The fall in this case refers to my own fall, not the season. And not a physical fall. More like a total collapse and denouement that could conceivably be characterized as a quarter-life crisis. Before I'm accused of being melodramatic, let's start at the beginning. Of August.

So I returned home from PC in August 2010. I turned towards my future career, which at the time I had no doubt was law enforcement. Even before I left China I applied to basically every police agency that was hiring, including federal agencies. The feds weren't interested but a few city police departments were, like Nashville. I went through the processes of Madison, Nashville, and Columbus, and Nashville was the frontrunner. During this process, which took months, I spent my time and remaining sanity as a substitute teacher in elementary classrooms. Not making this up.

In April 2011 my hard work paid off and Nashville made me an offer. The next month I managed to arrange an apartment in, unbeknownst to me at the time, one of the most crime-ridden areas in Nashville. So I move in to the ghetto and start work. And, for the first time in a long time, I actually started to think about my interest in law enforcement. I realized that I had none.

If only I had made that realization a few months earlier. Although to be honest, about 10 years earlier would have been nice, so I could have rearranged how I spent my early adult years, which had been planned with the sole destination of law enforcement in mind. Something had happened in Peace Corps. I don't know what it was exactly, and when it happened I tried to ignore it, but at some point afterwards someone asked me why I wanted to be an Agent. That was a relatively common question, as it has a reputation for being an exciting career path. I normally had a set of boilerplate answers that I could throw out quicker than a politician making campaign promises, and equally empty. But this one time, I told them the truth. When they asked me "Why law enforcement?" I responded with "I don't know." Both of us left that conversation equally puzzled, whoever it was.

At any rate I completely disregarded my reservations and kept on my path. It was only after I joined Nashville Police that I realized the colossal mistake I had made in going down there. I promptly resigned and moved back up north, as I don't believe it's right to stay with a job as serious as policing if your heart's not really in it.

So what now? I'm trying to figure that out. What do I want to do? What do I want to be? These are questions I have never really asked myself. I's always been a question of what I have to do, not what I want to do, as anyone close to me can attest to. While it is scary, and losing a huge part of my identity is also kind of alarming, I feel good about this decision. I was lying to myself about what I wanted for a long time. Now I can finally figure out what I'm all about. Better late than never.

It's time to go home. For good, this time. I finished summer project a few days ago, a 10-day teaching gig in nearby Dianjiang. It was alright. Wednesday was my last real day of work for Peace Corps, which feels kind of weird. I've been in PC so long I don't really remember what it's like to work for money. I do remember that it's a feeling I like, though. I've started looking for law enforcement jobs back in the States. There are a lot of opportunities out there, but most of them aren't in Michigan. Becoming a federal agent isn't that easy; I'm probably going to have to spend a few years as a city cop before I go down that road. That's fine with me. It'll be nice to actually live in my own country for a change.

I leave China August 4th and will arrive in TC that same day. I'll finally say goodbye to Peace Corps. PC has been my employer, my doctor, my security advisor, my travel agent, my boss, and my teacher for the last 3 years of my life. I've visited four countries with them, lived in two, studied two languages, and met a lot of interesting people, including some of my best friends (like Steph and Dave). I've learned a lot, especially about myself. I've been sick from diseases I'd never heard of, and vaccinated for countless others. I've had fleas, bedbugs, mites, malarial mosquitoes, and giant monster man-eating spiders. For the rest of my life, I'll hear "I always wanted to join the Peace Corps" from other Americans. I'll never be the same again. I would recommend PC to anyone, it's the best thing I've ever done. But now, it's time to go home.

IST, our in-service training, wrapped up last week. It was two weeks of...training. About what you'd expect. I will say no more of this.

With IST over, that can mean only one thing: my term of service with PC is almost over. The powers that be have informed me that I can leave immediately after "summer project". Summer project is when PCVs meet at a nearby school and provide training to Chinese public school teachers of English. It should be finished by the end of July. That will leave me only days to return before a wedding where I have the pleasure of acting as the best man.

