My crazy new friends

This is me and Yetanite one morning last week when we went to get coffee. She works at the ERC, one of the places I teach at. Yesterday was so cool! We all went to my friend Yetanite’s house! It was a blast. We had lots of good food at lunch(and the best lemonade I have ever drank), got to have the traditional coffee ceremony, but Yetanite made me do it. I roasted the beans, crushed them, and then boiled the water and made coffee for everyone. It was really cool. After coffee we had a dance party. They taught us the “iskista” which is a dance in which you mainly just move your shoulders. I was good at it when I was sitting down, but when I stood up, my bottom half felt the need to move too. Hahaha. I also learned an Arabic dance. My friends laughed at me because I have no rhythm. These are some of my students at ABCollege. This is on thursday morning last week when they had me over for a coffee ceremony. I got to get all dressed up in the cultural clothes. These girls are so much fun and so crazy.
Fun Culture
The eyebrow lift- so part of the culture here is active listening; but instead of nodding or saying uh-hu the lift their eyebrows. If a male is doing it, it feels like he is hitting on you. The guy pinching my cheek is Dave. Our first day in country we had a meeting at the college to introduce ourselves to all of the students. He did the eyebrow thing to us the whole time. We were all freaked out. When he walked into my class Monday morning, I thought I was going to have a problem with one of my students hitting on me. He later explained to me what it meant. He is one of my favorite students. We had show-and-tell on Friday and he brought me a cool beaded bracelet with the country flag on it. Maybe he was sucking up for a good grade, but it worked. I have also tried to do the eyebrow lift as part of my active listening, it might be somthing I bring back to the states with me.

Other random things about AA
We have noticed while driving that the lines painted on the road are purely for decoration, no on actually uses them. People drive in two lanes, and at some times I have seen three cars with at least some part of them in the same lane next to each other.
The air pollution here is crazy. We all have black boggers, and every time a car or bus passes I feel like we may have lung cancer because of all the junk in the air.
This is a cute little African baby that I want to take home with me, but i cant so i just took his picture.