Day Four!
on New Adventures in Ethiopia (Ethiopia), 06/Feb/2009 09:40, 34 days ago
The day started at 8 with language training in two sessions. We seem to be learning quite a bit. I can not count and say some things…I can function in a shop, I can ride a taxi and I can ask someone to introduce themselves. The words in Amharic are really long sometimes. I have an advantage because the unusual sounds we have in Armenian are the same in Amharic. Most of the Brits here can’t pronounce those sounds like ‘ts’and ‘kg’ and ‘jh’. But the word lengths are long for example…thank you is ‘ameseginalo’…yeah…We had some really interesting and useful sessions on safety and security, Ethiopian culture and the people and the appropriate and inappropriate ways to act. Again, because of the Orthodox background, everything is almost identical to the Armenian traditional way of doing things so it wasn’t much of a surprise to me. We also had a session on the logistics of our accommodations and how we are to take care of our surroundings and how to interact with guards that we will need to hire.Half way through the sessions, I went with Geleta and Thachika(VSO staff) back to the airport to locate my luggage. We were told it was put on the flight to Addis from London but of course I could not find it so after robbing the guy at baggage claim we discovered that there has been a snow storm in London and the flight never came. The older ladies here are really annoying. They all have these posh British accents and they basically crowded around me to ask about my luggage as soon as I came back. It was annoying…I just told them ‘its really ok’ aka ‘leave me alone, I will really be cool…’ . They kept saying ‘oh you pooooor thing’ lol…how is that supposed to make me feel better?? Anyway…I think I have been the most withdrawn of the other volunteers that are here. I think the mass of British people is more of a culture shock to me than the Ethiopians believe it or not. I had forgotten how British ways are actually different than mine in so many ways. I just feel I don’t have that drive to small talk and make new friends…I like to talk to people but Im more interested in the interesting one to one conversations I’ve had.The training ended at 6 and I went to my room and basically crashed. The jetlag has really caught up with me. So here I am, 5am or so…updating my blog which I haven’t even been able to post yet because I don’t have enough internet access. I was supposed to have an internet time slot at 9:30 but I slept right through that and I also slept through dinner. I was not fussed about that because Ethiopian food is delicious and wehave been extremely lavishly fed for the days we have been here. I was starting to feel really full. Having said that I feel I’ve already lost weight…ah…the joys of organic food…Hopefully, today I will get my luggage…