Monday, May 17, 2010

Day 5- Mekele

Our second day of Mekele was one of the best days of the whole trip besides our Gotcha day of course:)
We went to the care center again to visit the kids. After a little while we headed to the local market to buy some cribs/beds for the orphanage. It was so fun to get to shop the streets. On Sunday it's one of the busiest days. We did some bargaining around and found our shop
The market had everything you could think of including lots of american shirts and clothing.
Below, These cars were everywhere, they were used as taxis
We next headed to another local market to buy some souvenirs . Our 1st stop was to buy some local coffee from this sweet lady! We have tried to roast it here at home, but it's just not the same
In this video the lady is selling us coffee beans in the raw. She also was selling sugar...which we thought should have been brown and for some reason we thought we needed to ask them why it was white.We sound like Idiotic Americans!.. haha
I get very excited to see wild animals especially the exotic donkeys...We are truly dorky Americans!
It was funny, I felt famous as everyone was looking at me... I think it was the blonde hair. These kids below ran over to see us and were yelling "forengi! forengi!" which means foreigner. They were so beautiful! It was hard not to give them money because as soon as you did kids came running from everywhere wanting more. As soon as we got into the taxi Scott reached out and handed out a few dollars to two girls and then our taxi stalled... within seconds kids were running from everywhere begging for more. Oh if I could have given them all we had I would have!
Scott is shopping in the Market .. watch out for the donkey behind you..haha
below are some locals hanging out .. they all help us get the beds back to the care center
After our shopping we headed back to the Care center to meet up with the rest of the group and to teach the children all about SNAG golf. Here are some pictures on our drive back
Scott had a fun opportunity to teach some of the older boys at the care center all about golf with a game called SNAG. After the golf fun with the boys had we had another quick coffee ceremony before we left.
These two friends below made our day so special of showing us around the city.
Our group meeting up together, one stop left then to the airport.
The monument below was on top of a big hill that overlooked the city. It was a memorial for all the Ethiopians that have died for their country.
After the monument we went to the airport to head back to Addis Ababa. I'm just so thankful to be able to visit Jonas' birthplace. It was truly beautiful and I can't wait to go back with our family of 5 and explore all around even more. Scott and I looked at each other on the plane and said that it was one of the best days of our lives. We were still so full of excitement after seeing his roots and heritage We were also thinking that in less than 12 hours we finally get to meet Jonas!

1 comment:

Andrea Young said...

You two were crackin me up in those videos! Ya'll sound like you'd be so much fun to travel with!!! Love your sugar questions and you wanting to pet the donkey. Made me laugh tonight:)