After that, it's time to get to work. I'll be searching for a law enforcement job while I readjust to American life, a process that was interrupted last summer. I think readjustment will be a lot easier for me than other RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer), though. Other RPCVs I've talked to have had serious issues readjusting and long for Ethiopia. I barely thought about it while I was in the States last summer between posts. I love Ethiopia and my friends there, but it's not my home. Neither is China, although I've recently determined that it's my second-favorite country ever. I should add that I've only been to 16 countries so I'm hardly an expert. But it's awesome.

I've been teaching at my site for about 2 months now. I've been assigned to Sichuan International Studies University (SISU), where I teach 8 classes of English writing. I only teach 3 days a week which is great. My students are all English majors in their third year, so they're fluent in English which makes teaching them a lot easier. I live on campus in a great apartment. I have a fridge, stove, microwave, hot water heater, and TV, even CNN. The university is relatively small (12,000 students), but a new campus has just been finished nearby. SISU is at the base of a group of mountains on the outskirts of Chongqing, a large city.

My Mandarin hasn't been improving a lot since I left pre-service training, but soon I'll be starting with a Chinese tutor. I know enough to get by; I can go to the store and restaurants and stuff. There are real supermarkets here, and I can buy things like crunchy peanut butter and yogurt easily, which were kind of a luxury in Ethiopia. Many Western brands of food are sold here as well, like Oreos and Pringles (the Pringles come in all kinds of great Chinese flavors, like crab and shrimp). It's also easy to buy meat here so I cook pork and chicken all the time, which was very difficult in Ethiopia.

I have a lot of respect for teachers after being one myself, even for such a short time. It's exhausting work. The students are great though, and most of them genuinely want to improve their writing. Writing may sound like a boring topic to teach, but it suits me just fine and I think I'm happier teaching this than say, oral English. Chinese students are very different from their American counterparts. For starters, they don't choose their own classes. They are on a set track when they enter university. They also have permanent "cohorts" consisting of 20-30 students, who all have the same classes at the same time for their entire college career. They live on campus for all four years, with 4 students sharing a bedroom. There are bells between classes, just like in our high school. Each cohort elects a "monitor" which serves as the leader of the cohort. I'm expected to take attendance and report absenteeism to my department. Despite the differences, I'm allowed to teach as I please. My students have been taught by Americans before so they are familiar with us.

The semester's about halfway over. Now that I have a laptop, thanks to a wonderful young lady, hopefully I can blog more often!

Everything's great here in sunny Chengdu. Well, maybe not so sunny - it's kind of foggy and muggy most days. It's very hot too, I'm dripping sweat all day long. My host family gave me a fan for my room though, bless their hearts. Speaking of the host family, it's working out perfectly. My host mom's a great cook and fixes a huge dinner each night. I rarely see the dad or the sister because they work so much, but that's alright because it just means I get more time to myself. Jeje's a big Harry Potter fan so last weekend we went to see the new movie. It was my first exposure to the Harry Potter universe. It was a great movie, but I don't think it's converted me to the wizarding cause or anything.

Yesterday we started model school. My mentor is Chris, an older Trainee who has taught high school English in the States. This week Chris takes the lead and teaches the class and I act as sort of a teacher's assistant; next week I'll be in charge. We have 10 students in the class, age 16-19, so just a little younger than what we'll be teaching at our sites. Their level of English varies from basic (can form a few basic sentences) to pretty advanced - our star student has a decent vocabulary and can use at least 3 tenses. We haven't had as many classroom management issues as I expected; we haven't confiscated any cell phones, for instance. We've been told that student discipline can be an issue at some schools. We teach every day for an hour and a half, and we have Chinese lessons in the morning.

That's it for now!

Well, here I am in China. The flight went well; it was long but comfortable. PC put us in a hotel in Chengdu for a week while we went through orientation. Orientation means shots, language training, and lots of different kinds of information, most of which I already know as a transfer. There are about 30 transfers in the training class, from all over Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Pacific. One other PCV from Ethiopia has also transferred; Becca.

Chengdu is a great city. It's huge (the capital of the Sichuan province) and has everything that a Western city does - movie theaters, department stores, public transportation, you name it. It's a big change of pace from the small training site in Ethiopia.

