Peach People

We have a lot coming up over the next three weeks. We're getting ready to leave home to head back to the US for our maternity leave and home assignment in the spring. I'll be flying with Elsa and Ezra to my family in Washington on December 31, and Caleb will follow two weeks later after a 10 day riding trip with his cousin and brother-in-law who are coming out to do a riding tour of Ethiopia. Before we leave Ethiopia at the end of the month, we have a four day biennial conference with the organization we work with here in the country. So consider the travel: two days in the car from Omo to the conference.then another half day from the conference to Addis.re-pack and organize quickly so that the kids and I can leave for the airport that night.an 8 hour flight to Amsterdam.a 9 and a half hour flight to Seattle.ahh. I'm tired already.

Explaining to Elsa and Ezra exactly what is taking place over the next three weeks has proven confusing. Time, as I'm sure anyone with two, three, or four year olds knows, is a slightly nebulous concept. I'm sure for as many times as I've said the words "when we get to Grandma and Grandpa Judy's house", there's been some niggling doubt in the back of Elsa's mind about that day will actually ever coming. "Today after naptime, you mean," she's asked me on multiple occasions. Or, "The next day when I wake up?" Poor kids have no idea what life has in store for them over the next six months, considering the many moves we have to make, people we have to meet, and miles we have to cover.

One morning at breakfast I was going over again with Elsa exactly what was going to take place before we got to Grandma and Grandpa Judy's house. The following incident illuminates perfectly the stark difference between our two kids. (Elsa is likely to love someone simply because he breathes and has a name--Ezra, on the other hand, is just as likely to DISLIKE him for that same reason.) Anyways, I told Elsa that we were going to go to a conference, where she would get to play with other kids, do projects, play games, eat snacks and do all sorts of fun things while Mama and Daddy would be in some meetings. Elsa's eyes were getting bigger by the second and she was getting harder and harder to contain in her chair because she was bursting with
excitement at the thought of all the activity. Meanwhile, Ezra was sitting in his chair, glaring at me fiercely and saying, "Me don't LIKE other kids! Me don't LIKE to play games!" Now we've known this about Ezra for quite some time-a tendency toward being a total booty around other people-but we've really been trying to work on some basic common courtesy despite his anti-social tendencies. So in recent weeks, he's been practicing (and gotten very good) at greeting people, putting out his hand to shake hands, and smiling. So knowing that he's been practicing this lately, I said "Well,that's okay, but we can still be sweet to people and shake their hands, just like we do here". Elsa, ever the wise big sister, cuts in and says, "But Mama-peach people don't say Kuun Methob (our local greeting)!"

Leave it to Elsa to find the loophole.