Up until now, our new family website has really just been a bookmark waiting for a story to tell. Sure, I put up a few pics, test drove a few design templates, and mentioned to a more than a few close friends and family where to find us. But there was really no “there” here.
So let’s define what’s going to be happening here, as a place to understand what we’ve got going on while we’re living in Ethiopia and traveling beyond that base whenever our schedule permits us to.
One week from today (on August 15th), we begin the journey to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s largest city and capital). We leave Seattle on a red-eye flight, and will arrive in Addis early on the 17th.
Sarah is taking an approved leave of absence from her faculty job at the University of Washington. Call it a sabbatical, if you’d like. Either way, we’re talking about a year away from her regular gig. Speaking of which, you should check out the recent profile of Sarah in Seattle’s The Stranger that did a decent job of summarizing her work here.
Our daughter, Maya, will be doing her 9th grade year at the International Community School (ICS) in Addis. We will get more in depth about ICS in upcoming posts. Maya will hit the ground in Ethiopia and soon thereafter need to break into stride with ICS orientation on Monday, the 19th. There is also parents orientation. We hope our over-eagerness doesn’t scare everyone, but that is surely a risk.
Sarah’s got a job lined up at a teaching hospital and medical college. Much more on that will also be coming in future posts. Getting her Ethiopian medical license, after jumping through a series of hoops both on the American and Ethiopian diplomatic sides has been a learning experience for the whole family. Ever heard the term “apostille” and know how that factors into an overseas journey? I’m now intimately acquainted with what that means. Half-jokingly, I think it’s French for “bureaucratic torture.”
