Ethiopian Christmas--Melkam Gena!

January 7, 2010--We took our first shot at having an Ethiopian Christmas celebration this year, and well, it was an interesting day filled with all kinds of learning opportunities.......

I had everything planned out as to how my day would go. So I set out with my lists in hand and my two helpers--Haylie and Hana. We headed for the East African Market to buy some supplies for our dinner. I had never been there before but I was able to find it very easily. We lingered quite a while in the store checking off the needed items on our list and we were excited to find out that they sold injerra at a good price! We thanked the store owner and left the store....still walking on air that we now had freshly made injerra, because we were starving!! We tore into the bag and started pigging out and I'm pretty sure that what happened next was #1 because I was concentrating on eating the injerra, #2 because we were actually in the smack middle of a snow storm and I couldn't see anything, #3 because I was unfamiliar with the parking lot since it was my first visit there, and #4 because of plain old stupidity!!!

I started backing out of the parking spot and my eyes landed on two bright orange driveway markers. Great, I thought, I'm within the driveway boundaries and so I started slowly moving forward and before I could stuff another bite of injerra in my mouth, my car went THUD and immediately died! I KILLED MY CAR....I cried silently to myself.....I slowly opened my car door and got out. I walked around to the front of the car and bent down to take a look---not really sure that I would learn anything by doing that, but I decided that it was probably what a guy would do. So I did it. Well, turns out that I just happened to drive right off a cement retaining wall! Both tires.....off the ground....underside of the car balancing on "said" wall.....in the middle of a snow storm....freezing my behind off. Oh boy.....this was definitely NOT in my plan for the day! How could this happen?!

My next thought was "Now I have to call Todd and tell him what I just did". I don't know which thought scared me more.....the realization that I probably just ruined my car or the fact that I had to endure the torture of having my husband look at me with that "look". You know the one I'm talking about.....the one that is made up of "I can't believe you just did this and "This is great, now I have something to bring up every so often...just for fun"! All this, while trying really, really hard NOT to laugh at you! (or should I say, trying to laugh ONLY when you are not looking??)

So I got back in my car and slowly turned the key...praying that I would again hear the sweet sounds of my engine purring. Thankfully I did hear that wonderful sound and I breathed a sigh of relief to find out that my car wasn't "killed". I called Todd and slowly started to tell him what I had just done and he stopped me--mid story--to remind me that we were in the middle of a severe weather advisory (Oh really?) and "Did I realize what my chances were for having a tow truck get to me any time soon?" "Oh" I said....didn't think of that. Hmmm....."Well, could YOU come and help me"? I said, as sweetly as I could muster. Sounding slightly annoyed, he told me he was leaving and would be there in about 15 minutes. YES! Help is on the way....I smiled. So I sent my girls in to one of the stores so they could get warm and I sat in the car and waited for my Night in Shining Armor! EXCEPT....while sitting there I gradually started to realize that my predicament was being noticed by other people.

The first guy pulled in to the parking lot, got out of his car and walked over to my car and slowly started walking around it. I got out of the car and looked at him. He looked back at me and just shook his head. He wondered if I had any help coming. "Nothing I can do for you, you're gonna need a tow truck" he said. He went into the store and I got back into my car. Guy #2 pulls in, gets out of his car, and proceeds to start checking me out...I mean checking out my car. =) I get out of the car again....starting to get a little annoyed. He is now standing there, slightly leaning to one side with his head tilted so as to see what's going on under my car. I wait. Finally I can't take it anymore and so I say "Pretty bad, isn't it'? He looks up at me, and in a Jamaican-type accent he says, "Oh...it's not good". I assured him that help was on the way and he seemed very relieved that HE didn't have to help me!! I get back in the car AGAIN just to notice guy #3 pulling in. He was very nice and told me that he would come out and....help....my "help"..... and to come into the store and get him when they arrived. He was very kind but I was starting to feel like a piece of road kill just laying there watching the buzzards circling above me. It really didn't help my self esteem any when an old couple who were driving down the road in front of me, slammed on their breaks and then slowly drove by --pointing and staring at me and my poor baby. UGH!

So my Knight finally got there and I found out that he brought along "Mr. Muscle". This is great, I thought....more help. Until .....Mr. Muscle got out of the car and I noticed that he was having a bit of trouble maintaining his composure. Can you say hyena? Um yeah.....so I gave him a big smack and we got down to the matter at hand. Since this seems to be an everlasting story, I will just tell you that it took 5 guys to finally get my car off that dumb retaining wall! After trying many different things they decided that the best thing to do would be to just pick my car up and lift it off. It worked!! Thank goodness! I had places to go and people to see!!

I didn't die of embarrassment....but I wanted to. I learned a lesson....actually I probably learned quite a few lessons that day but I won't go into them here....that could end up being another story in itself!!

Congratulations if you made it this far.....I really didn't mean to be so long winded....really.

We went on to do our other errands and made it home to eventually enjoy our Ethiopian Christmas dinner. Everything turned out super! I just hope that next Ethiopian Christmas.......

I won't have so many lessons to learn! =(

Here is a picture of our yummy dinner!

Injerra

Misir

Alicha

Gomen

and

DoroWat