Sightseeing over the weekend

Hi again,

Here are some photos from our expedition around the city Sunday.  The first photo, though comes from a couple of days ago when we visited the Addis Ababa Museum withy a history of the city. Belete and Jim posed for me in front of a lion and a panther. Sunday we were chauffered around by a friend we met last year, and ran into last week: Million Retefe. She is a retired national TV newscaster and has many stories to tell of broadcasting the news during the time of the DERG, the repressive government. She was basically safe, one brother imprisoned and treated harshly, two brother fled to Nigeria, one came back and one has stayed for twenty years.  She is a font of information, a gragarious person you can't help but fall in love with. She and her daughter spent the afternoon and evening with us, driving us through the Italian parts of the city and showing us the main sites, and well as fulling us full of information.

So the next two photos are of us with her and her daughter Favel at a great coffee shop. You can see the types of roasts they offer. Coffee was great and we learned that they put a parsley-like herb in it to enhance the taste. Good. Then you see the barrista with the lion of Judah, Ethiopia's pride, on the wall.

Nest is a photo of the first Ethiopian hotel, built around the turn of the century, I believe. Then a photo of Emperor Menelik II, a national hero who reigned in the later part of the 19th century and was responsible for defeating the Italians at the Battle of Adowa, a very important part of their history. That happened in 1898. 

Next you see photos of a mosque and then of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, the cathedral of the Ethiopian Orthodox.  It is surrounded by a park and all through the park are people praying, prostrate, or on their hands and knees, or sitting by a pillar outside. Very devotional and pious.

The final photo is of beggars who surrounded our car as we returned to it from the coffee shop. We gave each of them a small amount of money. Two of the women had babies on their backs. So sad to experience.

Next post I am going to try to put in a short clip of the music from the church service yesterday. We went back to the same congregation as the week before because they had asked jim to come and preach. It was wonderful, so full of joy. By the end of the service, there were people singing their lungs out and coming up to the front and dancing, all to the beat of those wonderful drums.  So I hope the video will load!  We'll see.

Love from Jim and me!