13 months of sunshine

Ethiopia has lots of little oddities that have taken some getting used to. For instance, there are twelve 30 day months in the year and one 13th month with 5-6 days in it. Due to this difference in calendars, it's actually the 7th day of the 10th month of the year 2004. It can get a little confusing! Also, they do the time differently where our 12am/12pm is their 6am/6pm respectively. So if a meeting starts at 8:30am our time, it's actually 2:30 Ethiopian time. I have to second check all of my meeting times for fear of showing up at the wrong time! Not that it really matters--no one is on time and everything just sort of does things whenever they so desire. Lucky for me I have no particular agenda so it works out!

One great thing about Ethiopia is the coffee. The country used to be an Italian colony so they still have lots of espresso machines and coffee is huge in their culture (see past post for talk about the coffee ceremony). I am pretty much obsessed with the macchiato's and have been scoping out each cafe for the best ones.

Macchiato from Lime Tree, my little Farenji (Amharic for foreigner) mecca

In other news, I joined a gym! Sandy and Chris have been going to this gym on Bole and I figured with  all of the amazing food here and free time it would be good to try to get in shape. The gym is actually pretty nice and has lots of treadmills, bikes, and weight machines. There is also an hourly aerobics class that looks amazing and I can't wait to do jumping jacks with the locals. One of the trainers at the gym has really taken to us and helps us with our training and stretches our legs afterwards. Talk about good customer service!

Our gym!

So far, this city has been amazing and I am having the best time exploring it. I am hoping to take more time next week to visit the museums (one of which holds Lucy's skeleton!), the steps where Olympic runners train, and other sights and sounds of Addis. Every day is something new. Well until tomorrow, salam!