An Addis Ababa New Year

May the new year bring health, wealth, good cheer and less depressing news feed. And more regular blog posts even if my only audience is the middle of the night net trawler from Ukraine. Hi! Happy New Year and thanks for reading !

I am not alone in starting the year with aspirin and coffee

The featured macchiato

Mixed juice - Guava, Avocado and Mango

I am starting my Addis New Year very appropriately in a coffee shop, fighting and rehydrating an incipient  hangover with macchiato and juice. We had a wonderful end of the year celebration last night at the Indian Embassy which is the mother ship, shielding us from home sickness on the occasions which count. After much debate we decided a toddler free new year celebration would be in the best interest of both parents and aforementioned toddler, considering that his bedtime is at 9.30 pm and that the party would continue till, well, the new year. We executed the toddler bed time routine with military precision, stuff him with food till he is green- trick him into drinking milk twice-hurried bed time book-diaper change-double socks and lights out. Of course the toddler sixth sense alerted him to his impending abandonment and he tossed and turned and fought sleep with his last awake breath until finally succumbing by 10.30 pm, after which we did the change clothes-token make up-wake up nanny and careful right side of the road drive, finally arriving by 11.00 pm. It was all worth it. Drunk dancing under the stars on a perfect chilly night is the best way to bring  in the new year. And we were still back in time for the 2.00 am milk and cuddle.

So why am I rehydrating in a coffee shop instead of having a lazy morning in bed ? Because I work for an Ethiopian company and Ethiopia follows a unique Ge’ez calendar which means it is 2005 now, New Year was in September and Christmas is next week. The Ethiopian Christmas falls on a Monday – two day weekend! We are taking a short weekend break at Wolliso and will be back to start Vihaan off at his new play school after the Christmas break. My new year resolution is to post both a review of the trip and of Play Schools in Addis within this month, we should all keep our ambitions grounded and realistic.   

  

Note:

 I wrote this post on 1^st Jan but did not post because the photos were stuck in my phone because Google including Gmail is suddenly not working on Android devices in Addis and it took me four days to transfer photos by cable. Me and Ethiotelecom are a lethal combo, as of this date the glitch has still not been fixed.