A few days ago we finished orientation and moved in with our host families. My host parents are in their 50s; the mom is a retired teacher and the dad is some kind of administrator at Sichuan University. They have a 26-year-old daughter who lives in her own apartment in Chengdu; she still has a room here though and stays here sometimes. Mom and Dad are "Mama" and "Baba" and the sister is "Jeje", which is a Chinese diminutive for "elder sister". The parents can't pronounce Levi so they say something that sounds like a combination of Earl and Larry. Like Amharic, there is no natural "V" sound in Mandarin. Jeje just calls me "Didi", which is "little brother". The family's apartment is really nice, I even have a computer and internet in my bedroom. The Chinese generally don't sleep on mattresses, they have solid boards on their beds that they cover with a thin layer of cloth. I actually kind of like it - it's good for my back, if nothing else.

This weekend was our first time off and the family took me to Jinli Street, an old-fashioned section of Chengdu which is famous for its handicrafts, street food, and the "jinli" - goldfish that swim in the streams around the district. There are also jet-black swans, which I've never seen before. Other highlights of Jinli Street include the ear pickers. Ear picking is a traditional Sichuan practice where you pay like 20 kuai (3 bucks) and sit down in this chair and this guy cleans out your ears with a variety of swabs, brushes, and picks. I wasn't brave enough to try it but I'd like to. Jeje bought me a set of panda bear chopsticks (Sichuan is where some of the famous Chinese pandas can be found); I've definitely improved with sticks since I got here.

Training's going well. I'm having a better time with Mandarin than I did with Amharic. The tones of Mandarin are giving me a little trouble because my voice is normally so monotone, but most Chinese speak so quickly it's difficult to distinguish tones anyways. They are critical though - a single tone in a sentence can mean the difference between "I'd like to tell you" and "I'd like to kiss you". The TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) training is also going well - next week we start model school. PC staff have recruited high school and university students on their summer break to sit in classrooms and let us experiment on them with different teaching styles for several weeks. I'll be paired with a more experienced Trainee who will give me feedback on my performance.

Chinese food is great. There are all kinds of meat here, from the basics (beef, chicken, pork, fish) to the more exotic (duck, rabbit, eels). I've had a few dishes that were different, like pig's ears, seaweed, lotus roots, and roasted bird on a stick (it was some kind of small flying bird like a swallow but I'm not exactly sure). Also, when at a Chinese table, you don't eat just your own dish - all of the dishes are placed on a rotating glass disc in the middle of the table, and you snatch food out of them with your chopsticks when someone spins it around. This ensures a variety of food at each meal, but can also cause messes for children and foreigners when someone spins the disc and you're struggling to pick up a piece of food with your sticks, which then fall unceremoniously onto the glass. Chinese people love watching me use sticks though - it's probably like trying to watch an old person play video games, or a dog lick peanut butter off its nose. You'd really love to help, but it's too entertaining to interrupt.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more!

The last couple months have been great. I've spent most of it in the company of my Xbox, or with Shana. Thankfully Shana likes Rock Band so I've been able to mix the two. Some highlights of the vacation:

- Getting wonderful e-mails/orders from Peace Corps every day, including but not limited to: Go to the dentist, don't go to the dentist, fill out paperwork, give us money, stay in China longer. The most recent was "Don't come to staging with any flu symptoms, or you'll be quarantined". I don't think they're joking.

- Visiting Mt. Pleasant and seeing old friends.

- Sleeping in.

- Beating like 20 video games.

- Being able to talk to other PC/Ethiopia refugees, like Steph. Who seems to love the hospital now, by the way.

- Listening to new music and marveling at the graphic lyrics on broadcast radio.

I leave for China on Monday.

So, my time in Ethiopia has come to an end, a little bit earlier than planned. Last month, PC China issued an offer to currently-serving Volunteers to transfer and extend in China. I was intrigued by the offer and wanted to apply, but did not think that PC Ethiopia would let me leave 7 months early. Long story short, they are. I'll be home next month for my (required) vacation, and at the end of June I head to China. The extension is a 1-year commitment, so I should be finished in September 2010.

If anyone would like to see me while I'm home, feel free to call me - my American cell number is the same as it's always been. See you soon!

