More Ethiopian Fun!

Yesterday we spent time visiting our local (Houston) Ethiopian places! Once again we ate at AdisAbaba Ethiopian Restaurant, which we have come to love in only two visits. The food was excellent once again! We had fun practicing some of the words Chelsea has been learning via a Eurotalk Learn Amharic computer program. It is very basic Amharic, but lays a foundation for the completely different language of Ethiopia. We’ve had fun with it though! This time at the restaurant, we were the skilled veterans eating…and we watched as a new couple came in to eat. It’s pretty obvious when it’s your first time in ;) It was fun to see some other newbies there. We hope that more and more people come b/c there never is that many people. We were fortunate enough to have some more people from Ethiopia in this time around. We decided to ask about the language, did they know of anyone who taught Amharic, if what we were learning would really work, about the weather, pretty much anything they were willing to share. They were a little hesitant at first, but then Chelsea started trying to count in Amharic, said water, house, ship, and milk in Amharic, and all the other words she was just learning. This seemed to be the key, as from then on we covered a lot of information. We were told about two resorts, about the rainy season, and shown a picture of downtown Adis that was hung on the opposite side of the restaurant, as well as even more of the language. We were also told that if we brought our new nephew down sometime, that they would love to talk to him in Amharic. All of our encounters at the restaurant, and the grocery have been terrific. One comment Chelsea made is that you don’t have to prove anything to the Ethiopians we’ve met. They just accept you and embrace you. That has been our experience locally. Even at the Maru Grocery (we went there too!) our experience was similar. There were two ladies who saw Chelsea picking up some Teff (used to make injera) and asked if she was going to make injera. They were excited about it and asked if we had been to Ethiopia before. We told them we were looking forward to going, but had yet to travel. They then tried to help us find some books to learn about their culture and history. We used our newly refined (from the restaurant) language skills to say thank-you – which they also welcomed. At the Maru we were able to buy a few injera (4 or 5) already made for $5 and about 2lbs of teff. We should be receiving our Ethiopia cookbook soon, so we’ll see how we do. Anyway, that’s a lot of rambling, but it is due to the excitement I still have from our time at each place. Check this website for a few Ethiopian places near you: http://www.ethionetworks.com/Restaurants.html
If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll notice a list for each state.

David has already said a lot of what I was going to say, but here is what I thought...

I was surprised this weekend because I really didn't think that I had been learning that much Amharic. I had spent quite a few hours working on learning some words off of our new cd. I was starting to feel like I might be wasting my time. But, after talking to some people from Ethiopia I realized that I really did pick up a lot more than I realized. I was so excited to try out my newly learned words. It was so nice to talk to someone who actually spoke the language. I was able to ask if what I was saying was right. I was pretty worried that I would be saying something offensive somehow :)! I did that a couple of times when I was learning Spanish- I would be close but the word I was using meant something totally different. OOPS! With the Amharic I was pretty close on most of it. If you are thinking about buying the CD it's not too bad. The only thing is that the people on it talk so fast that it's hard to hear all of the sounds.- which was especially bad for me since the language is so different than English. It would be better if you could slow down the speed but there is not a way to do that. It's funny too b/c their mouths don't move with what they are saying. The cd is very limited as far as how much you can learn. There are key phrases, body parts, colors, numbers, etc. It's great for someone just staring out though!

When we were at the restaurant it was pretty funny, David went up and asked one guy if he knew anyone that taught Amharic. He said no and to just buy a dictionary. David said we had one and the guy was very nice but didn't have a whole lot to say. So I started talking to him and saying some of the words I knew and asking if I was pronouncing them right. He jumped right in and started correcting what I was saying wrong. He spoke very fast also so I had to ask him to say the words very slowly. He taught us quite a few words. He was really patient with us on several words that had hard sounds to hear in them. Unfortunately there are many words he taught us that I no longer remember. After a while the other two guys that were there chimed in and told us about all these neat sounding places in Ethiopia. They seemed to like that we were so interested in their culture.

David wore the "color of fatherhood w/the Ethiopian flag" t-shirt I made for him this weekend. When we went to the Maru grocery the guy that rang up the stuff we were buying liked the shirt that I had made for David. He was really cute in that he seemed excited to see it. He asked where David got it and when he told him I had made it he was very impressed. We also met a couple of ladies that were so sweet. They showed us all sorts of books on Ethiopia. One of the books is one I ordered so I thought that was neat. They talked to us for quite some time. One lady was surprised that I wanted to learn Amharic. She said that she liked "my" language and hated hers. I told her that I thought her language was pretty and that I am excited to learn it. We ended up leaving about the same time and they honked at us several times and waved as we were leaving. I thought it was neat how much time they spent talking to us and how nice they were. They acted like we were long lost friends. I have heard several people say that they are the friendliest people you'll meet. I can agree with this now and love that about them!

I have to say that my husband is really sweet and very sneaky. He brought along a brithday cake for our trip. We had just got back from Half Priced Books and I was sitting in our room reading one of the books when he brings in this cake with a lot of candles! Then he starts blowing them out really fast before I get a good chance to blow them out. I was kind of surprised by this and he tells me to look up and points to the smoke alarm right above where I was sitting. I was really glad he had noiced it, I can just see that going off- might have added an interesting twist to our weekend. He had been working all week but still made time to make a cake and kept it secret from me. He also brought sparkling grape juice and got me some really cool scrapbooking stuff.