Gotcha

I bought a couple of items and I am really excited about them! We really want to immerse our child in his/her culture as much as possible. We love Ethiopia and hope that our child grows up knowing a lot about his/her beautiful country. I was really pleased to come across these. Also, some day I hope to be reading the books that we've bought on Ethiopia and point out these two items in our house that are actually in the books! So when I saw these I decided we needed them! The best part was they were relatively in-expensive!

This first two pictures are of a container called an Agelgil used by Ethiopian herdsmen to transport their food. A sort of traditional lunch box. The interior shell is handwoven straw with a lid whose exterior surface is covered with sheep skin hide and decorated with cowrie shells. The shells are meant to bring protection and good fortune. Not that I had intrest in the fortune, for God provides all we need- however it explains the shells which I thought were just pretty and for looks! The cover is held in place by a leather strap that seals the top and there is an additional leather strap for easy carrying by the herder!

The other picture is a real authentic tribally used water bottle. It is made out of real leather hide with a wooden stopper and leather strap for carrying. Also with decorative beads! I'm not sure if there is a story behind these beads though! This kind of water bottle was used by Afar tribesmen during their nomadic wandering in the extreme heat of the Danakil depression (the hottest recorded place on earth)!

In Support of Ethiopia

Apparently Ethiopia is starting to make international headlines for fine leather goods. I have included two links that briefly speak about their increasing notoriety. For an interesting video piece, check out the Reuters.com link below (click entertainment, and then "Made in Ethiopia"). You must have high speed internet to view this video without waiting for a long time.

http://nazret.com/blog/index.php?title=ethiopia_the_leather_industry_boosts_val&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

http://www.elia.org.et/

http://www.reuters.com/news/video

That's all folks!

Okay, the spider we actually did NOT see on the trip, on the contrary I saw it tonight when I was trying to get the pictures to download. I HATE spiders and needless to say this guy was soon stuck to the bottom of my shoe only to have me running around panicking. The dogs were sweet and came running to see the what the commotion was about (David's at work). The spider then fell off my shoe and my dog stepped on it and then it was on her paw. Oh my! I panicked some more and shewed the dogs outside. The girls decided that they needed to come right back in so after a thorough paw check we were spider free and they were let back in. Sorry for those of you out there who are NOT spider killers...

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Pictures!

More pictures

For whatever reason our computer won't let me post any more than 2 pictures at a time...

Oh, the places you'll go!

This weekend we headed out to the Texas hill country. David and I have been wanting to go for quite a while. David had just got off nights so we headed out to a state park that wasn't too far away. We spent our first night at Stephen F. Austin State Park . It wasn't too bad but I don't think it quited down until 2 a.m.! After that we both ended up waking up early- go figure! So we went hiking. They had a neat area to hike in. Not a big area of hiking but there were lots of bridges and you could follow a stream around. We saw a whole herd of deer and some really neat woodpeckers. Then, David drove me to a town he used to go to as a kid and we ate picnic lunch by the river. The water looked like ocean water it was so clear and blue. Then we drove to Blanco state park. We arrived and tried to reserve a camping site but they were already booked so we drove to Guadalupe State Park and by the time we got to the lady they had two "water" spots left. We were pretty excited to hear that b/c they told another couple that was in front of us that they were completely booked, which they were, in the areas that had electricity. We set up our tent and then went down and swam in the river. It was pretty chilly but it was fun. The water was flowing so fast though a couple of parts that it about knocked me over. We swam up the river for a while and then sat down and let us push us down stream. We went back to our camp site, cleaned up, and drove to the closest town. We found what I think was their only sit down restaurant. The food was good! We had ribs with beans, corn, and bread! It was a MUCH quieter park! The next day we went back to Blanco and then to Pedernales Sate Park. Pedernales was by far and away our favorite park! Talk about amazing and beautiful. We went to a bird observatory and watched some birds and then went to see the falls. The falls were really neat, not that there were any big waterfalls just little tiny ones every once in a while. But, you could hike up the river bed on the big rocks. We would have loved to stay and hike longer but after a little while it got dark and we felt a sprinkle or two. We had saw a picture of what that area looked like flooded after 5 minutes of rain and figured we had better head out! We look forward to going back there some day and can't wait to take our child- the places he/she'll go!

Read all about it.

As promised- here is a picture of our "Ethiopia book section". This also shows some Ethiopian cd's we own and the pictures are MOSTLY all Ethiopian. My sister made me the card for my birthday it's pretty cool. The stamps in the frame are from Ethiopia too.