Woah! It's not as inappropriate as it sounds. You see, yesterday Kendra and I made a fantastic investment. While looking around in the "children's toys" section of a supermarket for some entertainment (for ourselves, yes) we came across a couple things that could provide hours of joy at our house. We purchased two badminton rackets and a birdie, and a frisbee. Super exciting. Obviously when we got home, we had to play right away. We went out front and whipped out our brand new frisbee, only to discover that this was no ordinary frisbee. It was, in fact, a flying dick. Right there on the front in nice big letters is "FLYING DICK". What a fabulous English mistake. I mean that's just kind of epic. Soon, I'll have a picture up on Facebook for you.
Anyways, we had a wonderful time with our flying dick. Amare and Desta joined right in, though they weren't so good at it. Desta may have never thrown a frisbee in his life, I'm not sure. But he's getting better. What he is really good at it getting the frisbee when we accidentally throw it over a giant concrete wall or on top of his "house" (see the sheep blog post for a description of where Desta lives - we're big fans of his place). After some frisbee, we busted out the badminton rackets and started playing. We only have two rackets, but Desta decided to use the frisbee as a third. This is why we are fans of Desta - he just jumps in at random times and when we're doing stupid stuff (i.e. sheep stealing?), no questions asked. Not that he could ask questions if he wanted to, because he doesn't really speak English. Like at all. We use a lot of sign language, broken English, and the few Amharic phrases that we know to try to explain things (okay, but really Kendra and I know a lot of Amharic. Soon we'll be fluent, thanks to Amare and Ready!). So, long story short, we're very happy with out badminton and flying dick. In fact, tonight we played a mean game of Monkey in the Middle with Ready and Amare and our flying dick. It got intense. I may have some injuries.
And now for the megabus story. Mom and Dad, I know hitchhiking is bad. And please remember that I'm a smart girl, and I don't do stupid things (not dangerous-stupid, at least). Remember the minibuses that Kendra and I take everywhere? Well, sometimes, just on the rare occasion, a minibus is actually a megabus. Meaning sometimes the minibus comes in a slightly larger size. Hence, "mega", according to Kendra and I. You ride these the same way, but they hold a few more people. So, Kendra and I were leaving the hotel we've been frequenting to steal wifi from (by "frequenting" I mean often enough that all the employees know, love, and get excited to see us) a couple nights ago and we walked across the street to find a minibus. At night, when it's getting later, it's sometimes harder to catch one and it's times like these that we've come across the megabuses. We cross the street and there's a megabus with about five or six guys getting on. They ask us where we're going, and we say Mekanisa. They tell us to come on. We listen. This is how the minibus works - you wait, a guy either shouts the destination or asks you where you're going and then when you answer he tells you if his bus is the right one. Okay, so we hop on the megabus and commence talking about many really important girly things in English like two American girls would. The Ethiopian guys kept speaking in Amharic, turning around, looking at us and laughing. We noticed, but weren't surprised because this happens a lot. We also noticed the bus wasn't stopping anywhere to let people on and off. But, no worries, we knew we were going the right way. And we have a cell phone, and Pat taught me how to punch. So, If something happened, Kendra could call 911 and I could beat people up. Just kidding, just kidding. When the bus arrived in Mekanisa, Kendra and I said "Wadach!" because that's what you say to stop a bus when you want to get off. All the guys turned around at once, looking shocked. One said, "You speak Amharic?!" and they all started laughing. They pulled over and we asked how much we needed to pay. They laughed some more and said, "This isn't a minibus, you don't have to pay us." Whoops! Not a minibus. Or a real megabus. It turns out it was not a running megabus, and those guys were all friends. They decided to give us a ride, which is very common around here. Hitchhiking happens all the time, and it's like, legit. People just do it to be nice. Kendra and I never do it...except this one time on accident. We figure the guys pulled away, cracking up about the stupid American girls who thought they were a minibus. I really hope this isn't one of those "had-to-be-there" stories...
Now I'm going to jump to the happenings of today. This blog is kind of all over the place but I don't have time to make it all orderly and creative right now, so you're just going to have to deal with it and enjoy the stories in whatever order I decide. Or don't enjoy them. Today, Kendra and I got up and failed at Ethiopian life for about the fifth or sixth time. We're supposed to go to the orphanage three times per week. The orphanage is far, far away and takes two minibuses to get to. Trying to catch these in the morning during "rush hour" is a very tricky task. Every orphanage day, we get up at 7:00 and leave by about 7:20 (yeah, when you don't have running water, the morning routine is really quick) to get to our orphanage by 9:00. Unfortunately we have been having an extremely rough time with this and, long story short, haven't been able to catch buses. Either they're too full, they don't come, people beat us onto the empty ones, or they just drive right by us without stopping. There's no orderly way about it - no schedules, specific stops, or lines. People just run for it anywhere. And Kendra and I fail. We were dissapointed, because we failed again this morning and couldn't make it to the orphanage. We really like the kids, and therefore were bummed (Dundee is trying to work out a way to make it easier for us to get to an orphanage...we'll see). But then, when we went home defeated, we got a happy surprise!
Amare asked us if we wanted to go with him and a bunch of other people to a "place" outside of Addis. They didn't really tell us where we were going, but we haven't gotten to leave the city yet so we were excited. We ended up at a lake a little over an hour away. We hung out there all day putting our feet in the water, climbing trees, playing on an old rusty merry-go-round, and just laying around outside. It was a fun day! The lake was pretty, and the area was much different from being in the city. You can tell there are even less of people like Kendra and I (aka white girls) outside the city, because everyone was coming up to us to talk to us. Or asking to take a picture with us. We're a pretty exciting sight. All in all, a good day. Not that any day in Africa hasn't been good...so far, I love them all. It's just a delightful place, really.
