Zufan Stories

A book in Amharic, English, French, and Spanish - FABULOUS! If you're a member of the Ethiopia Adopt Yahoo group please leave a comment on one of the posts as you're eligible for a discount. Ours should be arriving soon so will post a review as soon as we've received it. The Zufan Stories site says:

"Zufan and the Flower is based on a true story. Told in four languages - Amharic, English, French and Spanish - it is the first volume in a series about the adventures of Zufan."

Can't wait for ours to arrive! We've now completed 8 weeks of our Amharic course and will likely extend our lessons after our 10th week is complete. It would be a pity to have our last Amharic lesson be later this month and then not have any exposure to Amharic until we travel (which could be many months), so we're planning on tagging on a few lessons just before we head to Ethiopia - whenever that may be. In the meantime we'll be struggling through our broken practice conversations, adding more neutral colors to the nursery (green and yellow really are lovely), and thanking God that we have a place to stay in NYC as well as Upstate NY as I think we'd drive each other nuts if we had to stay in either location indefinitely...climbing the walls of winter I guess.

Cheers to thriving on flexibility.

Amharic Art & Our Lessons

Amharic truly is a beautiful language so not surprisingly it serves as the base, or inspiration, for various renowned artists. One of these artists is Wosene Worke Kosrof, an Ethiopian painter who incorporates Amharic into his works. He was born in Ethiopia in 1950 and currently resides in California. In his paintings Wosene distorts the written symbols of the Amharic language to create beautiful works of art that reflect his Ethiopian heritage as well as his life experiences in the US. His biography found on www.wosene.com states, "The Ethiopia that finds expression in Wosene's art is at once culturally specific in its visual vocabulary, highly personal in its interpretation, and international in its outlook, reflecting the complex realities of contemporary artistic practice in a global society."

We'll continue to seek out prominent Ethiopians and learn about their influences on world art, culture, education, science, politics, and more and are anxious to share this knowledge with our child one day. Our child's identity is going to develop much like Wosene's art, influenced by both Ethiopia and the United States and undoubtedly beautiful.

"The symbols bring my culture to me and at the same time I recreate my culture with the symbols, producing a unique international visual language."
~ Wosene Worke Kosrof

Wosene Worke Kosrof Colors of Words II, 2001

As for our Amharic lessons, we're getting there. Not very quickly but we do learn more each week and some of the basic phrases are even starting to flow more smoothly when we practice. We're in the midst of getting about a foot of snow today so that should give us an excuse for some extra practice time while we're stuck indoors. 27 days till spring! So far we can meet, greet, say goodbyes, count, and indicate what we "like" or "have" for a handful of vocabulary words. If anyone ever asks me if I like or have a chicken beware - I know how to respond! (affirmatively at least, we're still working on the "no" responses as there isn't actually a word for "no" in Amharic rather a complex redesign of the subject/verb structure in the sentence...yeah, this isn't going to be easy!)

As for all of your offers in our last post to take over the traveling baton, THANK YOU! Please, enjoy your vacations/travels and we'll keep our fingers crossed that your return will bring another batch of referrals!

Two, Dos, Deux, Due, Zwei, Hulet

English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Amharic - It's all the number 2.

Two months waiting.

Hulet months waiting.

It could be any day between now and September!

Amharic Book & Ethiopian Kids Songs

Zodi (our Amharic instructor) is the author of the book she uses for her tutoring sessions and it is now available online! If you're interested in learning some Amharic vocabulary here's how you can purchase her book: Go to http://www.authorhouse.com and click on the Bookstore link.
Then type "Amharic script" into the search and it should lead you to her Amharic book, "Amharic Ethiopian Script: Lakech One". (Or try clicking HERE but not sure if the direct link will work for everyone)Also, my mother in law sent us a fabulous new CD of Ethiopian kids songs that comes with a book that provides a basic pronunciation and translation guide. We can sing along with two of the songs already (both counting songs, hooray our number pronunciation is OK!) and will hopefully learn a few more over the weekend. It's called "The Life of Childhood Amharic Kids Songs" and is exclusively distributed by Abshiro Kids. FUN!

