Watching and planting!

So the day was very very busy yesterday morning!

Millie and I to breakfast at the cafeteria, and everything was great! Well..... The food was great, the news was very interesting that morning, and the people were all enjoying their food as well! It only went downhill when we were leaving and the waiter told us that he talked to his boss about what we told him about our breakfasts. (I forgot to mention this before. The night we arrived, the registration office gave us a yellow breakfast card, which meant that we showed the waiter that card, he'd write the number down on it, and it would just get charged right to our room.) Well sometime last week the man who's in charge of the registration office told us we couldn't use that and had to pay every day. Millie and I were like, "Okay, no problem." The waiter didn't understand that when we told him that next day, and he kept asking for our card number, so we just kept showing it to him! Yesterday morning though, he finally talked to his boss about it and asked us to pay. We asked him how much it was, and he said 120 birr for both last week and yesterday! That was way more than Millie and I expected it to be! But we had plenty enough to pay for it, so we did and headed on our way back to our rooms!

 We had to head back to our hostels to grab our things for work. Every day, as soon as we walk into the building, we go directly to Dr. Hanson's office to see what we'll be doing that day. She reminded us that we had our weekly Monday Morning Meeting! I was so excited because everyone from the Genebank has to come to this. (Time to meet more people!) The purpose of this meeting is for everyone to describe what they did the previous week as well as what their plans are for the coming week. Since it was Millie, Andreas, Ricardo, Edwin and my first meeting, Dr. Hanson also had everyone describe what their main job is here in the Genebank. She also made the 5 of us all introduce ourselves and describe our purpose of coming here! Wooooooo!

After that, one of the men in charge of the big plot took us down to the field to watch it get planted. He was also explaining to us what all was going on and what all they did to prepare the field. Millie made fun of me because of how many pictures I took... She was like, "Jeez! You're taking a lot of pictures for someone who comes from Iowa!" It was interesting! So I thought I should take some pictures of the tractor!

The tractor they used

Seeds that were getting planted

Describing the process and explaining
everything

After we came back from the field, Dr. Hanson had us go to the greenhouse to see if they needed any of our help. They sure did! We were set to work immediately! They had us plant some of their forages that they're studying. It's a different process from what I'm used to though. I usually only plant seeds, but these were germinated seeds, so they were already starting to have roots! If they weren't germinated yet, we weren't to plant them. They would plant them at a later date. Some of them were difficult to plant because the roots were wrapped tightly around the plant, and they're very fragile. If you even just slightly squeeze it too tight, the whole plant seedling is destroyed, and you don't want that because these are the plants that they have a limited amount of and are trying to regenerate and multiply to get more. It was a great learning experience even though I felt I was more in the way... So many people had to go around me! But that's good. There were a lot of people in there to help plant all the forages that needed to be planted that day. It's also very critical to make sure you have the correct label on each container. Mislabeled containers leads to a huge problem later on...

So many plants!

After lunch, Millie, Andreas, and I were told to go back to the herbarium for the afternoon and finish up from what we were doing the week before. We all headed back there, then looked at each other confused... We were all finished... We had nothing to work on for the next 3 hours, so we talked about some of our results, researched, watched it pour outside, and kept each other good company. Dr. Hanson was in meetings in the afternoon, so we couldn't ask her for something to do. Great work day!

It was the first rain Millie and I experienced here in Ethiopia! It was sunny earlier in the day, and then just BOOM! Rain. While it rained, it stayed sunny too! And no wind! Just pouring down rain! Andreas was making fun of the 2 of us because we were so fascinated. "It's rain" was his only comment. It rained for a good hour, and it even thundered quite a bit and I did see a few streaks of lightning. But nothing huge. Not the huge thunderstorms I'm used to in Iowa. It was a very peaceful rain. Okay, enough about rain...

When our work day was over, Millie and I headed back to our hostels and were pretty disappointed we could go swimming or walk around Addis today. We had to stay indoors because we didn't know when it was going to start raining again and it got chilly. That's what happens. When it rains, the temperature drops quite a bit! Okay sorry. No more about rain. So when we got back to our rooms, we just relaxed for a while until we got hungry. We didn't go to the Zebu tonight for dinner. We just ate together in Millie's room! We talked forever! It was so great! We talked about everything and I didn't realize how late it got! (It really wasn't that late, but for us it was.) It was like 8:30 and we both were amazed how fast the time went by! I hurried back to my room to get ready for bed, and successfully fell asleep before 9:15:) Great day? I think yes!