Good-bye Bingham

So after 34+ long hours of flying [and a small tour around Manhattan by myself], I am back in America! It's good to be home...but I will certainly miss Bingham Academy. I wanted to thank you all for reading my posts and for praying for me during my time in Ethiopia. And thank-you to Ricky as well-for actually posting my blogs for me since I couldn't. Obviously, I wont be posting more about my adventures abroad...that is, not until my next overseas endeavor. However, I wanted to close this particular Ethiopian adventure by posting a few more pictures that summarize my experience as a whole. So here goes:

The kids that I loved:


My beautiful roommates [Steph and Christina]:


The city where I lived:


The Ethiopian version of starbucks:


The milk...which I wont miss:


The taxis that don't know how to drive:


The donkeys that are...everywhere:


An average, upper-class, Ethiopian home:


The shoe polishers who begged to wash my flip flops nearly everyday:


The sewing machine guy on the side of the freeway:


The Foozball games that people play on the streets:


The market where I bought all my fruits and veggies:




The first thing I saw when I got off the subway in New York (literally):

[I didn't eat there]


I am so glad that God allowed me to go to Ethiopia. It was the experience of a lifetime and I took a lot away from it. If you want to know more about it, just talk to me. :)

Until next time...
-Nicole

Keeping Up With Current Fashion

So, this week is “field trip week”. We went to the dairy farm on Monday of this week. We saw lots of cows and some sheep that were just four hours old. We also got to drink fresh squeezed dairy milk and homemade cheese with crackers. Yum. On Thursday we are having a bus tour around Addis, which should be rather exciting. Today (Tuesday), however, we went to the hair salon as part of our social studies unit on fashion in order to investigate the current, popular hairstyles in Ethiopia. Well, I guess I failed to mention that the hairstyles in Ethiopia are much different from those in the United States. We were all a little reluctant at first, me especially, but we finally decided that we’d better try to blend in with the crowd. Hence, the new hairstyles:



Sophia [modeling the newest hairclips and ribbon look] & Kate [modeling the “hairy, scary monster-under-the-bed” look]



Midian & Elshaddai [both of which are modeling versions of the big and fluffy hair look]



Travis [modeling the infamous old guy bald spot…which I guess you can’t really see. But just picture my dad], Nathan [modeling the colored Mohawks], and Isaac [modeling the regular Mohawks]




Riina [modeling the wired, bendy braids], and Brayden and Jackson [both modeling the popular, male Mohawks]




Elshaddai, Furra, and Naomi [all with the big and fluffy hair looks]




Me and Riina. I was told that it’s the latest fad to stick objects randomly throughout messy buns. So the kids stuffed my hair with rulers, pencils, paintbrushes, pens, metal stars, forks, tin foil, ribbon, metal chains, adapter plugs, crayons, a name tag, and the letter “E”. –seriously, all of that fit!




Ya know, it’s really hard to get a group picture with 17 first graders who are all looking at the camera and holding a sign up in such a way that it doesn’t cover their face. But I tried…

If you can actually read what we’re trying to spell out in that picture, then you know not to take me seriously…ever.

What do you think?
-Nicole

Marriage Advice from First Grade

Since Cary will be gone next week at a conference (she’s going to miss my last few days in Ethiopia entirely), we decided to have a class good-bye party this week. In order to make this party “highly educational” we decided to incorporate one of my favorite authors [Dr. Seuss] and one of my favorite books [Horton Hears a Who]. We also threw in, just for kicks, one of my favorite foods [ice cream sundaes]. While at this party, I was presented with some very precious gifts. I suspected that the class was up to no good when I got kicked out of school for the entire day on Thursday…but I had no idea what they were making.

