School and Museums . . . Ethiopia Round 3, Day 22

A morning of hanging around the guest house.  It is a good thing.  Kevin hasn't been sleeping the best.  I have a icky cold.  So it's a morning of relaxing a little.

After breakfast "M^" and I tackled some school work.  Have I mentioned how determined my daughter is?  121 pages of 1st grade phonics  . . . CONQUERED!  We spent 1 1/2 hours and she started and finished the first grade phonics book.  Did I tell you that up until we arrived she had no instruction in English.  Yeah! 

For the afternoon we headed out to 2 local museums with our friend Zebene.  A wonderful afternoon!  We started off at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies Museum at the Addis Ababa University.  A fantastic museum to visit!

The grounds of the campus were beautiful.  

The exhibits were very well done.  Here is a traditional coffee ceremony setup.

Coffee coffee everywhere!!!

This is the framework of a house from the nomadic Afar people of Ethiopia. 

These are traditional grave markers.  The quality and depiction describe the individual.

A tej (honey wine) canister.  That's a lot of tej!

The museum was in the former emperor's palace.   Very cool building.  It now is one of the prominent buildings of the Addis Ababa University. 

The museum preserved the bedrooms of the emperor and empress.  This is her bedroom. 

Yeah.  We had to hang out in her bathroom a while too!

Here is the former emperor's bedroom.

His ginormous closet.

And last, but certainly not least . . . his bathroom.  Look at all that marble!

 There was a fabulous art gallery on the upper floor of the museum.

I believe this depicts the beheading of John the Baptist.

Harvest time.

They also had quite the array of traditional musical instruments on display.

And last, but not least . . . apparently the end of the tour!

Next we headed to the National Museum

The former emperor's throne.

"Lucy" . . . the oldest most complete skeleton of human ancestors.

Artifacts from around 600 BC!

Statue of the Lion of Judah.  A very special symbol for Ethiopia.

 

 

Traditional "pillows" or headrests.

Afterward we headed to Kaldi's coffee shop.  Basically it's the Ethiopia version of starbuck's.  Good coffee, but not as good as coffee ceremony coffee :)

Kevin even learned some new words today!

Up - lie
Down - touch
Hand - ach (Oromifa), archa (Amharic)
Nose - foonyan (Oromifa)