Museums, Thanksgiving, Shipping, Hiking....all this and much more in Ethiopia

The day finally arrived. Our shipment with our car and household goods made it-most of it. As many of you know homeland security rifled though our goods looking for "weapons of mass distraction" and only found a bottle of laundry detergent and packed it with my beer making supplies. It spilled, resulting in a moldy sugar detergent soup that would make anyone vomit after a quick whiff. The added bonus was our repacked truck with a guitar and amp on bicycles. No consideration for other people's property.  

Not pictured is the flat tire.

5 months later. We were also charged a extra. The school messed up on our paperwork-so we get to pay. I think this is how the shippers, school, etc. makes extra money. They aren't incompetent, just smart business people who know how to shakedown customers. 

"Hey boss, there might be AK-47's in dat der painting, let's cut it open!"

Thanksgiving with our neighbors. 

A gigantic art billboard made of circuit boards.

We finally got around to visiting the National Museum. Olmeca Head. There is a roundabout called Mexico, and I think this is where it came from for safekeeping with all the construction. Olmeca is also a duty-free tequila that should be avoided.

Haile Selassie 

What we once looked like.

Lucy and not Ricky Ricardo's media naranja (better half)

Haile Selassie's chair

Better than live sheep's wool. 

You'll have to come and visit for yourself to see the cool artifacts and art. 

Communist era art.

Meskel

Ethiopia is this scenic.

If we grew up being a punker in the 80's, I bet your first thought is the Bad Brains. 

This why we moved here... 

...and this too.

We stopped by the annex building for the Nigs exhibit by Mezgebu-a heavy hitter in the Ethiopia art scene. Think hyper realism.

Another afternoon out-of-town adventure. We parked at a spot and noticed several men leaning against their cars sitting on the ground chewing qat (chat). That seemed like a good spot to hike. 

Qat power! Monica in the middle is holding a rock, we've been chased by dogs during our past two outings.

Bale Mountains, the trip that almost was.

As a very part-time grade 9 advisor I got asked to tag along on their Week Without Walls trip to the Bale Mountains. According to the head honcho, the trip is usually in mid-December, when the rainy season is well into the books. This year's trip was an exception, I guess the person who made the master schedule for WWW decided to test fate (or ignore both sound advise and mother nature). After nearly a 10-hour drive, we arrived to the land of continuous rain. Long story short, the trip was abandoned two days into it, months of planning activities for the kids-a total waste, 20-hours to and fro in a bus dodging livestock...In the end, the kids had fun as we spent the last 2 days doing day-trips (Lake Langano and Menagesha Forest).  As I as said before, Ethiopia has some of the most amazing landscape in the world, one day I hope to return to the Bale Mountains.