First, the class made me a bowl that is completely covered with thumb print pictures from every student:



Second, the kids wrote and illustrated a book for me that is filled with teaching advice AND….marriage advice! I am seriously considering putting this out at our reception just so everyone can enjoy what these kids had to say because it is absolutely hysterical. But here are a few of my favorite quotes:

“Make sure you have flower girls and make sure you don’t cry when you kiss David on the lips. And I want you to worship God and try not to sin, please. When you’re married I want you not to fight with David.” –Furra


“You should always remember not to run away.” –Iabes


“Just kiss the groom!!!” –Kate


“If you get married, kiss your husband very much. To be a good wife, never leave your husband. Never get very angry with your husband. If you choose your husband, make sure he trusts God.” –Nathan


“When you get married, don’t forget that if the wedding dress rips then say to your husband, ‘my dress is ripped’ and cover it.” -Elshaddai

Also, everyone made ‘Cat and the Hat’ hats to wear for our celebration:



…including Lily, Cary’s kitten:

Meet My Crazy Class

We just has spring break here at Bingham so I’m back after a long, relaxing, and well-deserved break from the classroom. Break wasn’t very eventful…I mostly just slept. But I’m not going to complain because it was good to just “not work”. Anyways…now that break is past and I have just two weeks left here at Bingham I’m going to try to overwhelm you with picture updates (particularly of my class) and funny stories. So allow me to (finally) formally introduce you to my beautiful class:




Top row (L-R): Me, Kate, Midian, Brayden, Sophia, Elshaddai, Riina, Isaac, Travis, Ms. Sink
Bottom row (L-R): Ms. Lidya (teacher assistant), Iabes, Furra, Robel, Naomi, Melodie, Nathan, Hawi

[yes, Hawi always smiles like that. He cracks me up. Reminds me of my brother actually]

A few more stories:

I’m just getting over an awful cold. It seems every year (or twice a year) I manage to get some crazy case of laryngitis and I either lose my voice entirely or get cursed with this deep manly voice for a week or so. Supposedly, I need to drink more water and change my toothbrush more frequently in order to avoid these annual illnesses…but I’ve never been very good at following doctor’s orders. One cup of water a day is sufficient. Well…this time around I didn’t lose my voice entirely; rather, I had a deep, awful manly voice for a while. Well, my first day attempting to teach with this voice was rather memorable. Sophia remarked, “Ms. Normandeau, you sound funny…. you sound like Hannah Montana”. Needless to say, the kids called me Hannah Montana for the remainder of the week.


Isaac and Travis, as you can see from the class photo, are identical twins. It took me the longest time to get their names straight and I still get them mixed up frequently. I learned to tell them apart from their teeth (Travis lost all of his front teeth so he looks like an old man while Isaac has yet to lose his). Beyond their teeth, I can’t tell them apart for the life of me so I’ve been praying that God just slows down the growth of Travis’ teeth until after I leave. ;) Well, when they figured out that I knew them by their teeth they decided to confuse me. They wore identical clothes for one week and wouldn’t smile so that they could hide their teeth. The solution: I made little nametag stickers and made them wear them on their foreheads. It was quite fun. I’ve enjoyed getting to know those boys…they are just hysterical. While they have very similar academic strengths and weaknesses to coincide with their identical images, they have very different personalities. Travis is insecure and shy while Isaac is carelessly confident and outgoing. Isaac usually speaks in “robot” language whenever he can….which makes me laugh. Every time. 


Riina (aka the “smartestminigeniusandmostpolitestandcutest” little girl in the whole world). I have no funny stories with Riina…I just want to always remember how incredible she is so I’m jotting her name down in this blog. Just last year in kindergarten, Riina spoke absolutely no English. She is from Finland and she had to have a translator at all hours of the day in order to progress into first grade. Well, Riina is the only one in my class who is able to write more than 2 pages with ease. In fact, she writes an average of 5 pages for every assignment simply because she wants to. In addition, she writes with absolutely no grammar, spelling, punctuation, or capital errors. Her fluency in English is better than my non-ESL students and she writes like a fifth grader. I just am amazed that she picked up the language so well over just one summer. Love her.

A few more pictures:

Before break started, I shared my coffee roasting experience with my class and they concluded that my ability to roast coffee is severely inadequate. So they decided to show me how to do it…

My “inadequate” coffee roasting experience:




The right way to roast coffee:




…And these pictures simply crack me up:




We had a little “birthday party” for Bersaber that day (who was missing in the whole-group picture, by the way. –she’s the one in the black and white checkered dress) and we wanted to get a good birthday picture for the yearbook. But…back to the picture as a whole…Do all boys smile like that pre-puberty?



Believe it or not…they were actually excited to take that picture. ….not. Don’t they look awfully depressed? The middle school students drew fantasy pictures and insisted that my class try them on for size.

More to come,
-Nicole