This post is brought to you by the letter:

The thirty-second symbol of the Amharic alphabet is called ÄF and it sounds like a letter F.
|The animations were made according to the instructions in the book Writing and Reading Amharic and the sounds are from the site Amharic Online. Phonetic symbols according to David Appleyard.

print	phonetics	how to write it and say it	examples
	fä		(färäs) horse
	fu		(fuč’ät) whistling
	fi		(fiñña) balloon
	fa		(fasika) Easter
	fe		(märfe) needle
	fï (just f of a word)		(fïk’ïr) love
	fo		(fot’a) towel

Ademas la combinacion de los sonidos f y wa forman un octavo simbolo o “fwa”:.

Finally, the complete sequence in alphabetical order :

Next week, the last symbol, or letter P.

AliciA

Now that we got past the bad moment of seeing our court date postponed, I’m using all my energy to learn Amharic.
I switched from recognizing the alphabet to trying to get used to the sound of the language so that with a bit of luck I’ll be capable to speak a little when the children arrive. Since I still have two months ahead, better take advantage of that extra time.
The language sounds very musical to me, specially when spoken by a child.
I’m not sure if I will be able to help the children to keep their language, but at least I will try, that’s is why I need to know more. I also don’t know how much will I be able to speak by the time of the trip, but I think that maybe not much…
I couldn’t find anyone that teaches Amharic in Portland. There are some Ethiopian stores and restaurants but no one who teaches the language.
I’m planning in my visit to Ethiopia to buy everything I can find to keep learning, like books, CDS and DVDs.

Changing the subject, yesterday I received a baby swing (or that’s what I thought) I bought online to hang in the playground we have in our backyard. The problem is that is a “half bucket” swing seat and I realized that the baby girl can easily slip from the front.
So, I brought out my creativity and made a strong belt that goes between the legs so she can’t fall and that also can be easily removed so the older child can use the swing seat without the belt.
As you can see, I found things to do to mitigate the waiting…

AliciA[/spanish]

Unfortunately we couldn’t pass the Court because some papers of one of the children weren’t there.
There’s nothing we can do from here since that depends on the Ethiopian Institutions and it seems to be something very common, specially these days with so many adoptions in process.
We’ve been assigned a new Court date on November 6th and a tentative travel date for December 14th.
I will find something to do to calm the anxiety but what hurts me more is that the children will have to spend an extra month in the Orphanage growing up far from their family.
I’m sure they are in good hands , well cared for and loved and that they will be there waiting for us when we travel to get them.
If everything goes as planned and if we don’t encounter more problems along the way we will be home by December 21st, just before Christmas, that on the other hand is not that bad since Dylan is going to be out of school for the winter vacations and we’ll spend a couple of weeks the 5 of us together at home.
Patience…
Now I don’t have any excuses to finish some things of this blog and to learn a little bit more of Amharic.
Back to waiting, then…

AliciA

We are still waiting…
The Agency told us that we won’t have any news of how everything went on the Court until tomorrow, so we will have to be patient for  a few more hours.
In the meantime I would like to post some links for those who are interested in Amharic.
The first one is a site named Quizlet that has a quiz about Amharic letters and that one of the readers of the blog kindly sent to me. Thanks Pajaro!
The transcription is a little bit different but I still find it useful to learn the letters.

The second link is of Ethiopia Bound, a blog of a family that recently brought their child from Ethiopia and that posted a video recorded by an Ethiopian friend with basic Amharic words to communicate with a child.
I would recommend that before playing the video, turn up the volume but also pause the volume of the background music; the controls are at the bottom of the page.
It doesn’t have many words, but basic things like: Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Does anything hurt?, etc.
I wanted to post a basic words list but I haven’t had much free time lately and I think that soon I will have no free time at all…

Oh well, let’s keep waiting!

AliciA