So I learned recently that "Marley & Me," a best-selling book about a man and his dog, was made into a sappy movie.  The guy who wrote the book is a fellow alumni of CMU and he was the keynote speaker at my graduation, so I have decided to write some stories about my own dog in a pitifully misguided attempt to emulate his vast financial success.  Here are some stories about my Ethiopian hyena/wolf/dog hybrid, Lucky, who lives in the road near my house.

First off, I should describe him properly.  Lucky is old by Ethiopian standards, around 6 or 7 I'd guess.  He's pretty big, among the biggest dogs I've seen here, and he is mostly tan with brown stripes that gives him a distinct hyena-like appearance.  I call him Lucky because of his multitude of war wounds/health problems, which include a blind eye and a slight limp in one paw.  He's also mangy and kind of smelly but I guess I can't hold that against him.  He may also be partially deaf, but it could be that he's just ignoring me instead.  He doesn't understand English but I yell at him sometimes and he generally obeys.  Lucky is fiercely loyal to me and feels responsible for my protection, and snaps at other people who try to pet him or get too close to me.

As mentioned in earlier posts, Lucky and I like to walk around the neighborhood at night, when most Ethiopians have retired to their compounds and harassment is minimal.  One night when we were walking, we were attacked by a pack of wildish dogs.  Unfortunately for them, Lucky and I are both badasses and we promptly kicked the @#$% out of them.  Well, Lucky did most of the work, but I threw a rock at one and him right in the face.  We both emerged unscathed except for a small bite on Lucky's muzzle.

Another time, I stopped at a container shop to buy bananas and Lucky followed me as usual.  He was sitting just a foot away from me while I inspected the fruit, minding his own business when another shop customer kicked him.  I went berserk and released a cavalcade of colorful insults in several languages at the Ethiopian who kicked him, who was absolutely puzzled at my response.  He asked "Who is more important - me or the dog?"  I responded with more cursing along the lines of "The dog is my friend and if I had a little less self-restraint, I would let him eat your fat ass."  Naturally, the man was upset by this and puffed out his chest in a rather laughable display of machismo, considering my size and general propensity for violence.  I let him go, but if only he knew how close he came to getting pounded into tibs that night.

Last week, I left my house one morning to go to work, as usual.  I saw another dog sniffing around my gate wall, so I approached and saw a tiny little kitten trying to drink water out of our storm drain.  The kitten looked like it had quite literally been through a washing machine, with its fur all spiky and a crazy look in its eyes.  The little furball melted my cold heart and I wondered what I was going to do with it - I couldn't just leave it there, it was unafraid of me and thereby unafraid of pretty much anything, including dogs, people, and other cats.  It wouldn't last long with an attitude like that.  Lucky, however, solved the problem for me.  He heard me leave my compound and walked over to greet me, but soon discovered the focus of my attention.  Lucky has seen me interact with other animals before (usually friendly dogs we meet on our walks); he doesn't like it but he tolerates it.  Unfortunately for this kitten, it stepped towards me while Lucky was watching, and he sprang into action.  I watched in shock as Lucky "protected" me by quite frankly murdering this harmless, two-pound kitten.  By the time he was done, there wasn't enough of it left to make a hairball.  I left for work, lamenting the grisly crime and realizing that I hadn't even named the kitten, so I decided to call it Breakfast because that's what it had ultimately become.  When I told Anna about Breakfast later, she said "Sometimes living here is like watching the Discovery Channel."

Anyways, that's my pal Lucky!  Hope you enjoyed reading about him, and I'll be waiting to negotiate for the film rights.

So recently I finished Peace Corps' mid-service conference (MSC), a three-day workshop signaling the end of my first year of service. As of yesterday, I have one more year to go before I qualify for close of service (COS), which amounts to an "honorable discharge." We're also eligible for COS status if the country is evacuated at any time, which seems unlikely. Since I've been here for over a year, I've earned my noncompetitive eligibility, the benefit that gives me more points in the federal hiring system (similar to Veteran's Benefits). However, I forfeit the eligibility if I resign or get fired before COS.

Anyway, enough of government bureaucracy. Here I present some highlights from my recent adventures in Addis and Awasa. Enjoy!

