Edwin left and getting ready for seed producer visits!

Sorry I haven't posted since Wednesday! I've been getting home late and too tired to post anything!

We all decided to go out to eat Thursday night because it was Edwin's last night at ILRI. His flight was Friday night, so we decided to celebrate the night before. We went to a place of his choice! I have no idea what the name of it was, but it was an Armenian restaurant. It was quite a drive to get there! Part of it was it really was far away, but also because of all the traffic! It took over a half hour to get there! And I got to sit in the way way back! (The trunk.) There's a seat back there, and since I'm the smallest, I got the honor of sitting there! Talk about the perks of being short! haha. Well the food was very good! We ordered so many appetizers! Some of them were fried cheese pie, fried meat pie, tomatoes and cheese, cucumber mint yogurt, and falafels. Millie and I wanted to share different dishes, so I ordered Shish Kabobs with rice and she ordered dolmas. These had meat and rice wrapped in vine leaves! They don't look appetizing, but don't judge a book by its cover right? So delicious! The shish kabob was ginormous! It was so much meat!

Also, Dr. Jean thought that we all needed to have some dessert even though we were all stuffed to the brim with all the food! For dessert, she ordered 2 servings of donuts. Each serving contains 5 donuts, so that was good for everyone to try 1! There were 9 of us: Millie, Dr. Jean, Ricardo, Edwin, Lei, Paula, Elina (her daughter), and her husband. (I'm not even going to attempt to spell his name out... Sorry!) Anyway, the donuts reminded me a lot of cake balls because of how soft the dough was. They were coated in honey and cinnamon and oh my goodness were they tasty! Edwin didn't have one, so then we had 2 donuts left over! All of them pushed the dish towards Millie and I and told us to have them because we're teenagers and will run it all off in the morning... I couldn't argue with that and had to accept the extra donut... Darn...:)

From left: Falafels and tomatoes and cheese

From left: fried cheese pie and fried meat pie

Cucumber mint yogurt! Yumm!!!

My shish kabob! It's huge!

Dolmas! Don't they just look so
delicious???

Dessert! Donuts!

Some cultural action:)

When it was time to pay, it totaled up to all of us paying roughly 150 birr. This wasn't too bad, but some people put in more than that, so we ended up with 250 birr more than we needed, so all the adults decided to pull the "poor students" card and gave Millie and I the extra money back... We got paid on Wednesday, so we have plenty of money. We tried arguing that and told whoever who paid more to take it, but they all refused. So I guess we had to take the money back! I can get used to that! Not having to pay because I'm a "poor student!" Woo! haha. But I did feel bad about that. Others are paying more while I'm perfectly capable of paying, but I'm not. But I don't want to make a scene and that's just how paying for things works here. 

Now I'll backtrack! At work both Thursday and Friday I continued working on my lab report and observed my pistils that I put in the Aniline Blue Fluorochrome solution. I also continued with my research on underdeveloped pollen and just plain Canavalia sp. pollen hoping to figure out what that large mass was. In all my research, I didn't find much. All the pollen I could look at through my research had structures on the inside, but the large mass didn't. None of the pictures I found on the internet looked similar to the large mass. Hopefully I will find answers. I have a hard time believing that the large mass was pollen because after I stained the pistil and pollen using the Aniline Blue Fluorochrome solution, I didn't think I found any pollen on the slide or anywhere on the pistil. There was a large yellow mass that exploded out of the top of the pistil near the stigma, and when put under the UV light and looked through the microscope, the entire mass fluoresced. There was a chance that maybe this was mass of pollen! For something to compare the fluorescing mass to, I dissected flowers from flower samples I had gathered a few weeks back. The goal of this was to see what the pollen looked like for comparing to the large mass. It didn't matter if the pollen on those samples were dried out or not. After dissecting ten flowers, not a single grain of pollen was found. Because of this, I can say that most likely, the majority of the flowers on this plant are sterile, thus preventing it from producing seeds. There is a slight problem with this though. In previous dissections I claimed to have found pollen on the anthers. This coming week I'm traveling to Zwai so hopefully I'll have enough time to collect some flower samples to bring back into the lab to take a look at under the microscope to see if there really is any pollen or not. If there isn't any found, then that's the issue with this Canavalia sp. That would be why it's not producing seeds.

So right now I'm kind of in a standstill with my Canavalia sp. from Zwai. All of my observations through the microscope could be incorrect. I am almost 100% positive that I have seen pollen on the anthers earlier though. I mean I did germinate the pollen and could have sworn I saw pollen grain. Maybe I just don't know what pollen grains look like then... (Totally kidding but yet not kidding...) I'm really not sure right now. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have all the answers and everything straightened out!

