Day 10: Dance Fever! Fun Night with New Friends

June 10, 2009

Wednesday

“Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.”

1 Corinthians 9:19

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

1 Corinthians 9:24

What a fun day!

Kechene this morning was good. I taught KG2 English again and we went over consonants and vowels, and then I helped with Grade 1 math. After lunch I had free time so I went into the teacher’s room and read for a little while before helping with KG1 sport.

This evening all of us at Cherokee House got all dolled up and went salsa dancing (that’s right…salsa dancing in Ethiopia) at a place that JT goes to over in Bole. [JT is the other Program Manager who lives at Cherokee House along with Briana] It was soooo much fun! There were 6 of us girls and only 2 guys (JT and Mark) , so we girls didn’t get to dance all that much, but it was fun just to watch some of the amazing Ethiopian dancers. And they were amazing! Who knew Ethiopians could salsa? JT had taken salsa lessons here so he was teaching all of us. I ended up dancing the merengue with him, which was pretty fun.

It was funny though because on the way there, we went to Tor Highluch bus stop to get a private mini-bus to take all 8 of us and a bidding war broke out. JT was negotiating the price with various drivers while the rest of us stood in a circle waiting. We were quite the spectacle, 8 ferengi (the Amarhic word for foreigner which I probably spelled wrong) standing around, going out late at night (which apparently women in Ethiopia do not do). Blair commented that she felt like we were on display while all the drivers argues with JT over price. Then on the way back we got 2 private taxis (which are smaller and only fit 4 people max) and Mark, Rachel, Brittany, and I had a dance party in ours because the driver turned on some really fun music and we just went to town. When we got back to the house (no power again) we were all still so hyped up that I turned on The Cupid Shuffle on my ipod (we had a battery powered ipod player) and we all danced. Then Blair put on some hip-hop that we all danced to, and then Mark put on some shag music that we danced to. It was just a fun night of dancing.