Wish you could see what a beautiful day it is here! It's been months of daily rain and we're really enjoying a nice breeze and sun today. You know how the cloud cover in West Michigan is in January? That's what it's been like. You would think so close to the equator that it would be HOT here. But it very rarely is HOT. We enjoy that most of the time, but rainy season has been like those days in late fall when you start to say, let's get the furnace going... it's good though to have "seasons" (no colors, we envy those of you enjoying colors right now :)).

I think I'll write about a few things that I didn't write about in coming back from Jimma. We did have a great time in Jimma. But I thought I'd take some time to compare what we see here and what we saw there. Jimma is probably the third? largest town in Ethiopia. It has three colleges and the population tends to be young, but then again the median age in Ethiopia is what? 15, I think. The whole country is young. The majority of the population there are Muslim. Here, the population is about 40-45% Muslim, 40-50% Christian and the Christian bit is largely made up of the Orthodox Church which has been around for centuries. All of our neighbors are Muslim, except the one house, who are currently in the US. It was more common in Jimma to be recognized as a foreigner than here, at least verbally. Here we are always recognized but not always verbally. The biggest thing I think I noticed in coming back is that Addis really is a big city. Yes, it is a developing city but big none the less. There are many tall buildings, and many new ones going up, even a few cranes around the city. You would notice, if you came, the scaffolding used for even the REALLY modern buildings is "sticks." It looks on first glance quite scary but it totally works. One Sunday morning as we were driving to church the kids counted over 100 police officers. Our drive to church is between 5-10 minutes. The reason (we found out later) was that there was a really important meeting at the African Union and some big guys were in town. That kind of sums up Addis, developing, but yet, the biggest names in Africa come here because the UN and the AU both have major meetings here. I'll take a picture sometime of the embassy signs...

So, we're glad to be back in Addis. However, it comes with what all big cities come with, more people, lots of cars (particularly, blue taxis), and it can be kind of dirty. And then on the other hand, there are several groceries stores to go to (maybe not with exactly what we would look for at home, but we are NOT complaining!), an English speaking international church with solid teaching to go to, MANY levels of opportunities to get involved in, and people from literally, all over the world to talk to.