Also, I haven't tried the vernalization with the Onobrychis arenaria this past week because the incubators needed to get worked on and fixed. I'm sure that when I get back from the fields on either Wednesday or Thursday they should be fixed and up and running!

That's my amazing news! Monday-Wednesday or possibly Thursday this coming week I'm traveling to various farms that are selling forage seed through ILRI! While touring the farms, we're passing through Sodo, Zwai, and Debre Zeit! We leave bright and early Monday morning at 5:30 and our first farm is part of a Union/Cooperative! Dr. Jean had Millie and I create a questionnaire that we can ask each grower that we stop at. We stopped in the office this afternoon to have Dr. Jean review it over and help edit it with us. Also, we added some questions and took out others. I think we're stopping at 12 growers total, so I am so excited! Some are small scale producers, while a few are medium scale producers. No large scale, so this will definitely be different from what I'm used to. Also, Dr. Jean said that this is a great time for us to go because it's planting season, so maybe I'll get to see their planting process! Who knows! I am looking forward to seeing the southern part of Ethiopia, interviewing all of the farmers, seeing my Canavalia sp. plant in Sodo, spending the night other than in my hostel, and so much more! I get to see so many new cultural things about Ethiopia other that areas in Addis, Debre Zeit, and Zwai! 

Working on the questionnaire with Dr. Jean!

Sodo is at least a 6 hour drive, so we're traveling pretty far south! I am so excited! There is even a chance that instead of coming home Wednesday night, we'll get back on Thursday. This will only be the case if we don't get to all of the farmers by Wednesday. I'm sure we will because Teklu (one of the workers at ILRI) created an itinerary of the trip and he's done this trip numerous times before! It's only a handful of us going on this trip. It's Millie, Eseba, Teklu, Lei, and me. I can't wait to write all about it when I get back!

Friday morning Tigist asked Millie and I to stop by her office sometime to talk. We did around 10, and then she asked to take us to tea. We weren't expecting this, but we couldn't decline to this invitation. So we went to the Zebu for some tea and since Tigist doesn't eat breakfast, she wanted to order some food as well. They were serving this small pizza of some sort and asked if we wanted one, so we said yes. We thought that the 3 of us would share just one, but it turned out we each got our own! They were small, but I definitely wasn't hungry since I ate breakfast. It was too late to say no though... And it looked really ...

Pizza and tea!

Doesn't that look scrumptious???

Before I knew it, it was already time for lunch! For some reason I didn't get injera again... I definitely I got it too much and just got burnt out on in. I think that maybe for the rest of my time here though, I'll start getting it often. There aren't too many Ethiopian restaurants in the United States! Also, the injera made in the United States is used with flour instead of teff, so the taste texture is totally different... On the menu today was baked pasta with meat sauce on top, potatoes, and steamed vegetables! And of course my bread roll!

Very tasty!

I mainly already talked about all the work I did already. That was a mixture of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so I guess I'm good!

Tigist took us to dinner at the Zebu Friday night, so that was really fun. We stayed there forever! It was about 9 by the time I got to my room! I was so tired! It was such a busy day!

Fish and fries! (In the background
is Tigist's tibbs.)

Lemonade! But it's fizzy!

This morning Tigist picked us up by her office at 8:45 to take us around and look at all the different markets in Addis. There are so many people! It's all so crowded! I don't know how people do that every day. There's way too many people there the whole time during the day at the markets! You're almost constantly running into people! But it was a really cool thing to experience. I enjoyed it very much! It was fun to see some cultural places! Also, I love all the traditional clothing! I am extremely in love with the scarves! Everyone wears them and they're all so beautiful! I want to buy them all!

We got back to the ILRI campus around 3 and Millie and I were starving, so we went to the Zebu for lunch! We both ordered tibbs because it's been a while since we've eaten Ethiopian food! Tibbs is cooked meat with a sauce or seasoning on in. It's been slightly different at every restaurant I've eaten tibbs at, so I find that pretty humorous. There's a sauce that occasionally is served on the side also. It's sometimes pretty spicy; it's some type of spicy chili sauce.

Smile before I take a bite!

Picking up the tibbs with my injera

When I returned to my hostel, there was a vase full of some pink roses! They are so pretty and I have no idea who gave them to me or how they got there!

Aren't they pretty?