This blog was intended to be a quick little something about the megabus/flying dick tidbit, and turned out a bit long, and I am just running right out of time! So I better get myself going before there are no more minibuses to take us home tonight. Peace out, my friends!
Anyways, we had a wonderful time with our flying dick. Amare and Desta joined right in, though they weren't so good at it. Desta may have never thrown a frisbee in his life, I'm not sure. But he's getting better. What he is really good at it getting the frisbee when we accidentally throw it over a giant concrete wall or on top of his "house" (see the sheep blog post for a description of where Desta lives - we're big fans of his place). After some frisbee, we busted out the badminton rackets and started playing. We only have two rackets, but Desta decided to use the frisbee as a third. This is why we are fans of Desta - he just jumps in at random times and when we're doing stupid stuff (i.e. sheep stealing?), no questions asked. Not that he could ask questions if he wanted to, because he doesn't really speak English. Like at all. We use a lot of sign language, broken English, and the few Amharic phrases that we know to try to explain things (okay, but really Kendra and I know a lot of Amharic. Soon we'll be fluent, thanks to Amare and Ready!). So, long story short, we're very happy with out badminton and flying dick. In fact, tonight we played a mean game of Monkey in the Middle with Ready and Amare and our flying dick. It got intense. I may have some injuries.
And now for the megabus story. Mom and Dad, I know hitchhiking is bad. And please remember that I'm a smart girl, and I don't do stupid things (not dangerous-stupid, at least). Remember the minibuses that Kendra and I take everywhere? Well, sometimes, just on the rare occasion, a minibus is actually a megabus. Meaning sometimes the minibus comes in a slightly larger size. Hence, "mega", according to Kendra and I. You ride these the same way, but they hold a few more people. So, Kendra and I were leaving the hotel we've been frequenting to steal wifi from (by "frequenting" I mean often enough that all the employees know, love, and get excited to see us) a couple nights ago and we walked across the street to find a minibus. At night, when it's getting later, it's sometimes harder to catch one and it's times like these that we've come across the megabuses. We cross the street and there's a megabus with about five or six guys getting on. They ask us where we're going, and we say Mekanisa. They tell us to come on. We listen. This is how the minibus works - you wait, a guy either shouts the destination or asks you where you're going and then when you answer he tells you if his bus is the right one. Okay, so we hop on the megabus and commence talking about many really important girly things in English like two American girls would. The Ethiopian guys kept speaking in Amharic, turning around, looking at us and laughing. We noticed, but weren't surprised because this happens a lot. We also noticed the bus wasn't stopping anywhere to let people on and off. But, no worries, we knew we were going the right way. And we have a cell phone, and Pat taught me how to punch. So, If something happened, Kendra could call 911 and I could beat people up. Just kidding, just kidding. When the bus arrived in Mekanisa, Kendra and I said "Wadach!" because that's what you say to stop a bus when you want to get off. All the guys turned around at once, looking shocked. One said, "You speak Amharic?!" and they all started laughing. They pulled over and we asked how much we needed to pay. They laughed some more and said, "This isn't a minibus, you don't have to pay us." Whoops! Not a minibus. Or a real megabus. It turns out it was not a running megabus, and those guys were all friends. They decided to give us a ride, which is very common around here. Hitchhiking happens all the time, and it's like, legit. People just do it to be nice. Kendra and I never do it...except this one time on accident. We figure the guys pulled away, cracking up about the stupid American girls who thought they were a minibus. I really hope this isn't one of those "had-to-be-there" stories...
Now I'm going to jump to the happenings of today. This blog is kind of all over the place but I don't have time to make it all orderly and creative right now, so you're just going to have to deal with it and enjoy the stories in whatever order I decide. Or don't enjoy them. Today, Kendra and I got up and failed at Ethiopian life for about the fifth or sixth time. We're supposed to go to the orphanage three times per week. The orphanage is far, far away and takes two minibuses to get to. Trying to catch these in the morning during "rush hour" is a very tricky task. Every orphanage day, we get up at 7:00 and leave by about 7:20 (yeah, when you don't have running water, the morning routine is really quick) to get to our orphanage by 9:00. Unfortunately we have been having an extremely rough time with this and, long story short, haven't been able to catch buses. Either they're too full, they don't come, people beat us onto the empty ones, or they just drive right by us without stopping. There's no orderly way about it - no schedules, specific stops, or lines. People just run for it anywhere. And Kendra and I fail. We were dissapointed, because we failed again this morning and couldn't make it to the orphanage. We really like the kids, and therefore were bummed (Dundee is trying to work out a way to make it easier for us to get to an orphanage...we'll see). But then, when we went home defeated, we got a happy surprise!
Amare asked us if we wanted to go with him and a bunch of other people to a "place" outside of Addis. They didn't really tell us where we were going, but we haven't gotten to leave the city yet so we were excited. We ended up at a lake a little over an hour away. We hung out there all day putting our feet in the water, climbing trees, playing on an old rusty merry-go-round, and just laying around outside. It was a fun day! The lake was pretty, and the area was much different from being in the city. You can tell there are even less of people like Kendra and I (aka white girls) outside the city, because everyone was coming up to us to talk to us. Or asking to take a picture with us. We're a pretty exciting sight. All in all, a good day. Not that any day in Africa hasn't been good...so far, I love them all. It's just a delightful place, really.
This blog was intended to be a quick little something about the megabus/flying dick tidbit, and turned out a bit long, and I am just running right out of time! So I better get myself going before there are no more minibuses to take us home tonight. Peace out, my friends!
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