11-10-2017

Didn’t sleep. I am used to sleeping with white noise. In the quiet of the night I hear the packs of dogs barking with an occasional donkey’s cry, Simay’s son sporadically crying and my own racing thoughts. Maybe it’s the time change creeping up on me. Maybe it’s because I am not in my own bed.

I was up early and Girma took me to his brother Tinsae’s work. I had buna (coffee) and a burger for breakfast. The plan was to meet up with Assegid and visit his school however Tinsae got a text message that he would have to change plans today.

So instead we visited the national museum. Last time I was here I went with their brother Worku but now I have a much better Camera. So we visited with Dinkenesh (Lucy) and some even older ancestors like Salam.  

Shiro with Injara for lunch. The rest of the day I spent drawing Simay’s son, resting, watching ebs (Ethiopian Broadcasting System) which is a TV channel comparable to PBS, and waiting to see if anything goes on this evening. Tomorrow I will go purchase my ticket to fly to Dire Sunday. Hopefully I can sleep tonight because I feel the tired creeping at my eyes.

I made dinner for everyone tonight. I kept trying to think of easy American food I could make for everyone, but in the end I made Mexican food and explained that since in Texas we are so close to Mexico it’s one of our favorite foods to eat.

Beef is expensive and harder to find so I made sheep soft tacos. I made the four tortillas, guacamole, pico, and rice and beans. I used the beans popular here and they didn’t turn out the way I wanted to but everything else came out well. I even had some packets of Taco Casa hot sauce with me for them to try. It was a success!

I taught my family here how to play Farkle (a dice game kind of like yhatze or poker), read a bit and finally about to crash.