Day trip to Entoto (Liad)

Wow..what a day! Don't even know where to start..but I guess at the beginning ;-)
So this morning started with a nice breakfast at a nearby local coffee shop. It was the 3 of us and Tiferet and Allison (two medical students from Will's school). We had already been there yesterday with Yared, so they recognized us and greeted us with a big smile. I find people here to be very kind and they smile a lot, so that wasn't very surprizing but it was still nice to be recognized after 3 days in a foriegn country. We had some local dishes and I think we are starting to really enjoy the local cuisine.

After breakfast we met back at the hotel with some American medical students from D.C, Katie and Cheseny. They are here doing an elective at "black Lion" hospital here in Addis. We went with them and their 3 Ethiopian friends - Mohhamed, Tesh and Bigi.
So all of us with the help of our new ethiopian freinds hopped on a little minibus up to the Entoto mountains. It was only 30 minutes out of Addis but it felt like we were in a different world. We were so high up, we had a nice hike in the forest, lots of fresh air and a lovely view of all of Addis.
On the way down from the mountain we stopped at a nearby market. It was mostly fabrics, so scarfs and dresses. But it was nice to walk around and enjoy the market atmosphere and we even bought a few gifts :-)

From there we made our way back into the city. Before Will and I left Israel we got a recommendation for a really good restaurant called - Lucy's. We weren't really sure where it was but we are into exploring. So, with the help of Allison's lonely planet guide book, we found it..yay! After a long and tiring (the good kind 0f) day we found ourselves in this little haven of a restaurant in the middle of the city. We walked into a garden, was very pastoral. A real upscale Ethiopian restaurant. The food was really good, and we even had our first salad for this trip (hopefully that will go well with us). It was definitly the most expensive place we had eaten at so far but it was still 5 dollars a person. So thanks Shiela for the recommendation :-)

So we are coming up to the end of our first weekend here and tomorrow we start our first day of the project..YAY! We are definitely very excited and will update you on things tomorrow.

Love and Kisses from all of us here to all of you there
photos to come..