Archived Blog
Christmas Time!
So it’s now Christmas time, school finished up for the year yesterday. I’m not sure whether the students or teachers were more excited. Many of the other teachers are going away to exciting and exotic locations all around the world. Some are travelling home, some on holidays. Not many are actually staying in Ethiopia! Brian and I have finalised our plans for the break; we leave on Monday to a town called Harrar, in the east of the country. We’ll stay for a few days there; one of the main attractions is to feed the wild hyenas raw meat, holding it with your teeth if you’re brave! We’ll then bus back towards Addis to a town called Nazaret (some friends here joked about going to visit another town called Bethlehem for Christmas instead), and stay a few days there. The week after, his dad arrives and they are taking their trip around the country. I’m working at the moment at having my bike part fixed and I’m hopeful that it will be fixed by then. We’re going to various locations around the country, including Langano Lake where we’re hoping to go water-skiing, as well as the Awash River where Brian hopes to use live chickens as bait for the crocodiles in the river. Should be a laugh!!! Last weekend, we had the annual Bingham Academy Christmas banquet that is put on for all of the students. A number of the parents organise these events with great help from the art department of the school. Every year it amazes me just how much work is put into these things on behalf of the students and I really hope they appreciate it! This year the organisers had themed the evening on a “Masquerade” theme, with all of the students required to wear masks. Before the dinner, they had organised a carnival and set up various booths for games which were run by teachers. The students won tokens in the booths which were exchanged for necklaces. The boy and girl who had the most necklaces by the end of a certain amount of time became the King and Queen of the ball. It was really very well organised!
At the end of the evening, some of the students had asked me to play guitar in a band they had created to sing a rocked up version of the 12 days of Christmas song. It was a total mess around, the singers were awful and my guitar kept cutting out but it was so much fun! I really miss playing in a band.
On Sunday last, some of us went to the Annual Gingerbread House Decorating competition. This year we had 4 teams, as before the teams were given a plain house and all sorts of sweets and icing etc with which to decorate the houses. Our team created a gingerbread nativity scene with a stable at the side of our main “Inn” house. Other teams decorated their houses in equally creative ways; one of the teams even turned their house into a pirate ship on the sea with mermaids and a desert island! It was really good craic as usual.
We all had to create a Christmas decoration related to your home country; this was the effort from the Irish contingent.
Happy Christmas!
Niall
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