Day 7 - "They call me Mister Adrian..."

Once again pitched up at the street kids breakfast, partly to introduce Sam Littleboy and Jo Ashton to the Hope team, but mainly to find out how the exams went (OK, since you ask). Sam is our IT expert, and thus much in demand from the projects here. Jo is a management accountant, and for the next six months is liable to wake up in a cold sweat whenever Peachtree is mentioned (special joke for management accountants everywhere).

Left them to it and headed on over to the school to teach a few more art classes again. It's quite rewarding when the kids see you heading for the classrooms and start shouting for you to come to their class, and then the class you walk into erupts into cheers. I've never felt so wanted in my life. My Amharic is improving every day - I now know "Sit down", "Be quiet", "Brilliant", "Beautiful" and "Do you understand?" which pretty much covers me for all teaching situations. It can be very slow progress in Art, as the kids insist on coming up and showing me their drawings each time they draw another line.

I also join Lauren and Fiona for a PE class. This time, after the usual warm up, Fiona gets them playing British Bulldog, although it should probably be renamed Ethiopian Bulldog because the Brits proved pretty hopeless at it. Damn, those kids are fast.

After another great lunch provided by the catering students, I had to pop out to get some gifts for those who had hosted us. Ethiopians are probably the most hospitable people I've met, and take it very seriously, so I felt it was important to hold the British end up. On the other hand, it did occur to me that they might think the whole concept of wrapping paper to be wasteful and slightly crazy, so I used newspaper. Now I'm worried they'll just think I'm tight.