Sleep, or what you will.

So, I have had this amazing and almost complete lack of jetlag this trip.It's been great, and weird.

I got here at midnight, got picked up and driven back to the cabin, ate some breakfast and was in bed before 2 am.
Woke up at about 7am.
Stayed up till 10 pm no naps, and actually felt pretty normal. And had a great day!!

And since then, life has been normal.
I'm amazed. And slightly creeped out. But awfully pleased.
^_^


This week has been amazing.
A whole week at the cabin, relaxing, acting all cool. Playing watersports outside by the lake.

Yup.
Boating! Canoeing! Tubing!! Jumping into the lake whenever I feel like it!

The weather has been amazing. We ordered a good week for our family reunion, and mother nature really came through! We'll have to give her a tip for good service. ^_^

We got to see all sorts of family, we had almost 60 people come.
By tomorrow they will all have gone home again.

And we will be back, in 2 years, to do it all again. ^_^

Packed and waiting.

I have an hour and a half before I need to leave for the airport. It feels almost surreal that I am leaving tonight. I won't believe it till I'm on the plane.
*heh*

But I'm definitely excited for what I'm headed to!!

I fly to London, then Calgary, then Seatle, then Kalispell, where my lovely lovely parents will take me to the cabin on the lake and I can get over my jetlag in a completely summery and leisurely fashion.
^_^
YAY!

It's going to be a very long day of travelling to get there.

But the end result is completely worth it.
^_^

And the rain it rained... every day.

It is rainy season here in Ethiopia. That means it rains. Every day.

This year has had exceptionally heavy rain though. There is flooding in Nazaret, and many people have been displaced because of it. When we drove out to Awash, there were sections of the landscape that were under water.. and shouldn't have been.

Today, it rained some more. Surprise!

It was an incredible downpour.  We could hardly see out of the van windows  the rain was coming down so hard! Plus, the defrost function doesn't work in most vehicles here. Usually, this isn't really an issue since it never freezes. But when it rains... the windshield does get rather foggy.

So, we could hardly see.

The traffic was stalled and slow because no one else could see either. Or because people in small cars had decided to brave the small lakes that were forming at the bottoms of hills and any flat spaces, and had flooded their engines with water. Not gonna get that moving any time soon!  But of course, they were stuck in their vehicles, with water rising to the bottoms of the doors, and splashing right over them whenever any larger vehicle drove past.

Even our van got completely submerged in a passing spray as another van went speeding past us. And we were on the edge of the puddle!

There are many many hills here in Addis, and the water was running downhill so fast that it couldn't even get into the sewers. Or if it could, it had overloaded their capacity and was merely shooting straight up out of the sewer covers farther down the road.

So what with bad visibility, stalled vehicles blocking the road, and an over anxiety of every other driver on the road to get to where they were going without getting flooded.... it was a rather crazy drive home.
O_o

Awash, Afar

Awash is a city, in the Afar Region. It is not too terribly far from Adama, and Awassa.  And yes, I think everything in that area starts with A.

It is a five hour drive from Addis, if the traffic is reasonable, and is down out of the mountains a bit. It is also much, much warmer than it is up here in Addis.
Next time I go to Awash, I am not wearing black sweat pants.
I will wear a skirt.
And a nice blousy shirt.

And sunscreen.
Possibly even a hat.

We went there and back today, and spent around 10 hours in the van. It was interesting countryside though, more what people think of when they visualize Ethiopia; dusty, rocky, covered in scrub and accacia trees.  The road construction may not immediately spring to mind, but it is also dusty and rocky, so it's not too hard a stretch of the imagination.

To get to Awash, we go through an area that is covered in old volcanic rock. Lots of extremely bumpy, rough, and porous black rock was piled everywhere, in the same places it has lain for who knows how many hundred years since the volcano erupted.
There is no volcano anymore. It's a crater. A crater with a road through the middle. A crater that is slowly but surely filling with water, and that road is nearly submerged now. It used to be quite high up!
This is one of the major reasons for all the road construction.

There is a rail road that threads it's way through this area as well, and also crosses the growing lake. There aren't any trains running on it anymore. You can tell, because where it crosses the pavement it has been paved over, and because the people in nearby towns use it as a convenient place to dry large pieces of laundry.