So Steph and I left BD on Sunday, October 26th and arrived in Addis, somehow without any problems (I think the flight was even a bit early, so hell may have frozen over). We checked in at the Red Cross Training Center, the training facility for MSC. I was the first guy to arrive so I signed my name on the sign-in sheet and scratched out the space underneath mine, indicating that I was to have a room by myself. Thankfully no one disputed this. We then spent the next three days in typical PC training, but this time several experts were brought in to talk about Ethiopia's food crisis, small businesses, and other topics. This basically just meant that instead of boring presentations given by other PCVs and woefully unqualified PC trainers, we got three days of boring presentations from doctors and economists. Yeyz for us!

Nothing too excited happened during MSC, except that the Ethiopian guests of the Red Cross liked to start doing calisthenic exercises at 6 am right outside our windows. Naturally, this was infuriating, as was the mysterious dance party that could be heard every night until at least 1 am. Remember, Ethiopians generally don't sleep, and unfortunately they expect the same of foreigners. Also, the power went out, which isn't strange, but what was strange is that it went off in only half of the Red Cross building. So half of us had to move across the hall for a couple of hours to watch TV.

After MSC, we all went our separate ways, and my way was to Awasa, the capital city of the SNNP (Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples) region, which is to the south, as you may have guessed. CARE arranged for me to attend a PC3 technical review meeting, which happens in each PC3 country twice a year. PC3 stands for Positive Change: Children, Care, and Communities (or some permutation thereof) and is a USAID-funded project across many African countries. It is an OVC (orphan & vulnerable children) project implemented by large NGOs, which in Ethiopia consists of FHI, Save the Children, World Vision, World Learning, and my host organization, CARE. Each of the NGOs sent a representative contingent to discuss our implementation of PC3 (because PC is funded by USAID, I was assigned to the PC3 project). We talked about all of the wonderful things that NGOs discuss in meetings - lessons learned, challenges, best practices, the way forward, etc. ad nauseum. I didn't like the meeting, but I do like Awasa, as it turns out. It has a lake and so reminds me of Bahir Dar (and, by extension, home). It's a pretty modern city and there seemed to be less harassment there than what's typical in Amhara. There may be a Volunteer or two placed there in the next round; I think that will be a good thing for them.

Speaking of new Volunteers, they'll be here in 3 weeks. Any of you new trainees who's reading this blog, run away! Just kidding. I'll be helping out with your training. Hopefully there's no hazing, but you never know!

I don't have any pictures from MSC or the PC3 meeting, but I have a few new pictures on Facebook from my own training, a year ago. You can find them here (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2215313&l=4b48c&id=21700123). They're hosted on Facebook but I don't think you need a Facebook account to see them; they should be open to the public.

Last weekend my outfit (CARE Bahir Dar) took a trip to

Wonzaiyay for a one-day retreat. Wonzaiyay is a little

hot springs town an hour or so northeast of BD. The

waters there arereputed to have healing powers so many

Ethiopians come from all over the region to soak in

them.

CARE picked me up at 7 am and we spent the next hour or

so driving around town and picking up the other staff

members (why didn't we all just meet at the office and go

from there? Good question!). It was apparently BYOS

(bring your own sheep) so we bought two sheep from the

livestock market and tied them to the top of the trucks.

We also contracted a local butcher to slaughter the

animals and cook them for our lunch.

So our little caravan drove the remaining hour or so

Wenzaiyay. The village is off the main road a ways so

there are lots of farmers and other rural folk around.

I was quite possibly the first whiteperson some of them

have ever seen, judging by their reaction when we drove

by. When we got to Wenzaiyay, we parked the cars

and everyone went to the"hot springs" Turns out that

when Ethiopians say hotsprings, what they really mean

is a hot bath in a shallow tub. Not that much fun.

After the hot springs we had the first of our 2 lunches.

Lunch was "yebeg tibs" (or just "tibs"), a popular

Ethiopian dish that consists of finely chopped sheep

meat, fried with peppers and onions, and eaten with

injera (Ethiopia's famous sourdough flatbread).

We stuffed ourselves full of tibs and then took a walk

around the resort compound. Some of the Ethiopians

decided to climb a tree and take pictures which was

pretty funny to watch, and we were accosted by Jeremy,

a nosy old firenji (white person) from BD who likes to

awkwardly insert himself into conversations he hasn't

been invited to. Jeremy was at Wenzaiyay with some

other group.

