Amharic language spurt!

So the other day I was reading my friend and travel mate Nancy's blog (Hi Nancy!) and salivating over the super cool Amharic alphabet workbook she found for her daughter, and thinking: Aaah, if I only lived in the U.S. I would have so much access to so much cool Amharic stuff.

Then I started trying to figure out if it was realistic for me to try to buy the book and somehow get it over to Egypt. Well, I think Mike's best friend has been in Chicago a lot on business and was thinking of seeing if he is still there and if I can dispatch him to the Ethiopian market to buy the book and then hold on to it until we are next in the U.S. And then I thought, hmmm, that sounds like a pretty shaky little plan. And I thought about just sending money by mail to the guy who made the book and asking him to mail it to me, and that sounded kinda iffy also.

So imagine my surprise when Tiberh walked into our house this morning with two books for Maya including an Amharic alphabet book! You know, the kind where you can trace out the letters and there are pictures with words starting with the letter you are learning to write. What a bizarre coincidence. It turns out Tiberh's housemate and friend Helen had picked it up for Maya on a recent trip to Addis. Actually, we had asked Helen to see if she could find any children's books in Addis before her trip, but it had been quite a while since we spoke to her and I had forgotten all about it. So thanks Helen!!

If anyone else wants to surprise us with Amharic stuff... We could really use some Amharic fridge magnets!! Or Amharic kids videos, other than the one 30-minute DVD that we already have. Yeah, yeah, I know, not a chance...

But speaking of language, Maya has been having a major Amharic language spurt. She actually volunteers words in Amharic to Tiberh. She knows lots of words now and is learning to count in both languages. It is actually very cute as she mixes the numbers. She will say something like: One, two, sost. Or Und, three, five. Very cute.

We also have had very cute conversations about who is beautiful (or konjo), which according to maya is only her. Here is our sample conversation.

Maya: Maya konjo!
Me: Yes, Maya konjo. Mommy konjo?
Maya: Maya konjo!
Me: Daddy konjo?
Maya: Daddy, Daddy ... Maya konjo!
Me: Tibi konjo?
Maya: Maya konjo
Me: Daddy konjo?
Maya (whispering and barely audible): Daddy konjo...