So I wrote a mass email last night, just a quick message, but I think I will write a blog tonight. If I don’t have your email please email me so I can put you on my list:
jeremy.marinos@gmail.com. The part I wrote last night is in quotes followed by what I wrote on August 16.
“Hi everyone,
So I arrived last night about 6:20 Ethiopia time. Everything so far has gone really smoothly. I am surprised and I thank God for watching over me so far. I met up with Cassie a few hours before we were planning on meeting. I we just ran into each other in the airport, not even in the terminal we were leaving at. Our flight took off at 4:00 PM New York time and arrived in Germany 5:30 AM Germany time. Technically it was a Red Eye flight because it went all night but we also crossed 6 time zones and since I got a good night sleep the night before I didn’t sleep at all on the plane. The next plane took off at 10:30 AM and arrived int Addis, the Ethiopian capital at about 6:20 PM as I said. Paul, the CEO of GAH picked us up personally. On the second plane I slept for about 2 or 3 hours so in 26 hours I got 2 hours of sleep. I went to bed last night at about 9:00 PM and woke up at 4:00 AM. I couldn’t sleep past that for some reason but I feel well rested. I am safe and I got to meet Renee, my volunteer coordinator, Paul, his wife, Petra, and a doctor. They are really nice people. Really laid back too. It is nice. One interesting thing about the capital city though. According to some forms of measurements Addis is the most dangerous city to drive in. I guess there are a lot of accidents. We stayed in the Seventh Day Adventist compound today ( I saw an Adventist Book Center). Tonight we may get a room for Cassie and Paul and I might stay in the hospital’s ambulance, or on top of it. I can tell already that the next 9 months is going to be an adventure. I am sure I will have plenty of stories to tell. Paul told me that it would be a good idea for me to write a book. What I wanted to do is take a bunch of pictures and then make a Photo Journal. If you have any ideas about how I should go about things please let me know. I am so excited to be here. I the only trouble I had was in Frankfurt but it was very minor. The metal detector went off when I went through. I joked to Cassie that it wasn’t a metal detector it was a motion sensor. They didn’t find any metal on me when they patted me down. Other than that I didn’t get any money stolen, all my hotel reservations in New York worked out ( I was so tired on the plane that when I filled out this slip for customs I spelled “New York” “New Yourk”… that makes sense right? haha) Anyway, Cassie and I are going o go and explore Addis. I guess it is a really safe town to be in, in terms of violence. Paul, Cassie and I are also going to go to a Buffet, all you can eat for 80 birr, just under $8 but that is pretty expensive for food. That is like an American price. I will try to keep everyone posted about what I am doing. I am in Addis so I have internet pretty reliably and pretty fast but in Gimbie I might not have such luck. I love you all!
Jeremy“
First of all I would like to answer a question that was sent to me in several emails. People asked what the time difference was. Ethiopia is 10 hours ahead of Pacific time. So right now it is about 9:00 PM and that means it is 11:00 AM on the West cost.
So today I woke up at 4:00 AM and could not get back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. Everyone started getting up around 6:30. We talked for a while and saw Renee, Petra, and Priscila off. They are going to travel around Southern Ethiopia for about a week. After that we went to a buffet lunch. Paul described it as “the most American place in Addis”. There was some American music and I could actually recognize a lot of the names of the dishes. After that Cassie and I went around Addis for about 6 hours, maybe a little more. We estimated we walked more than 10 miles. The streets are very friendly. There were a lot of people with their friends walking around or playing soccer. One thing that is different culturally from the United States is that it is not uncommon to see members of the opposite sex to hold hands as friends. Through out the 6 hours I saw several men holding hands and I concluded that it shows a strong friendship which I admired. Another thing that struck me was the amount of bagging. It was incredible. The adults for the most part were either disabled or had something to sell. The children though were heartbreaking. The would come up to with hands held out and say “sista” or “brotha” “please”. We were advised to say “no” or “no thanks”. Me and Cassie were nice so we weren’t terrible forceful because of this several children followed us for more than 5 minutes. Some of the children got scoldings from the “better off” Eithiopians. I only gave to one child. He help us with the phone. It was such a long walk but it was a nice break form the plane. We got a little off track but got a taxi for less than $4.
We were a little late meeting up with Paul but it was fine. We then went to an Ethiopian restaurant. It was really good food. There was a plate covered with this large crape. We would then put things like lentils, and other things that sort of resembled humus in a way. They were called different types of “wat”. The entire meal for the three of us including soda was less than $7. It was nice.
It was a good day. Paul, Cassie and I just finished a conversation about Soccer. I spelled it “soccor” and Paul backed me up but the computer and Cassie both said it was spelled “soccer”. I guess we are tired. I am going to get some sleep. Thank you for keeping up on my blog.
Jeremy
Thank God the trip was as we all prayed it would be! If you’d like, we can send you a photo-journal book. I’ve seen a few before and half of the page are sleeves where you add pics, the other half is where you write. I am not sure if the space for writing would be enough, but we’ll look around and see what we can come up with. Let us know where to send things!
Hugs and love,
Dad and Patty
Comment by Patty — August 18, 2009 @ 4:36 pm