When we were finished with the drunken tree-climbing,

we had lunch again (of course we had two lunches - we had

two sheep), followed by painfully loud Ethiopian music and

of course, dancing. Ethiopians have a unique form of dancing

called "eskista" where you shake your shoulders and head.

Of course all of the (by now rather rowdy) Ethiopians

insisted that I join in the dancing, expecting to have a

good laugh when I screwed up the eskista like every other

firenji they've ever seen try it. To their shock and awe, I'm

actually pretty good at eskista. They were so shocked,

in fact, that they forgot to pick up the camera and take

pictures before I finished. Sadly, they will have no

evidence to prove what happened, and other Ethiopians they

tell will regard the story as a myth - Bigfoot, Nessie, the

eskista-ing firenji, etc.

After we were done, we packed everything up and headed

home, but not before stopping at a huge "chat" plantation on

the way back (chat is a plant with mild narcotic properties,

endemicto East Africa). I have no interest in chat, but it's

popular among Ethiopians.

I've included some pictures from the event. Enjoy!

No rest for the weary...or the women

Tibs, before

Cooking

Tibs, after

Mmm tibs!

Co-worker's kids who got dragged along

Ethiopian kids love the PSP...but not smiling for the camera, apparently

Ray Charles there is my counterpart...and probably also three sheets to the wind

Who invited the drunk old white guy?

Confusion?

Way to ruin Mekuanint's serious pose, Haile

A heated game of bottle-cap checkers

Bunna ceremony (it's the culture!)

What do we do after lunch? We climb trees and take pictures, duh

I was writing in my journal the other night and realized that it had been almost exactly a year since I started my PC journal. Here are some excerpts from those first few days:

10-04-07 2245 Hotel in DC I got here in DC last night. I only missed 3 hours of training yesterday [because of the flight delay] so no big deal. This guy Angus who I’m not sure is Ethiopian or what has been really helpful, he helped me with my paperwork and gave us each $200 [for our expenses in DC.] There are 43 of us, 8 men. Most of us are recent college grads. There are a few older Volunteers and a few married couples. Today we got to meet the director of the Peace Corps Ron Tschetter and Congressman Mike Honda, both RPCVs [Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.] We also met with some representatives from George Washington University who talked about starting penpals with med students, maybe they can help us in our work. Tomorrow we have to get up early to get our shots. 10-06-07 1115 Hotel in DC Just about got everything packed up for the flight to Ethiopia. I’ve decided not to take my heavy coat and gloves. Hopefully I won’t regret it later.

Last night we all got dressed up and went to a reception at the Ethiopian embassy. The ambassador showed up and said some very encouraging words.

10-07-07 2355 Hotel in Addis We’re in Africa. Up until now, it’s just been a place on the map to me – now it’s my home. 10-08-07 1705 Hotel in Addis This @#$% is serious. Today the [Peace Corps Ethiopia country director] told us how excited the Ethiopians are [about us] and how high their expectations are. [The Peace Corps staff] also told us in great and often explicit detail about the potential medical problems; which I hope I don’t have to tangle with. 10-10-07 2130 Wolisso Today we came to Wolisso to start our training. We met our host families and now I’m in the house I’ll be living in for the next 3 months. It’s not bad; there’s no internal plumbing but there is electricity. My host parents are great so far. They’re older and most of their 5 children are grown. Their English is pretty good but of course I speak no Amharic so the dinner conversation was interesting. Both of the parents were taught by Volunteers in the 60s. 10-11-07 2100 Wolisso So I think my host family was expecting a girl.

Wasn’t I stupid? A word of advice to any future Ethiopia (or anywhere really) trainees who have unwittingly stumbled upon this blog: don’t be stupid. Just keep your nose clean and your mouth shut and you’ll be fine.

Today's blog entry will detail a typical day in the life of Lavus. All times are given in 24-hour format with absolutely no conversion or justification. It's a little tongue-in-cheek, but 95% accurate at least. Enjoy!

