New Year's Eve celebration at the Blue Nile Resort, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. Good food, good company and a bonfire. The few tourists we saw at the bonfire out drank and out danced the expats. But then, they didn't have to go to work the next day.

Most people I see on a bicycle are riding to work. They seem to enjoy seeing a Ferengi (white foreigner) out there at sunrise who has the luxury of riding a new bike for fun exercise. The first time I passed a guy, he soon passed me back. I caught up with him and we paced each other for a kilometer. He yelled "Thank you!" when we finally went our separate ways. A bit of fun for both of us.
But these guys really are racing, right outside my residence. You can see how they block off the road here, more often for a football (soccer) match than a bike race. You can also see some of the different donkey carts I encounter on my own rides and the balcony I eat my breakfast of champions on.

Gaja's successful Indian dinner encouraged Meron to open Chez Meron's kitchen up for other experiments. While injera is a delicious and nutritious whole grain carb, the yeast bread here is all white flour. We convinced Meron to let me show her what a whole grain yeast alternative is like. 
I was disappointed in the final results. It certainly wasn't up to Gaja's curry chicken benchmark. But after 3 months of white bread we didn't care. The two loaves pretty much disappeared. I am hoping Meron will give me another chance to adjust for the pizza oven/altitude/kitchen and build a better loaf. And waffles some Saturday morning.

Meron, who owns Chez Meron, had asked Gaja to teach her how to make Indian Curry chicken. Jill seized the opportunity by suggesting they do it on Boxing Day, her birthday, and threw the party for us. So when Americans are taking back their unwanted or ill fitting gifts to scoop up all the after Christmas sale merchandise, we were at Chez Meron's enjoying a rare opportunity to have a delicious Indian dinner. 

Our Fila Hotel Family treated us to true Ethiopian hospitality today, gifts and a coffee ceremony. They knew it was Christmas on our Calendar. No one else here seemed to. I have only seen one Christmas decoration, a tree, in one resort here. I had only one conversation with someone here who knew it was Western Christmas, Dadimos who lived in the states several years.
Ethiopian Orthodox Christmas is not until January 7. The only sign of it is many Orthodox church members are fasting for 6 weeks (no food until noon and a vegan diet). But our Fila Family knew and put on a coffee ceremony for us to celebrate Christmas. They even presented us with these beautiful traditional shirts. Merouane and I had just moved out a week ago, but we are still welcome as family. Gaja has never even lived there, but as our friend is welcomed as well. 
Ethiopians are so welcoming. They will share what they have, even if they do not have much. I am very fortunate to have this opportunity to spend with them.

Connecting with colleagues and students, past and present, is my favorite thing to do at the GAJE Conference. That was especially true this year when I learned that Abhinov Mishra on my immediate right, who was on my first international research team as an undergraduate at Banaras Hindu University, was presenting at the conference. We ran into each other at the dinner the first night. Nirmal Upreti from Nepal was also there to co-present with me and his wife, Manju. They are on my left. I don't know the two women on the far left. Maybe future colleagues. The rest of the crowd are my Missouri Western students.
There is so much more to the GAJE Conference, and most good conferences, than the workshops, where we get to learn about legal clinic projects around the world. One of my favorite conference activities is the field trips, where we get to see what NGOs are doing in the host country. We visited a youth assistance and advocacy project at this conference.

My co-presenters and co-panels did an excellent job demonstrating our projects in Myanmar and Nepal. Our audience participated in our activities enthusiastically. Hopefully they took something home with them that they can use in their communities.

Bakso, the Indonesian meatball soup, is delicious. It's a common street food. The vendor looked skeptical when I said I wanted it spicy. I sat on a tiny plastic chair to enjoy this while one of his customers who could speak English talked to me. This was a great way to be welcomed to Indonesia.