This week we are pleased to have seen the arrival of Kim from New Zealand. She has made the total number of volunteers at the moment to a grand total of three ,which is the largest number we have ever had! It is a bit of a squash at the house since it is a 2 bed roomed house and there are 3 adults living there ( Frasier is sleeping at a nearby hotel since it is culturally unacceptable for males and females to share ) so this has meant that Dawits mother – Azeb – an energetic woman of about 65 who works as the school manager has temporarily moved into the living room. However it is worth it since the summer school children are getting such a lot of attention and the standard of the lessons is steadily rising.

   In addition, this had meant that there is intensive English language training in the afternoons of the teachers, with the hope being that as the standard of English amongst the teachers rises so does the standard of English amongst the children !

   On a personal note, I handed in my resignation this week at the school where I was working in Addis Ababa. 

The lower wages means that we will have to move house to someone cheaper and sell the car – which is all going to be hard but it is better to be even poorer and happy !

  Since every penny counts, we are really pushing people to join in with the free fundraising – there is a website –http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk  where you can join for free to support us ( English Alive Academy – Ethiopian schools for the poor ) and then whenever you shop online then you access the site from here and a proportion of the amount you spend is donated to us !!! – in addition, you can click the easysearch button ( bottom left ) and make that your home page – then instead of using Google you use this search engine and each time it is used you earn ½ pence for us ! – which doesn’t sound like much but once you put it all together then it really adds up to a lot !!!!

So please give it a try !!!! – Stephanie