You don't realize that you are in the mountains when you are in Addis. You have to leave the city to be able to see them. They are not at all like the Rocky Mountains back home. They are smaller, closer, and softer. They are old and worn, and look like they've been smoothed over with loving hand. Or washed partially away with the rain. Or both.
The scrub and the rounded tops of the mountains hide a much rougher inside though. If you try to cut into it, the rock is just as rocky and hard as any granite in BC.  Construction of any kind is always identifiable by the piles of rock chunks of every shape and size surrounding the area being worked on.

We also passed by a National Park, and saw some baboons keeping watch at the gate. And several herds of camels grazing on the treetops that the cattle and goats can't reach.
We also saw a hyena - but it wasn't as nice to look at. It was roadkill. Ick.

And now I am back in Addis, at my lovely and cool guesthouse room. And I think I need a shower to wash off the film of diesel exhaust that you simply cannot escape when you share the road with big rigs in Ethiopia.

Ciao!

They're bright *pink*

I went and got my nails done. O_O
This is a first for me. I have never gone anywhere to get my nails done before. I think a roommate may once have painted them for me, but I'm iffy on the truth of that statement.

Who'd'a thunk my first manicure would be in Ethiopia?

One of the programs we support is vocational training for young adults, and one of the vocations is beauty salon skills, like hairdressing and manicures.

So, we all went and saw the training center and enjoyed chatting with the Director, and then got our nails done. Handy that all the volunteers this trip are female, no?
^_^

Anyways. They had no such demure colours as I usually permit my nails to be if they are painted at all, so I had bright pink chosen for me. And it is BRIGHT. PINK.

I always think my fingers look strangely deformed when the nails are a substantially different colour from natural.  I mean, I'll get used to it I suppose. But usually I try it, take one look, and wipe the whole mess off.

And go back to nude cream colours that basically only make my nails shinier.

*heh*

And this picture makes my hand look like a disembodied apparition, but whatever.

Activity Day!

We took the kids from one of the centers on a bus out of town, to a swimming pool! Not many of them had ever had such an experience before!
Some of the girls were afraid to get into the water at all.

I can't get some of these pictures to turn. Dang computerr.

After swimming, we all had lunch. Then we played games. There was a pinata, egg-on-a-spoon races, and potato sack races.

Sure was fun!!

Playing in the rain

Today was a bit more of tourist-y day... we went shopping.
It's all little outdoor stalls with excessively interesting things hanging from the walls and ceilings and piled up on the floors...
So of course, it rained all morning.

Which just made the inside of those little stalls all that much more attractive!
*heh*

I didn't buy anything.
I almost never do.

Except lunch.

3 days in, and a lot of paint later.

This time round in Ethiopia, I am the team leader, which means I have the binder and everyone's phone numbers.

I am also running an art class at each of the centers. And all of my projects involve paint. So I brought my beloved painting pants with me. They cost me $8, and are a work in progress... since every time I paint, a little more colour ends up on them.

But I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm making a mess!!

The kids loved them. They also then immediately wanted their own clothes painted and decorated. >_< Dang.

We compromised by painting things on their hands. And some of their clothes.
They're insistent, what can I say?

It's been raining like crazy today, which is appropriate. It's the rainy season, after all. ^_^  The sound of the rain falling on the tin roofs is quite lovely.

The other members of the team have been doing fun games, and reading activities. And writing! We had the older kids write stories, or just short autobiographies, in English. Then we made them read them outloud to us. ^_^  Aren't we sweet?

The younger kids needed the stories translated, since they are just starting to learn English in school. We had them act out the stories. That was lots of fun too!!

Tomorrow, we are going on a field trip. I'll take lots of pictures. Pinky swear.

Flights and jetlag and layovers

I am in London.  Paid some cash to get into a lounge with nicer chairs and some wi-fi. YAY! Internet! The world outside the airplane exists!!

It may be 5 am at home, and I only had half an hour of sleep last night (on the plane).

We need to invent teleportation people. I want to get across the world without having to be sleep deprived and crammed in a small chair for long uncomfortable hours.

I think it's about 11 am here. I think. My flight doesn't leave till 17:00 London time. Which means I have a lot of time to crash about and think about food.

I met up with two of my team members in Calgary, and they decided they wanted to go see London while we were here. It is a rather long layover, so there's certainly enough time to sight-see.
I opted to not carry my backpack and laptop bag around all day, and just stick it out here. With more comfortable chairs.

And internet.
Did I mention that???