more reasons to love this country

16. combination butchery bars – while I myself have yet to try raw meat, I hear that going to a butchery bar is quite the experience with people fighting over which cut of meat they want, etc. I imagine it’s heightened by the fact you can drink there as well.

17. Bruno’s – the best ice cream anywhere

18. grocery stores – it’s always a surprise because what you found last week, might not be there again this week. Or they might have something newly imported you haven’t seen before.

19. a surprising range of different tasty restaurants – so far I’ve been out for Indian food several times, Korean, Lebanese, Chinese, Italian and, of course, Habesha. I have yet to try the Georgian restaurant, the French place or the Armenian one. When one Canadian dollar is worth about seven birr, it makes eating out semi-regularly affordable. Of course, I’m not making dollars here but somehow when calculated, it feels less guilt inducing to eat out here.

20. bootlegged movies – the great thing about being in a country where the government is too busy doing damage control is there are less regulations for other things…like movies. I’ve been able to see Brokeback Mountain, The 40 year old Virgin, Kinsey, Crash, etc. even though at the time they were barely out of theatres in other parts of the world. Granted sometimes it’s a crappy copy poorly shot in the cinema but still, a girl’s gotta be entertained.

21. compound livin’ – practically every house is part of a small compound which includes the surrounding yard, the main house and servant quarters. Our landlord and her sister live in the servant quarters area behind the house creating a horrible noise tunnel which filters all their yelling at the neighbour’s kids and their dirty talk straight through our windows. But the benefit of compound livin’ for a fereng is the privacy from staring eyes, which I relish (sometimes too much).

22. an interesting re-usage of materials – for instance, our compound walls have been imbedded with broken upside down glass pop bottles as a security measure. I hear there are neighbourhoods where a plastic bag doubles as a ready made toilet complete for throwing/disposing of elsewhere as far away as you can wing it.

other reasons found here