Amharic Lesson #2 And More Food

On Monday we had our second Amharic lesson with Zodi and we were finally able to put a sentence or two together. She's prioritizing vocabulary for now and will help us with sentence structure / verbs later on, but it's fun to be able to say a few complete sentences in the meantime! We're slowing gaining the ability to pronounce words (relatively) correctly but there is definitely A LOT of studying in our future. Can anyone recommend good DVD's/CD's in Amharic? Listening to the sounds throughout the week would definitely help us - we'll gratefully accept all suggestions!

Last night we went to The Ethiopian Restaurant on Manhattan's Upper East Side and the food was fantastic. It might be my new favorite in NYC, or at least tie for first with Meskerem. Mike and I took our best shot at a few of the Amharic words we've learned (nothing too tricky, just "thank you" and "hello") and the waitress actually understood us! I was so relieved when I said thank you to her in Amharic and she responded with a huge smile - my pronunciation doesn't stink! We have 8 lessons to go, so hopefully by the time we've completed the course we'll be able to practice some basic conversations while dining at NYC's Ethiopian restaurants - this is definitely not going to help our attempt at losing some babywait, but it's for a good cause so is justified...right? Thank goodness for the treadmill.

Melkam Ganna! (A Day Late)

Malkam Ganna (Merry Christmas in Amharic) from the McGregors! Christmas is celebrated on January 7th in Ethiopia and we were happy to participate in a few Ethiopian-themed events:

- We had our first Amharic tutoring session and it was fantastic! Our tutor, Zodi, is wonderful. We're really looking forward to being able to communicate (at least a little bit :)) with the community while we're in Ethiopia. During the session Zodi made the comment to me that Amharic is in my blood - The size of the smile on my face must've been record breaking!

- We met Cloverlandfarm and her husband for dinner at Meskerem, an Ethiopian restaurant in Manhattan. They're adopting from Ethiopia as well and are an absolutely lovely couple. We're hoping to go to a service at Zodi's church together sometime soon. Their services are conducted completely in Amharic with English subtitles so should be very interesting!

- I enjoyed another exciting correspondence with our CHI adoption consultant today regarding our time line: Our dossier arrived in Ethiopia on December 31st, 2007 and we've been on the wait list since December 4th, 2007. The 2-3.5 month estimated wait time to receive a referral is based off of the day we were added to the wait list, so... 1 month 4 days down, 2 months 11 days to go! (I'm a former math teacher...you have no idea how hard it is for me to refrain from posting a thorough analysis of the data and corresponding graphic representations of all of the "estimated" wait times.)

- We're on day #4 of operation "babywait be gone!" So far, so good.

So, it was a busy day but we adore participating in activities that help us to feel that much closer to our child. Our child certainly isn't waiting for us, in fact little baby McGregor has no idea we're coming. We're the lucky ones waiting for little Ashton/Isabel to be ready - and when s/he is we're on the next plane to Addis Ababa!

Amharic Lessons & Organic T's

Our agency (CHI) researched and organized an Amharic tutor for interested families in the NY area recently and we're now in the final stages of scheduling the classes. As it currently stands we'll begin meeting with her in early January for one hour a week on Monday evenings. Her typical class consists of ten one-hour sessions, so hopefully by March we'll be well on our way to having a basic understanding of the language. As I've mentioned earlier I LOVE languages. Although I've always felt that for any country we visit we should have at minimum the basic pleasantries and restaurant/taxi/tourist vocabulary down pat, with this situation it feels so much more important. When we travel to Ethiopia I want to be able to greet our hosts properly, say I love you to our child with familiar sounds, and chat with the local taxi drivers and shop owners. I know that it's unrealistic to think that my husband and I can be conversation-fluent in Amharic by the time we travel to Ethiopia, but we can do our best to get as close as possible. I can't wait to start classes and am so thankful that CHI dedicated resources to find a capable Amharic tutor.

On my way back to Brooklyn today I stopped by the holiday market in Union Square. For the most part this is a huge tourist trap stuffed with booth after booth of knit hats, candles, hand-made jewelry, and gingerbread cookies that I SWEAR have a chemical scent added to them that was engineered somewhere in New Jersey...but I did find a fabulous woman who makes 100% organic baby wear that made the whole trip worth while. Her shop is called Farmer Kids, check it out! I fell in love with this little set:

4 Thoughts, 1 Post

We have an exciting post, a still waiting post, an Amharic update post, and an odd question post all of which surfaced today. Each of these thoughts likely warrant their own posting, but it's a short work week and I'm very much so looking forward to the long holiday weekend so I'm going to keep this short and sweet!