I didn't have a whole lot to do so I decided to do a little reading for a while, then decided to type my blog. I reached the part talking about tibbs when there was a knock on my door! (It was a little before 7 pm so I thought it was Millie asking about dinner or something.) Wrong! It was Valentine! Val for short. He lives right behind my hostel in a Villa (technically just a small house) and works in the water quality field. We ran into him for the first time when we were at tea with Tigist Friday morning and he asked if we would want to have dinner with him sometime. I didn't think it would be the next day! But it was! He had a whole dinner made before we even got there! He said he made it all Friday night because he didn't know when we would be coming over. He made all Indian food! (Because he's Indian.) It was all sooooooo delicious! He made yellow rice, white rice, curry, some meat dish, and 2 other dishes I can't remember. Then to drink he made Millie and I green tea with mint and a milkshake! The milkshake had hazelnuts, grapes, carrots, milk, and a few other ingredients. It had a very different taste and wasn't very sweet, but it was so good! The Indian food he made was so delicious, I of course had to go for seconds! (For anyone in my family or I guess anyone who knows me, this shouldn't surprise you at all...) 

After dinner we watched a marathon of Storage Wars and played with his guinea pigs! His guinea pigs are the cutest things ever! All 3 of them are albino! So they're all white with red eyes! (Of course... That's what being albino means...) I had such a great time and didn't realize how late it was! We left his place a little after 11 pm! He said we were welcome to come over whenever even without telling him ahead of time. Also, he said he will grill for us sometime before we leave! Yumm!!! Oh! ANDDDDDD he told us we were more than welcome to come over any time we wanted even if he wasn't home. His housekeeper is there during the week so it would be unlocked and we could watch movies, play video games, or just chill. Val even said I could take his DVD player and projector and any movie I wanted to borrow to watch whenever I wanted! He also opened up his kitchen to us and said if we ever wanted to cook something just tell him what ingredients we needed, he would go buy them for us, and we could use his kitchen!!! How great is that?! I'm not even kidding. Everyone here is so extremely friendly and welcoming. They all open their houses up for me and it's so nice.

Before I went to bed, I turned on the Argentina vs. Brazil game to see how that was going and fell asleep a little after halftime! Which was almost midnight by then. By that time, the score was 2-0 with Argentina leading. The final score was 3-0 Argentina, so I guess I didn't miss that much, but Tigist said that the last goal scored was the best one... So I guess I did miss quite a bit... Oh well! Now tonight is the final! I'm so excited for it, but so bummed because it doesn't start until 10 pm and I have to leave for the field trips at 5:30 in the morning! I guess I'll just have to sleep on the car ride! Totally kidding! I won't sleep! I'll be looking at all the countryside and fields on our drive! :)

This morning was a huge struggle to get up. Staying up till almost 12 and then waking up for church... Tigist picks us up at the Holy City Center at 8 am so that she doesn't have to drive through the ILRI campus. It saves her time and it's not that bad of a walk. We went to IEC (International Evangelical Church), but didn't stay for the bible study after because Tigist had to be home for lunch because some relatives and her mother are all at her house. She still took Millie and I to Kaldi's Coffee for some coffee before she dropped us off! Kaldi's Coffee is very similar to Starbucks. That's what Tigist compared it to when we first arrived here. The coffee and food is very good here! We all ordered coffee lattes and chocolate eclair cake! Millie and I didn't know that Tigist also ordered us all our own serving of cake, so that was a huge surprise when the waitress brought that to us! It was all so delicious though! It was the same cake that we had for dessert at Andreas' barbecue! There's about 3 layers of the crumbly "cake" layer with chocolate filling in between and then like chocolate syrup on top! Oh my goodness it's heaven... Also, the coffee latte was very good! Coffee in Ethiopia is so delicious! I love it so much! (Sorry Mom and Dad. I might start drinking coffee when I get home...)

Coffee latte!

Their logo

The heavenly chocolate eclair cake!

Posed in front of part of IEC

For some reason when we got back to our hostels, Millie and I were still hungry for some lunch, so we made some tomato soup and ate that with some spiced bread we bought the other day! We thought that tomato soup would be pretty hard to mess up, so we decided to give it a try to make! We were right! The soup tasted good!

Can you say delicious?

Now the rest of my Sunday will be spent getting all my things gathered for my field trips the next couple of days and submitting pictures to Lisa and Anna! (They're due tomorrow, but since I won't have my laptop with me or possibly any WiFi, I have to submit them today! Woo! So much to do, and I think this post is long enough! I'm so sorry! I just haven't had any time to post anything the past couple of days! I won't post again until I get back from the fields! I can't believe I'm starting my 7th week of work tomorrow! It's all going way too fast! I'm not ready to leave yet! I'm going to make the most of it!