back home

I forgot how slow dial-up connections are...this month will be a test of patience, ha.

Well, the trip over here was very smooth. The flight from Newark was delayed about an hour, but not a big deal. We got to London in about 6 1/2 hours and I had the whole day to walk around and relax a bit. It was really nice. I went to the Whole Foods in Kensington, which was quite amazing. They had about 6 or 7 different restaurants on the third floor - thank God for that discount card! Other than that I simply walked around London for the day.

I left London on another overnight flight and got in this morning to Ethiopia at 7:30am local time (12:30am in PA). I was greeted by my host, Dr. Frew as well as Birhanu and Eshete - both of whom are part of our NGO (Non-Government Organization) staff. We had a few errands to run, but we made sure to stop and grab a machiatto before we came home. They really do have some great coffee here and it is so nice to drink such fresh coffee (and so cheap too!)

Didn't really do much today, we visited the Ethiopian Dept. of Justice because Frew is working on renewing the NGO status with the government (apparently it is about to expire). He said it has been more than 2 weeks and they have still not completed the paperwork. It was supposed to be done by today, but was not.
The rest of my day I spent sleeping and spending time with Frew's boys. However, soon after I woke up Frew said that he and Frehiwot (his wife) and his father were going to a wedding. They invited me to go along, so of course I accepted the invitation.

Ethiopian weddings are quite a long process. First you have the initial ceremony which is thrown by both the bride and groom's family. Then, two days later you have a party thrown just by the bride's family and then two days after that another party by the groom's family (I think I got that in the right order...). So, today was the second party. It was quite nice. Lots of really good food, some nice music. I always enjoy seeing other culture's ceremonies, so this was really nice. On Sunday I am supposed to be going to another wedding (I wish Frew had told me to bring a suit!!).

The weather here is perfect. Today was in the upper 60s low 70s, it was cloudy for most of today which is why it was a bit cooler. But the rainy season finished about two weeks back. So the ground has not yet dried out completely and it has not yet gotten hot. Should be a lovely couple of weeks here.

It sure feels nice to be back here. As soon as I could see Ethiopia from the airplane - and even more once I stepped onto Ethiopian soil - I had this overwhelming sensation like I was coming back home. Everything seemed so familiar to me, even Amharic words that I had forgotten came flooding back into my head. In some strange way I felt as if I had been on vacation for the last year. It is a very nice feeling and wonderful to be surrounded by so many great people. Everyone was happy to see me and it was a sweet day of reuniting with friends.

It looks like I will not be going to Sendafa until Friday. Frew has a lot of work to catch up on because he was busy the last week or two with other things. So, we will spend most of our time in Addis. Which is actually a good thing because it will allow us some time to figure out what my long term job could be here (and since that's the main purpose of this trip it's good that we have time to do it).

I think that's all for now. I'm pretty tired so I'm going to try to get some more rest and hopefully tomorrow will be back normal (the trip over took 30 hours, and I couldn't fall asleep the whole way). Luckily my dad had given me some No-Jet-Lag...I'll tell you what, that product really works. When I landed I felt like it was 7:30 in the morning, when really I should have felt like it was in the middle of the night.

Ciao!

p.s. The blog website is not working for me currently. This post was supposed to be posted on Tuesday evening Pennsylvania time, but I couldn't get it to work. So, for now I will be emailing my mom the posts and she will be posting them. Hopefully that works better.