And so sad that I only have 6 weeks to go! I can barely look at the posts from my classmates who are finishing up their internships and heading home…just a reminder of what’s coming for me. My time in Addis with UNESCO IICBA so far has been exciting and challenging in all the right ways. I’m not looking forward to leaving.
But that’s for another blog post! So the last couple of weeks I’ve been busy; my dad came to visit for two weeks. It was a really special trip for the two of us because the previous times I’ve been to Eritrea and Ethiopia have been with my mom. My dad lived in Ethiopia for 17 years before he left during the Eritrean/Ethiopian war in the late 70’s so we spent most of his trip spending time with his old friends and visiting his high school, university and places he used to hang. We went south of Addis one weekend to see where he had first real job as an engineer at a sugar plant. I now know more about how sugar is processed than I ever thought I would.
My dad is constantly asking me to make him famous on Facebook and Instagram, so here are a bunch of snapshots of him during our trip:
We spent one weekend in Debre Zeit, which isn’t too far from Addis. It has a bunch of beautiful crater lakes with resorts that surround the lakes. We spent most of our time eating and laying by the water.
It was really nice having him here. It was also really nice staying at his fancy hotel with him for two weeks.
Besides my dad’s visit, I’ve been busy at IICBA. IICBA is hosting a conference with the African Union on teacher mobility in a couple of weeks. The other interns and I came in at the perfect time to help out with logistics and such and we’ll get to attend the workshop where a bunch of sessions will be run by different experts on different topics including teacher motivation, teacher standards, and teachers in emergency settings by different experts. It’s been a great learning opportunity to see how a conference like this comes together and I’m looking forward to sitting in on the sessions.
Besides the conference, I’ve just been working on my early grade reading instruction guide for teachers and I got to help out a bit on a teacher training on building resilience in young children. Resilience building is something completely foreign to me so I enjoyed being pushed out of my comfort zone.
Well that’s all that I’ve been up to! Until my next post!
The International Educational Development Program 