Ethiopia Court Trip, Part 3: Accommodations

People often ask us what Ethiopia is like....  what the hotels and guesthouses are like...  what the people and the food are like... So, I thought I'd devote a blog post to answer those pressing questions. :)

For our first night in Ethiopia and our last night in Ethiopia we stayed at a guesthouse.  This guesthouse is where most of the families that adopt through our agency stay. I think Matt and I decided that it was nicer than the guesthouse we stayed at when we adopted Michael and Liliana.  The room we stayed at our first night in Ethiopia had two barely-full sized beds.  It had lots of windows and a huge private bathroom.

 

This is the view out the window of our guesthouse our first night in Ethiopia.  There seems to always be lots of construction going on in Ethiopia.  You can see the tall building in this picture that is being built.

 This room also had a decent sized sitting area with a couch, chairs, and TV.  It also had a fridge, which was nice for keeping bottled water cold.

 In Dire Dawa, we stayed in a hotel.  We heard from our agency that it was a very nice hotel for the price.  We payed roughly $25/night to stay at this hotel.  It had a nice kind-sized bed, lots of huge windows, and a small sitting area.  Our hotel room also had a TV, but it didn't work.

 Our favorite part about the hotel room was the bathroom.  It had a nice tub with a shower curtain (the guesthouse didn't have a shower curtain), however there were these two huge windows in the shower!  As you can see they put some sort of coating on the lower-half of the windows, but we still didn't trust that people couldn't see us.  We ended up only showering once while in Dire Dawa because of this.  And it happened that as I was showering there were 100s of Muslims walking down the street outside our window because it was a Holy day.  Seriously, so awkward.  I'm really hoping you couldn't see in.  :)

The food in Ethiopia was delicious!  This is a picture of me with our Ethiopian food at the restaurant in the hotel.  This time in Ethiopia, we ate many of our meals out because the guesthouse only provided breakfast.  The food was very good.  We had pizza, pasta, and Ethiopian dishes.  Matt also tried a hamburger and beef goulash.  We enjoyed almost everything we ate.

  The scenery in Addis Ababa is very commercial and city-life-ish.  There are buildings everywhere.  It seems like most are under construction.  We did see several really nice houses.  I was paying very close attention to the housing situation in case we ever move to Ethiopia. :)  Below is a picture of the landscape while driving from Dire Dawa to Harar.  It was such a huge change of pace from the busy capital city.  We absolutely loved the view.

 There were some bodies of water we saw on our drive to Harar as well.  Most of them had rice growing in them, which I had never seen before.

 This is a typical side-of-the road market.  You can see there is some construction going on in the background as well.  I particularly like the random goat walking around. :)  The two men standing close to Matt are holding hands.  This is very normal in Ethiopia.  Men and women alike (but especially men) that are good friends will hold hands or put their arms around each other as they walk around.  The Ethiopian culture is very loving and affectionate.

 This is actually a picture of the town where the twins' birth mother lives.  You can see the apartments that are to the left in the picture (the birth mom did not live in these apartments, her house was a 1/4 mile walk to the left from where this picture was taken).  You can also see a blue taxi straight ahead.  We loved these taxis!  Behind the taxi is a mini-bus, which is another very common mode of transportation.

 Another picture of the city where birth mom lives.  I love the construction in the background.  You can see that the scaffolding they use would not be considered safe in the US.  It is literally just tree branches tied together.  And apparently it is perfectly safe.

 Another picture of Ethiopian landscape on the way to the care center.

 This is a roof-top view in Harar.  The wall in the bottom of the picture has shards of glass on top of it.  This is a common way to stop people from climbing over the wall that surrounds your house.

 This is the landscape in Addis Ababa where there are not buildings around.  You can see the mountains in the background as well as the developed part of Addis Ababa.

 

Here are a few videos of the landscape of Ethiopia we took while driving around.  The last video is of the guesthouse room we stayed in our last night in Ethiopia.