Market Day

Good morning!

What ever is that noise?  Oh.  Its singing.  What time is it? 5:00am!!?
oh.

It is the Orthodox Church, singing, loudly, over a speaker system. This goes on for quite a while each morning. The birds start their singing around the same time as well.  It starts getting light at around 6 and that's when the roosters join in!! Needless to say that combined with jet lag is making for some short nights of sleep.

This morning Warren, Belay and Wolansa (Gelila's uncle and aunt who are our landlords) went to the airport to check on our pallet status.  Turns out it wasn't on our flight after all and will be arriving tomorrow (Sunday) and that we should be able to pick it up on Monday.

Later in the afternoon, Wolansa took us to the outdoor market which has MANY stalls selling everything from rugs to chickens, kitchen gadgets (dollar store like quality) to goats, socks to lentils....You get the idea.  Many thousands of people and animals crowded together.  I soon became overwhelmed and we ended up just purchasing a floor rug for Cameron's room.

We then made our way to a butcher shop, which was a place between the stall near our house where you point at the part of the cow you want and the "ALLMART" where you can buy your meat packaged similar to our grocery store.  The beef was in big chunks behind some glass and you would tell the butcher which chunk you wanted and how heavy in Kgs.  I asked for mine to be ground so he put my chunks in his I'm sure very food sanitary grinder and voila ground beef.  We got home around 6:30 and were all hungry so I browned the beef, cooked some pasta and made a cheese sauce.  The dairy here is interesting.  It comes from local cows and has an aftertaste that I am not used to.  I have experimented trying some in 1 lt tetra packs from Belgium and Holland and they taste more like our milk at home so Cameron has agreed to drink it :)

All through the day the qualifying soccer match for the world cup between Ethiopia and South Africa was on.  It was very obvious every time Ethiopia scored because of the cheering and car honking in the streets.  Ethiopia ended up with the win and the people in the streets went crazy!! Children running down the middle of the roads screaming and cheering, cars honking, people clapping and hugging.  It was quite a sight!

Andy and Jo were out until about 9:30 having a visit with a contact from last year and his wife and two little girls.  They ended up having to walk most of the way home as the streets were so crowded because of the soccer game and taxis were hard to come by.   But from the sounds of it the visit was well worth the walk! We are looking forward to Sunday meeting tomorrow, there should be a grand total of 7 of us :)