Day 21 Monday, July 11th 2011

It's weird to think that by this time next week I'll be back in the U.S. It's our last week. The closer that time comes the more I don't want to leave. I really don't.

I woke up not very well rested and in a bit of a bad mood. I kept tossing and turning and waking up in the middle of the night from my ribs or butt hurting from the rock hard beds. So... no much sleep. We all went to the hotel across the street called Rift Valley to eat breakfast. This is where we will be eating most, if not all, our meals. All the orders kept coming out at different times and wrong as well. I think this set the tone for how it will be for the every meal. I'm sure the waiters and waitresses were frustrated as well. Even with translators around the table there seemed to be a big language barrier.

I got french toast which tasted like fried cake heaven and sat in a pool of honey. Thank you... thank you... yes, it was a great breakfast choice wasn't it? Even though breakfast seemed to take forever (mmm... bout 2 hours or so) it was nice sitting outside with the beautiful weather, having fun chats throughout my table area. This was a funny morning.

After breakfast we all went back to the hotel and gathered our jackets or bags for the day and headed to the Women At Risk center. There was a new group of women that had entered the program whom we are going to be hanging out with all week. They had just come in a month ago, some two weeks ago, and a couple of them it was their first day. These women have had some hard lives and today we just hungout with them and got to know them and some of their stories. All these women were prostitutes right before they came into the program.

In the program the women are taken care of financially while they go through it, but the first month they don't get any financial assistance. They do this because some women will drop out within the first few weeks. So, it's sort of a weed out time frame to see who will stick with it. It kind of made me sad though, because some of the women still go out and prostitute so that they can still pay their bills and rent. They have to completely stop when the program starts to take care of them financially. It really made me sad to find out that a few still did it, but I understand why they do and I also understand why the W.A.R. facility delays their support for awhile. BREAKS MY HEART!!

When we got there we all just introduced ourselves and talked to them. We didn't really know what to expect in wether or not they would want to talk to us and let us hear their stories since there were girls there that had only stopped two weeks ago.... and then the ones that I found out were still doing it to make ends meet. But they seemed to be very open about it and a lot of them were open enough to share their stories. At the end of the day I think they were pretty excited we were there.

For lunch we all went back to the hotel we ate at for breakfast. I sat next to Kat. LOVE that girl! I'm so glad she came with us to Nazret even if she's only staying for 3 days. Wish it was the rest of the week. Lunch was pretty good. I had the Chicken Kabab plate which came with green beans. All of you that know me know I was excited about the green beans. Stupid comments were heard around the table from certain people as usual. Sometimes I'm completely floored by people's attitudes and cultural stupidity. Ugh...

After lunch we went back to W.A.R. to hang out with the ladies more. They are so sweet and welcoming. Some of them are super shy. They youngest was 17. Can you imagine that? 16 and already a prostitute for years. A child already in her lap. Come of the women came from the country and apparently it's pretty common that they don't know their age. A few of them only guess how old they are. The oldest one there is 30. When we were done for the day (@ 4) we headed over to "Sister's Cafe". Sister's Cafe is a cafe that the women who have graduated from W.A.R. program. We all got coffee. I didn't know they already sweetened their coffee so I added more sugar before I took a sip. 1. It was definitely too sweet and 2. It was definitely just steamed milk. Our orders are always wrong anywhere we go. If you come to Africa.... EXPECT IT! There are so many things that we say that mean something completely different to them. Oh well.... that's the African life when you're a furengi (Amharic for white foreigner). I had the waitress bring out a shot of espresso to add to my milk. Much better.

Not much really went on after that besides dinner, hanging out in each others rooms chatting and going to bed.

.....oh wait! yes. After dinner Michael wanted to practice on all of us women folk and paint our nails. Tomorrow we have a spa day with the women and he needed some practice. HAHA! Let me just say this... it was so sweet and cute that he wanted to do that, and watching him, but Lawdy Mercy! what a terrible nail painter he is. Horrible. He's going to need some practice.