Yesterday was great. Although I was very tired, I was able to power through.
After all the flight craziness, I got off in Addis Ababa, bags and flights all figured out. I had a tricky time finding the driver that WFG had organized for me, but I got some strangers to call the guy and eventually figured it out.
Addis is a very large city. It’s truly a concrete jungle. Buildings are so tightly packed and they seem to be racing one another to the sky. There is so much new infrastructure being built as well. Everywhere I looked I saw 5 to 10 new skyscrapers going up. Greenery is sparse, but there are some infrequent parks littered throughout the areas I’ve been. A lot of urban playgrounds and bike paths. Overall, I really enjoy the vibe here. For the few days I’m here, it’s going to be very quiet I think because Monday and Tuesday are the celebration of the Easter holiday and people take time off.
Anyways, I got to the hotel and had a minor issue there with the reservation, but it got figured out pretty quickly. And boom, my day started. I had about an hour to get settled and shower. I then got picked up to go start my day at the office.
The day was fairly boring—which I needed. I spent most of the time learning the software systems that the company uses. My tutorial was very in depth and I knew a lot of the things already, but I think it’s just some policy that every new hire has to be oriented in a standard way.
For lunch my two friends, who were so kind to come to the office on a holiday to give me my orientation, added onto their kindness by taking me out to lunch. The place where we ate was absolutely wonderful. It was on the top story terrace of a building nearby the office. The place was advertised as a jazz club (they used to, but no longer, offer live jazz music). There were plants and greenery covering the walls and fences, soft jazz music playing, a nice breeze, a distant ambiance from the streets below and a wonderful scent from a burning resin (I later learned that to accompany coffee people always burn this tree resin type of incense). Don’t ask me what lunch was, the language—Amharic—is very difficult for me, but hopefully I can pick some up like I did Kiswahili.
After lunch we went back to the office to continue with orientation. The day ended right around 5 and at that point I was exhausted. I got back to the hotel, laid down at 6 just to “nap” and woke up 12 hours later this morning.