lives a block away from our compound. She lives with Maria, an active Orthodox woman who has a dog which just gave birth to two puppies. Tamara invited Amani, Abby and Sophia to come over and play with the puppies. What joy and anticipation there was over the invitation! The girls stayed all afternoon. They came home chattering with excitement, describing in detail the puppies and their activities. After that we were inundated with requests everyday to go and see the puppies. So on Friday Wanda and I joined the girls and went over to see these “incredible” animals, as described by our daughters. There they were in all their glory; two roly-poly puppies, a male and female. They waddled, they fell down. They shook and shivered when they were picked up. And our girls loved them. Ever since then Amani, Abby and Sophia have asked to go over to see them. It’s hard to say no to such animal lovers.

On to Home Improvement: On Saturday the last of the suitcases were emptied out and the contents found a home on shelves. One of the reasons it took so long was that there were shelves and drawers that needed to be cleaned out, in some cases 40 years of items. A rack for the coats and hats was hung by the front door. Amani and Abby’s beds were made into bund beds (they had been asking for this since day one). Sophia’s room was rearranged with the safety board removed from her bed and now she has even more room to play school with her stuffed animals. Earlier in the week we traded our bed for the guesthouse bed (the quality of the beds are the same, but the one we have now is longer by about 4-5 inches. The bed was specially made for an MCC’er who was 6’7”). And we are dreaming about improvements such as kitchen cabinetry (Shawn and Tyler, wanna sell us new cabinets and come over and install them?), new floor tiling, new lighting for the living and dining rooms and other smaller items. Should we buy a TV and DVD/VCR or go without? We’ve enjoyed playing more games and reading but going cold turkey is hard . . .