Gonder

We had the opportunity (really we just miss calculated our time) to spend extra time here in Gonder. It’s a city you can easily do in one day if you just go from site to site, but we got 2 days to take it easy, and we’ll have another 2 days to celebrate Timkat with the locals – the epiphany.

When walking around a town with no destination in mind, that’s when you can really appreciate everything outside the typical tourist trail. The tourist trails is full of young people yelling hello, how are you, where you go. All try to sell us Kleenex packs or gum by the stick. Some of the kids just ask straight up “give me money”. I find them entertain, screw the pleasantries just give me money.

Side streets, now those are interesting. When you have all day to get to one church, you can let yourself get lost in streets where people are busy doing their own thing.

We got all the way to the local market today. Jack compared it to an outdoor Walmart – you can get anything there! Clothes, animals (dead or alive), spices, tons of dried red pepper, baskets and buckets and everything!

The last 2 days has been relaxing, it has been eye opening for local Ethiopian culture, and it’s been fun! FYI I’m really enjoying the food, so no further weight loss. Pierre – I’m on the last notch of the belt… :S

Last night we had the chance to out to Ase Bekkafa (something like that), a local dance club. You should all YouTube traditional shoulder dancing Ethiopia – if you thought you could “pop and lock it”, you haven’t seen locals dance! Jack even got pulled onto the stage, and I think she did great! Locals loved it. As you can see from my last post, I’m having difficulty posting videos, but hopefully the one of her dancing will be posted soon!

Oh ya, and the sites – we saw the Royal Grounds today, beautiful, old palaces, not what we’d expect to see on Ethiopia, but interesting none the less! And yesterday we visited a gorgeous church where a monk showed us around, pointing to the painting covered walls and explaining their reference to the Bible. Jack and this monk had plenty to chat about as I just stained at all the paintings. Debre Birhan Selassie, thank you.

All for now! Timkat tomorrow. Let’s hope I manage to keep my wallet. :)Read more