It seems like my life is going to be wonderfully boring. In one respect I love having a routine and structure, but I don’t exactly enjoy sitting at a desk all day doing similar things all the time. And right now it looks as if I’m going to have a good balance (and have to sacrifice a little bit); I like the structured hours and the free time I get around work, I don’t think the work will be too exciting, but it will be relatively variable and help me build a lot of skills. Anyways, I say this because my new style of life will have an impact on my days and therefore an effect on what I can blog about. Because the hours from when I wake up to when I get off work contain mostly the same thing, I don’t want to bore you with repetitious postings. So, in the future, I’ll just skim past the boring routine items (unless something interesting happens at work) and try to make the posts intriguing with other events.
For lunch it seems like everyone goes home. And although it’s supposed to be a one hour break, most people seem to extend it closer to one and a half hours. That’s nice for everyone who has family at home to prepare lunch for them, for me it’s not very efficient. Yesterday I just had a few bananas for lunch which kept me surprisingly satiated throughout the rest of the day. My home has some nice balconies where I enjoy eating meals and watching the passerby’s.
After I had returned to work and the day finished, I went to go buy some meat for dinner only to find the shop was closed. This was not the worst possibility—it forced me to go try out some nearby restaurant.
This was the menu, and for all I know I could have been ordering a massage. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it yet, but people don’t speak English in Hawassa. I’d say 1/10 people have knowledge of some basic English which is fine for greetings and whatnot, but out of those only a select few have adequate conversational English. Thankfully all my coworkers are fluent, so they can help me translate when I’m out shopping by the store, but it seems like I’m going to have to learn some very basic Amharic. Anyways, last night my ordering was done by pointing at an item on the menu.
I landed on Kitfo, not knowing what it was—but then again, the only thing I do know is injera, the pancake-like staple that is eaten with almost every meal. Yes, that is raw ground beef you are seeing. I was scared at first, nervous for how I might handle raw meat, but when I tried it I was blown away. There’s a little bit of chili and some other spices mixed in and with the injera it was amazing.
After my adventurous dinner I went home and watch the movie The King. I’m happy to have some independent free time on my hands these days and I’m excited that I’ll be able to watch movies more frequently! I went to sleep fairly early, around 8:30pm, but I slept terribly. All last night I kept waking up mosquitoes hovering right by my face, sending a ringing buzz to my ears. I would try to ignore them, but then they would land on my face and I could feel them biting me. It was hard to sleep with them constantly berating me—at one point I turned the light on, vowing to kill every single one, but saw my efforts were hopeless as there were dozens of them swarming all around my room. I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with this problem, but any mosquito trap techniques would be much welcomed!
Today is my first free weekend in Africa. In Arusha I was kind of on a lock down by the family, and could only really accompany them wherever they went. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’s exciting nonetheless!