Turkey, Boxes, 10k, and Car

Our HHE (household effects - our stuff that was sent by ship) arrived Wednesday, so I took the afternoon off to watch eight men unload ten shipping crates full of our belongings. Needless to say, we spent much of the weekend unpacking. Clara & Gwendolyne were overjoyed to have their bicycles again finally.

Now that we've been living fine without all this stuff, we realize we have too much. For example, I sent sweaters that I'll never need in this fine weather, so will store most of them. We have more towels than we can ever use, and I have t-shirts out the wazoo. I'll be giving away a lot of stuff, I think, in addition to the bicycles and four boxes of baby clothes we already planned to give to a local orphanage.

Our sponsors invited us to their house for Thanksgiving but we had already started defrosting the (outrageously expensive) turkey, so I stuffed and roasted it anyway and we took it with us. The children all played together and we adults had a nice evening chatting.

Yesterday (Sunday) was the Great Ethiopian Run, and Patricia and I both ran all 10k, finishing in 64 minutes. We received a medal and (of course) another T-shirt. The group dynamic was great, and I felt fine even though I hadn't trained sufficiently. Patricia had been running quite a bit and so beat me by ten meters.

Our Nissan Patrol is finally in Addis. I paid for the registration last week and the insurance today, so we should have the car in the next few days. We have to have it by Friday, because we're getting away to Lake Langano for the weekend.

Sorry I don't have any photos but it's not always easy to connect my computer to the network.