3 weeks to go.

No one who hasn't done it can imagine how difficult it is to disentangle yourself from the years of building up a multitude of connections and commitments in your home country, or countries in our case, in order to pack up and go away for a couple of years. Just when you think you have all the arrangements made, the gremlins come calling. We've just returned to Holland from seeing the family in England and doing another VSO training course, when the boiler fails to produce hot water (a cold shower is good training for Ethiopia where we will have no hot water), the insurance company refuses to cover us if we rent to students, even the adult postgraduates who are moving in next Monday, the battery of the new notebook computer doesn't work and the internet and TV connections go on the blink. By comparison, working in Ethiopia will seem like a doddle.

We leave on 11th September from Spain, not a terribly auspicious date, though with stopovers we don't arrive until the 13th. Then we have 8 days or so of in-country training in Addis Ababa, including classes in the language of the area we are going to, before taking that day-long bus ride to Nekemte to see what it holds in store for us.