Happy Birthday to .... "you"?

Tough weekend.  It’s cool because I can have awesome experiences but still be reflecting on the day and be like “this is hard”.  We went to an NGO bazar in the morning – it’s a place where all the non-profits from around the area sell things they’ve been making.  There were a lot of scarves, but other than that most of the stuff varied from beads to pictures to rugs to outside lawn chairs.  The Ethiopian government makes it really hard for foreigners to live here/work here: in order to get a work visa, you have to have permission from a company/non-profit saying that they need you to work, and that you’re doing something that an Ethiopian can’t do.  You can’t even own a house unless you were born in Ethiopia.  So even though some of the non-profits are run by Americans (i.e. Because of Kennedy), the locals are the ones who are working it.  Kind of cool.

 

Bounce houses in Ethiopia... legit.

IT HAILED.  and it's 60 degrees. Weather is weird.

This is actually what I'm doing in Ethiopia all summer...

I like tuttles.

ICECREAM. I think these scoops are baby scoops. No wonder non-Americans are so skinny.

After the bazar we went to my first ever International Birthday Party! It was for one of the families from the International School – the father works for the UN and they’ve been in Ethiopia for almost 2 years.  The family was from Lithuania and a lady from Australia stopped by for a bit – even with all the International representation, I still felt like I was at an upper class white people birthday party. Except there were healthier snacks, the cupcakes were smaller, and they gave tablespoons of ice cream in the cones instead of ½ cup scoops. I definitely didn’t feel like I was in Africa – they had rented a bounce house and had a trampoline and a playground in the backyard – the only thing that was noticeably different was that the view from the wrap around porch looked into a concrete wall lined with barbed wire.  I’m kind of frustrated with myself because I TOTALLY missed an opportunity to learn about other cultures.  Instead I let myself be frustrated that I felt like I was wasting my time, when I wasn’t taking advantage of getting to see a completely different side of Africa that no one ever talks about.  It’s the side where different cultures exist and people actually live lives kind of similar to mine, just in Ethiopia, and they’re from Lithuania instead of Roswell, GA.  That’s cool.