0630-0730: Wake up. Or more accurately get woken up by any of the following or a combination thereof: screaming children, screaming cats (they sound like children, it's creepy), barking dogs, plaintive goats (usually before a holiday, when they're starved for several days before they're slaughtered for eating), obscenely loud Ethiopian music/television, and a compound mother with rather disturbing sinus problems.

0730-0800: Get dressed, make breakfast. Breakfast usually consists of fried eggs or a plain oily donut.

0800-0815: Ride my sweet Fashion Phoenix bicycle to work. Yep, I'm that guy riding down the street in Bahir Dar with a helmet. The only guy with a helmet (thanks Peace Corps!). So far I have gone 2 whole days without being shouted at by a single Ethiopian. Most days I get shouts like this: "Firenji!" "You!" "Give me money!" "Hay-lo" and "#$%&!" Sometimes the Ethiopians in question cannot produce even a single word of English and in their desperation that I will pass by without giving them any attention (and unaware that I speak Amharic), release an unintelligible string of gibberish. Also to my unending surprise, I occasionally get catcalls from Ethiopian women, the most recent being, "Oh my gawt, hi baybee."

0815-0830: Arrive at work dripping in sweat, or, depending on the weather, a combination of sweat, rain, and mud. Strangely, I'm the only one at the office besides the guard, despite the workday starting at 0830.

0830-0930: Spend the next fifteen minutes greeting the 8 or so people at the office and catching up on their personal lives, despite having seen them only yesterday. Try to check my e-mail (yes, it's true - I have an office, computer, and relatively stable internet connection) only to realize that my computer, the network router, and/or the internet connection isn't working. Proceed to go berserk and stomp around the office for an hour alternately smashing the router, nagging the office secretary to reconnect the dial-up internet, erasing my PC's hard drive, and rewiring phones.

0930-1230: Try to get some work done. This could consist of calling CARE's NGO partners to nag them for overdue reports, visiting partners in the fiend to talk to CARE's beneficiaries, preparing my lesson for this afternoon's computer training, and constantly e-mailing Peace Corps staff with complaints. Try to avoid interruptions by my co-workers demanding that I accompany them for tea/coffee, the power going off, and Honney mooching my internet. My day is also interspersed with fun office tasks like sobbing at the malfunctioning fax machine, trying to staple more than 10 pages together, and convincing my co-workers that I can in fact use a copier.

1230-1330: Go to a nearby restaurant for lunch. If it's Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday, I have a roughly 75% chance of being served the first item I order. If it's Wednesday or Friday, I piss and moan that there's no meat because it's an Orthodox fasting day and proceed to smear vegetable paste all over myself (Ethiopian food is messy).

1330-1700: Go back to the office and, if I have any, work. If there's no power, play my PSP/nap for the afternoon. Fanatically avoid doing my quarterly report for Peace Corps if it's due. Sometimes I go to the Family Guidance compound (NGO partner) to give a computer class to their peer service providers. Will graciously thank all Ethiopians present for their wonderful compliments that I am fat and not as good at Amharic as Honney.

1700-1730: Go back home, see above for details. I also may stop by the market if I'm feeling particularly hungry/masochistic. I have suavely talked one of the vegetable ladies there into giving me the Ethiopian price for her products and not the white man's price. A small crowd will gather around me while I shop and request photographs, autographs, and offer to have my babies.

1730-1830: If it's Monday, Wednesday or Friday, I have Amharic class with my clever, polite, and exceedingly patient tutor Wally (his real name is Wallaleeyn or something but I don't bother trying to pronounce it). Wally answers questions like "How to I say 'don't touch me' in Amharic?" "What will happen if I throw a rock at the Christmas goat outside cuz he won't shut up?" and "Do Ethiopian women shave their legs?"

1830-1930: Make.burn dinner. My favorite menu items are my famous peanut stir-fry, spaghetti, tuna sandwiches, and seasoned French fries (I make the best cheeps in PC Ethiopia - I challenge any other Volunteer to beat me!). My compound family is visibly nervous as they watch me try to burn the house down by flagrantly misusing my gas cooking stoves. I occasionally have partial success by scorching my oven mitts, my wooden table, or myself, usually accompanied by loud cursing in French so no one understands me (despite most Ethiopian women not speaking English, English curse words are surprisingly well-known).

