Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Week In Review...

We started our week with a little drama at drama camp. Eli was overwhelmed by the chaos and craziness of kids "improvising" at Lauren's drama camp. He said,(at least this was my interpretation)in Ethiopia, kids are obedient in class and the teachers have control. He left crying and frustrated. Later, we visited the dentist and had a wonderful check-up, with only one cavity and new pearly whites!

I learned that in Ethiopia, the bottles we recycle are washed and re-sold on the streets.

We shouldn't throw away anything! Especially an old broken toy!

Christmas is celebrated and Eli is happy that we celebrate it too! (by the way, he had an "artificial" tree, because real ones are "dirty").

In Ethiopia, he had a small dog named "Buchi".

His goal is to learn the "splits" like Jackie Chan.

On Wednesday, we cooked Ethiopian pasta made with "berebere". Wow! Was that hot!

On Thursday, we went to a Minnesota Saints baseball game! He LOVED it! He laughed at all the funny games that are put on between innings.

He ADORES his big brother, who won a baseball at the Saint's game and came home and gave it to him! Biggest, widest smile...ever!

He now loves McDonald's Hamburgers and still hates pizza...but eats everything else!

He learned how to count money and counted an entire jar of coins in various increments of a dollar to a grand total of $64.59! He kept calling it "diamonds" like it was so valuable...which it is, only that we seem to forget.

Last night, through much persistence, we gave in and took him to open gym at the nearby gymnastics center. We were amazed at how he jumped in and learned a front flip!

Saddest thing: He saw the neighbor kids with some friends over, and although he plays with them all the time, he said "me...no friends." I'm sure it feels that way, but wow! we have not been home quite a month and have we made some strides! We couldn't be more proud of him! Soon enough...he will have plenty of friends.

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like you had a great week! We love hearing about Eli! That's great he only had one cavity. Biruktawit had 6 teeth pulled in two weeks! She's done with that now and all she needs is a bridge. She gets that in 2 weeks. I wish we lived closer Biruktawit would love open gym with Eli.

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  2. It's amazing how fast the kids become Americanized! Still no pizza - I'm sad. How about home made pizza with bereber in it?.... we do pasta that way too! (maybe it's the cheese - our kiddos don't / won't do dairy products except pizza and chocolate milk.)

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  3. Thanks for sharing these interesting tidbits. I was surprised to hear the kids are so familiar with movies. And I thought we'd need to shelter T!

    Yes, I'll bet classrooms are QUITE different here.

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  4. So glad to see the transition going AMAZINGLY well! Our son had to see pizza for supper at least 10 times before he would try it and NOW he'd eat it every day if we would let him!

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