Alice in Africa

** Guest poster… sorta**

Hi y’all, Tatiana here. Just doing my fav gal in Africa a favor and posting to her blog. Am I the only one whose summer just PALES in comparison? Thought so.

Now I am sad as Sally left this morning – and I am all alone in our big room. I guess now I finally have to get down to work. Too bad it’s the weekend! I had such a great time when Sally was here and I was also made lots of other farangi friends. There is Temi, from the US, Prem from India, Gina from Ireland, and lot of revolving others. The question now is where I should live. I could stay in the hotel where Sally and I have been staying (it is about $4 a night) or move to another hotel that might be nicer but would be twice the price, OR I could move into a room above an Indian restaurant owned by a Pakistani woman. It would be a little cheaper, but not by much (like less than $1 less per day) and I might just make up the difference in travel costs as it is more in the south of town compared to where I’m living now which is right in the center of town. I can’t decide! I like the idea of not living in a hotel – but at the same time I like having my own space and not having to socialize if I don’t want to. I may move over there on a trial basis…maybe a week or something! I guess you can’t have everything you want!

I may have mentioned that Sally and I were taking a trip to Lalibela – it was great, even though it took us a day and a half to get there and to get back – total the trip took 4 and a half days with a day and a half actually in Lalibela. Of course the bus rides were crazy – on one we managed to run out of gas, but we were able to take care of it relatively quickly (about 40 minutes!) Lalibela is considered the “Petra” of Africa, and in quite a small area there are 13 rock-hewn churches which were carved directly out of the rock. We were able to attend Ethiopian Orthodox mass on Sunday morning (at 5:30am!) and then hired a guide to take us into all the churches. Unfortunately I don’t have the facilities to upload pictures right now, but maybe at some point!

Now that Sally and Paige and Amita (the other Bixby staff members) are all gone, I guess it’s time to get to work. I have created the data bases, collected the first round of data (from three of the eight villages) and started entering it. I hope to be done with it by the end of the week so we can go get more!