Trip to Ethiopia (Part 3)

When we get the kids back to the guest house, the first order of business is to get them into some better clothes. That was easier said than done because we weren't terribly sure what sizes they were actually wearing. Even though CWA care takers tried to give us measurements, the measurements weren't the same way we do it here. Justin is skinnier and Davis was shorter than we anticipated. Zoe was about where we thought she was. So we had to go do some shopping the next day. Meanwhile we sat around the room and watched them play with toys we'd brought along for them.

It was a delight to listen to them talk among themselves. They are typical kids with animated speech, and they all talk at once. It didn't take us but about 15 minutes to figure out that Zoe was in charge and the boys bowed to her will. She's much more extroverted and has already shown a talented grasp for learning English. (I think it's part being a girl and part being competitive) She and Analyse will be a great deal alike.

When we try to gauge their grasp of English, it is Zoe who tries to answer all the questions, even for the boys. They do have a larger vocabulary than our first three did at the very beginning, so that will help some. Unfortunately, we can tell that their vocabulary is disjointed because the boys can't form sentences with the words they know. Zoe can put two simple words together to form sentences. At one point she holds my face in her hands to get my attention and says, "Daddy toilet". By Wednesday, she was putting several words together as two word sentences to tell me she was looking for a specific toy and believes that we left it upstairs after nap time. After we looked for it for awhile, she told me to forget it and we move on to something else. Amazing!

Lunch and dinner were fairly uneventful. Praise the Lord!! They eat what was put before them without too much of a fuss. Another lesson learned from the first set - eat American food, right away! Davis is our enthusiastic but messy eater, Zoe is the very picky eater, and Justin fits somewhere in middle. We get to introduce them to our family tradition of holding hands while we ask the Lord's blessing; then we rhythmically squeeze hands as we say, "I - Love -You."

The kids play out in the yard with balls that are just laying around. They seem so non-plussed by the whole deal. I wonder if they are really as calm and content as they seem (something we've been praying about ever since the Lord showed them to us to choose). We shall see.