One week!

Now we’ve been in Ethiopia for 1 week! The time has flown by in one way, but at the same time it feels like we’ve been here for a long time. We have seen so many things in a short time, from the poorest of the poor living on the side walk in a heap of rubble to the wealthy staying at the Hilton Hotel. We have learned some general things about Ethiopia, at least about Addis. One is that it is absolutely crowded with people! When we are driving around there is just tons and tons of people everywhere. There is a lot of people working everywhere as well. In the super marked we have been to a few times there is a person standing around at each isle of the store, some working and others just standing around. It seems they try to employ as many people as possible, which is good I guess. At the hotel next door there are sometimes five people just guarding the gate.

Things also don’t move as fast as we are used to in Norway. Ordering and getting food takes a long time, and sometimes they just forget you ordered something. People just seem to chill a bit more, they have all the time in the world. But they are very helpful and so far we’ve met mostly friendly people. There was one person yelling after one of us because we took a picture out the window of the car driving by, and some kids wanting money for pictures. So we have to be a bit discrete when taking pictures, which means I can’t just walk around shooting with my big camera, and I end up with a lot of bad pictures. So I guess some things I’ll just have to remember!

The food here, if you want to eat Ethiopian food, seems to be quite spicy. We ordered curry the other day and it was so hot we could hardly eat it! Hopefully it helps kill some bacteria : )  I can find a lot of the same food I got in England, I’ve even found tesco (supermarked in england) products, hehe. I got myself a tesco washingline strung up in my room. I am very happy to have found weetabix and dutch longlasting milk, so now I’m good to go for breakfast.

Today we handed out two of the footballs (soccer balls) we brought to some kids living in the same street as the guesthouse, and they were very happy and started playing with them right away. Today I also saw some ladies cleaning their carpets, they brought them out on the pavement and put them down pretty much in the middle of the street, threw a bunch of water and soap on them and started scrubbing :)