Ethiopian Weekend

This weekend was full of fun, food and fact finding. In Colorado, there is a google group that caters to the people of Denver and the Rocky Mountain area. It is a great resource for all sorts of topics from adoption to rashes when yu get your child home. We meet once a month and meet for picnics and quarterly dinners at Ethiopian restaurants.

There were kids of every age there.




The girl on the left is my friend Sally's oldest daughter.




These are most of the kids from our group. Brandon and Evan are in the back with black shirts on.

For a while we had planned to go to Nile restaurant for a gathering. There were about 90 people who RSVP'd so we had to split it into 2 restaurants for accommodations. The other restaurant was called Habesha closer to the city. Everyone brought their spouses, bio children and adopted children, so that was really fun for us to see lots of children running around the dance floor playing, eating injera (bread) and little girls flirting with little boys. There were even children who had come from the same orphanage and are now here together in different families. How fantastic is that!!

The food was very good. What you order comes all together on one plate for your party. So for David and I and our 2 boys, everything was on one big place placed on top of injera bread. Then you take your basket of injera bread, tear it off and use that as "utensils" to eat with. Very different. Although we took up most of the restaurant with our group of 48, there was a group of men sitting in another part sharing 2 huge plates of food. Just men. It reminded me of what I have learned about their culture how they are from "villages". Meeting in groups and hugging or holding hands is a common practice. They are a very strong community. I glanced over during the night and saw all of their heads bowed as they prayed. It was so lovely to see.

This is Sally's second daughter.


On Sunday, we then attended our Ethiopian Church where David brought his acoustic guitar and played and sang songs for all 3 classes of children. They are so cute. Most of the little girls dress in their best dresses and shoes, the others all looked so cute too. Again we used head sets to understand the adult sermon. The message is similar to what our other church would preach. Our friend, Mesfin and his wife invited us to their home in 2 weeks time for a home made Ethiopian lunch. I believe her name was Genaw (probably spelling it wrong), and she said she is a good cook and wants to host us. they have 3 children. I am very much looking forward to that.