Exciting
* We received our first clothing purchase for Bean in the mail today. It's a onsie (6-12 months, hopefully will fit!) produced by American Apparel as part of their Bella {Muse} series and has a scribbled line that says "Artist" underneath. Adorable.



Waiting
* We're still waiting for the I-171H. It is the last form we need before our dossier can be sent to Ethiopia and we can begin officially waiting for a referral. We were fingerprinted 18 days ago and were hoping that this form would arrive before Thanksgiving. One more mail day... come on Postman!

Amharic
* Our adoption consultant notified us today that CHI may be offering Amharic classes in our area in the near future! YEAH!!! This is definitely something we would participate in and have recently begun the search for an Amharic tutor so this is great timing. No number of books, DVD's, or colorful beanbags could possibly be as affective as an actual agency sponsored/recommended language tutor and/or class. Very exciting, CHI is amazing!

Odd Question
* I was randomly asked this question by a close-to-complete stranger today who happened to know about our adoption via having worked with my husband recently:

"Are you planning on having your own kids after adopting?"

Are you kidding me? Not only was this my first time exchanging anything other than a quaint "hello" with this person (which was evidently enough for him to feel justified inquiring about our personal family matters including reproductive habits) but what exactly did he mean by "my own" children? My response didn't even come close to the thoughts that were bubbling inside my head at the time, but the moment he asked the question has been haunting my thoughts ever since. I know we're going to encounter far more disturbing situations and we're doing our best to educate ourselves on the best way to handle them, however we'll never cease to find them disturbing nor would we ever want to. I'm sure he didn't mean any harm by asking what I'm sure he thought was a simple question, however not only was it not simple but completely ill-stated and very personal as well. I definitely need to better prepare myself for similar future encounters.

Amharic DVD

Thank you Jill for this fantastic resource! I just ordered the first DVD in the Tsehai Loves Learning series and can't wait to start learning!

Learning The Language

I love languages. My list isn't as long as many of my friends who grew up speaking three languages and then studied three more in school, but I have picked up a few. I studied German in elementary school, French in high school, and Spanish in college. I try to study the language of every country we visit for a few months leading up to the trip, however this usually results in just a few key phrases and if I'm lucky the ability to count and order dinner in a restaurant. When we visited Morocco I was lucky if I came anywhere close to correctly pronouncing the 5 words of Arabic that I managed to remember and was very thankful that French is also a widely spoken language in the country. In Italy, however, I was able to participate in conversations and understand most of what was being spoken around me. Languages are incredibly exciting to me and I love learning them, even if it is just a word or two.

So, when we began this process I fully intended to learn as much Amharic as possible. I bought the Amharic phrasebook published by Lonely Planet however haven't been able to find many other resources. A DVD would be fantastic as it's always more helpful for me to hear the words, say them, repeat them, and practice them than just read them in a book and hope that I'm interpreting the pronunciation rules correctly. I'm going to look on craigslist for an Amharic tutor who might be able to help me out for an hour here and there (I love NYC!) but would love to learn about any books, CD's, DVD's, etc... that any of you know of and would recommend. Any ideas?

Meskel

We had dinner at Meskel this evening. It's located on a quiet corner near East 4th St. and Avenue B and appears to be run by one front-of-the-house server and one or two chefs in the kitchen. Meskel bills itself as "home cooking" and the reviews, for the most part, rave about the fabulous flavors. The only negative reviews come from restaurant goers who complain about the service, but I think those complaining about the service might also be the type who ask for silverware in an Ethiopian restaurant or insist on cutting their sushi with a knife and fork. Eating with your hands sans silverware is actually quite a liberating experience. Despite the stress of the day both of us radiated a sort of, "who cares if I lick the remnants of the delicious spicy lentils off of my fingers and soon after reach for more injera and cabbage?" kind of attitude. It was lovely. Meskel was a bit pricey for the portions but the server was absolutely lovely and the atmosphere fantastic so I'm sure we'll be back.

One new topic that came from this evening's dinner conversation was that of world music. The tunes being played at Meskel were great and we can't wait to learn more about the artists. Another new topic that came from this evening's dinner conversation is that neither of us knows how to pronounce Ethiopian food correctly. I simply must learn Amharic.