1930-2030: Take a walk around the neighborhood. I'm sometimes accompanied by Lucky, a half-deaf, half-blind, half-hyena neighborhood dog who likes me because I don't beat him. We have a lot in common - neither of us bathes that much, we both have fleas, and we like to playfully threaten other denizens of the neighborhood when they harass us. Lucky protects me from the other dogs and I protect him from the other people. As if a huge yeti walking around playing air guitar and singing George Thorogood with his headphones on would need any protection.

2030-2300: Watch movies, write, read, play video games, swat mosquitoes. When the power's out I can usually only sway mosquitoes, and not very well because it's dark.

2300-2302: If there's running water, take the coldest and shortest shower of my life. The compound maids probably wonder what the panicked shrieking is coming from the bathroom.

2302-morning: "Sleep."

P.S. For my Facebook friends who'd like to see this blog in its natural habitat, the address is levivantine.blogspot.com. Cannot be accessed in Ethiopia.

P.P.S. I'd like to thank my lovely assistant Alyssa for posting this entry for me and managing my other Internet-related affairs. Thank you!

So with the advent of Google Chrome and my computer's subsequent embrace of all things Google, I've decided to create a blog on Blogger. It will be imported to Facebook automatically so you can continue to read about my life there if you like. Also, "Lavus" is the most popular Ethiopian mispronunciation of my name for those of you who didn't know, and my personal favorite because it has a classically divine ring to it.Today is New Year's Eve on the Ethiopian calendar and as a result there are very few people here at work. Obviously I don't have much work either right now or I wouldn't be blogging. There's not much news to report from Ethiopia but here it is:

- The UN Security Council didn't renew the Peacekeeper Mission on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border on July 31st. As of now all Peacekeepers should be gone. Everything's quiet so far.

- There was an explosion in Addis at the Mercado on September 3rd. Six people died on the spot and an additional 30 were injured (although by now some of the injuries have probably been converted to additional deaths), all Ethiopian. No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

- We are down to 30 Volunteers. We had a lot of resignations in August and a medical separation last week.

- My birthday was awesome! Of course, not as awesome as last year...but how could I ever top that? Anyways, I went to Addis Zemen where Esteph and Jessica proceeded to cook great food all weekend. Esteph also has a new cat which I think is named Brak (of Space Ghost fame apparently?). There was vigorous debate on his name; the shortlist included Efie (its birth name), Daryl, Retard, and Shitty. I lobbied for Retard but Esteph's the boss. Also, special thanks to Mother Teresa (my mom, not the dead nun) for her incredible birthday packages (3 of them!).

- My compound mom, Nigist, gave birth to her third daughter on August 20th. Her name's Helen for now (I guess Ethiopians give themselves time to think about this mildly important decision, as if the previous 9 months of gestation just wasn't enough).

- Two small birds are making a nest on top of the curtain rod in my office. I've decided to let them squat here rent-free (I came to this decision after several attempts at evicting them were met with scorn), and after some deliberation I have named them Mr. Peepers and Kelly Clarkson.It's been over 11 months since we first came to Ethiopia. Soon Peace Corps will start bringing us all in to Addis for our mid-service conferences, which unfortunately also includes a medical and dental examination. Hopefully I'm not med-evac'd again which is the general outcome of examinations here.Honney is doing well, and surprisingly she's not in Addis at this time. Lately we've been working on this project with a group of PLWHAs (people living with HIV/AIDS) who have started a mill almost completely from scratch. The project is occasionally pretty painful but it's work.My Amharic is coming along pretty well - I can identify the past tense without too much trouble and I'm reading and writing the Ge'ez script much faster than when I started. However, my limited vocabulary sometimes leads to acutely comic expressions which are generally understandable but may elicit laughter from Ethiopians. Here are some examples (all translated literally from Amharic) along with what I was actually trying to say:"Do you have a rain protector?" = "Don't you have an umbrella?"

"These are hand-clothes for a bicycle." = "These are cycling gloves."

"What is that? Is that cloud-noise?" = "Do you hear thunder?"

"I have a mouth-fire!" = "This [food] is really spicy!" (borrowed from Elsabet)So that's all for now!