New Year & Sweet 16

Happy Birthday Tigist and Happy New Year Ethiopia! 9/11 means something different to most of us in the U.S., but our Ethiopian children remember it as the best day of the year. Thursday Tigist turned 16 years old and Ethiopia started the year 2001. (The Ethiopian calendar is made up of 12 months, each lasting 30 days, and then an extra month is tagged on lasting just 5 days. Ethiopia is 7.5 years behind the Gregorian calendar ) I did poorly creating an Ethiopian New Years celebration for our family this year, though we are feasting on Injera (from freezer) and Wat this weekend. We did have a very nice birthday celebration for Tigist. She is really growing up to be such a lovely and kind girl. Tigist is a quiet person, calm and level headed. I rarely see her shocked or amazed. I will always remember the look on her face when she opened her present and saw an IPOD! She wanted an MP3 player but thought maybe she might get a much cheaper version. Really what she got was my replaced IPOD nano as I upgraded to standard IPOD last month. Tigist couldn't be more pleased. She is having Ethio girl friends over this weekend for movies and feasting.
It's Happy Sabbath today for us (Saturday) and a day to make another cake for a birthday boy. I'll share his happy face tomorrow.
Julee