Have Good Appetite!

So the place where I'm staying is full of these awesome Germans. There was the woman who listened to opera and instrumental versions of ABBA songs (she left a couple days ago), Pastor Thomas (who used to live in Chino...huh?), and the white-haired man whose name I can never quite catch but who is basically my favorite person ever. I've never met anyone who better fits the word "jolly." He was thrilled that I had heard of Berlin and even more thrilled when he was briefly under the mistaken impression that I am from Sweden. Last night he walked past as I was eating dinner in the sitting room and called out, "Have good appetite!" with the biggest smile.

Yesterday it was absolutely pouring when I left work, which meant that the streets had basically turned into rivers. I had to cross this one road where someone had thrown a big stone in the middle of this pool of water because the water was way too wide to jump across. But the stone was too far for me to step to, so I had to jump to it and then jump to the other side. I know what you're thinking--yeah, big deal, you jumped across a puddle. So let me share the following details so you can appreciate how much I was like Indiana Jones:
1) The rock was wobbly and only wide enough for one foot.
2) I was wearing a white skirt.
3) I was wearing slippery shoes.
4) I have remarkably poor coordination and balance.
5) I had my laptop in my backpack
6) This was in central Addis, where there is a ton of traffic and the drivers only kind of care if they run you over.
7) It is very likely that there was some sewage in that bottomless lake. Now, those of you who are familiar with my feelings on sanitation know that asking me to jump across a sewage puddle to a wobbly rock is roughly equivalent to asking me to jump across a FIERY PIT OF LAVA.

I'm pretty sure my co-workers think of me as a bumbling (hopefully lovably bumbling) ferenge (is that how you spell ferenge? I don't even know). I went out to tea with a few of them a couple days ago and they found my fear of bees endlessly amusing. Also my inability to pronounce Amharic and the fact that one of them saw me walking all the way back to the Piassa Monday when I couldn't find a minibus to take me there.

Ciao for now