Touristas o voluntarios?

Not yet volunteers but happy tourists

This is day 5 of my 27 months and I feel more like a tourist than a volunteer. Tomorrow I will move in with my homestay family which I'm looking forward to as I feel like I will start to transition away from the tourist feeling. Our hotel is amazing, so much more comfortable than anything I stay in when I'm traveling (maybe that's because I've grown accustomed to sleeping in buses, hammocks, tents and big-ridden bunk beds). The housekeeping and restaurant crowd are very gracious and most nights we have live entertainment. One of the waiters changes clothes, and he sings everything from classic Ethiopian favorites to Lionel Richee. His friend, who is also a great singer, plays a keyboard and we can't get enough of them.

Injera, wot, breaded fish, stuffed tomato, green salad and macaronie, carrot and lentil salad. 

Table of delicious salads

Pretty swanky lobby of my hotel

Today was our first day of language class, and I am finally thrilled to learn Amharic. Before I was too intimidated to even hope I could EVER communicate effectively. Now I can meet, greet, and speak superficially with my friends in the restaurant. A few of my fellow volunteers are African American, which is a curse and a blessing. With language, Ethiopians expect them to know Amharic fluently, because obviously they are black, and therefore Ethiopian (the Ethiopians cannot be convinced otherwise). Being Caucasian, I am immediately excused from speaking a native African language. We learned very basic, yet crucial phrases, regarding food, water, bathrooms and polite ways to express need for such things.

After lunch we did a city tour of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, the headquarters of the African Union and the home of the largest outdoor market in Africa. We went to a museum that occupies Haile Sellasie's last palace. This was a cultural museum that covered much of the ethnic diversity, rituals, food, crafts, art, currency and religion. Additionally, the museum has a lot of former emperor Haile Sellasie's lion mane-hair embellished robes, a taxidermy abssydian lion, fine china and his bedroom, bathroom, and closet. Their was a  dressing mirror in his closet with a hole from a bullet that occurred from a coup de t'au from the 1960's. I had the goose-bumps being in Haile Sellasie's bedroom. HAILE SELASSIE!!!

Haile Sellasie's palace at the University of Addis Ababa

Next we went to another anthropology/archaeology museum that held a beautiful art collection, statues, prehistoric tools, musical instruments and in the basement a robust display of homosapien and dinosaur bones. When not touring the U.S. Lucy calls this museum home.

Lucy replica