Lalibela

After a month away from Ethiopia, the first thing I thought I would do is take a vacation. After all, didn't I deserve it? Well, a couple of friends who we work with in Tanzania had the week off for Easter and decided to come up to Ethiopia for a vacation, which gave me the perfect reason to take a couple of days off and go to a place I've wanted to go since I arrived: Lalibela. Lalibela's north of Addis, about a 1 hour flight away. It's a holy town that's well known for its 11 rock hewn churches, which, according to my guidebook (which is generally cynical about everything in the country), are described as "supernatural."

There's something I've learned in the past few months about famous and amazing sites, which is that every single one of them claims to be "the 8th wonder of the world!" As my family knows, I have a special interest in the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and I dare any one of you (if anyone is still reading this) to try and name more than 3 wonders.

Anyway, it turns out that Lalibela is as amazing as its described to be. The churches are all carved from rock into the ground, so that the roof of the church is at ground level and the base is a good 10 meters or so down below the surface. Some churches were still attached at various points to the rock (semi-monolithic) and others were completely free standing, with only the floor or base still attached to the rock (monolithic). The churches were absolutely breathtaking, amazing feats of architecture, artistic beauty, and holiness. I actually thought about believing in god for a second in there.

As usual, here are some photos:

St. George's church, us in the rain (we're holding out our hands because it's raining but you can't really tell), and an area between a few churches, which kind of gives you an idea of the underground like feel of the whole thing.

NI HAO

I've been kind of out of touch for a while - this is partially my fault, but I also blame it on the blockage of websites in China, which somehow deleted my whole post. So this is a good segue to say....I went to China!

I spent the first half of March in Tanzania and the second half in China. Since Tanzania is kind of old news by now (and I didn't do anything new and/or interesting there), I'm going to tell you about China. I should say that for some reason, I had kind of low expectations of China. I just wasn't all that excited about going, especially coming right off of another trip. But China proved me wrong; it was more amazing than I ever could have imagined.

I flew to China via Dubai. The trip was long, and to give you a sense I made this really helpful drawing on top of a map. The only map I could find was of the distribution of Sunni vs. Shia Muslims throughout the eastern hemisphere, so please feel free to educate yourself on that while you look at this map.

The work we did in China was kind of interesting, but probably not to most people. In case you're interested, the main thing I was trying to do was to help the CHAI/China office advise the government of China on how to finance the treatment of opportunistic infections of HIV. This involved making some models and meeting with a bunch of people, blah blah blah. The coolest parts were that (a) I spent a weekend doing China sightseeing, including going to the Great Wall, and (b) I spent 2 days in Western China.

Beijing is a completely amazing city. Despite the fact that therea re like 15 million people there, everything is really well organized and clean. Well, except the air which is ridiculously polluted. But they're doing tons of improvements on the city in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, so it was looking good. The thing that surprised me most (but shouldn't have) about China was that people spoke pretty much no English. I guess I figured that after I could easily find English speakers in rural Ethiopia, it would be no problem in the capital of the most populated country in the world. I also had the opportunity to sample some delicious Chinese dishes, like cow stomach and duck intestines. The various innards I ate ranged from just okay, this tastes like a piece of rubber (cow stomach) to wow, this is kind of delicious (duck blood).

Here's a photo of me on the Great Wall. I should explain that the photographer thought a good idea for a photo would be if I turned around and then spun when the photos was about to be taken, which is why I look like this in the photo. You have to admit, it is more exciting than me just standing there, right?

The Great Wall was really amazing - I just couldn't get over how cool it was just snaking through the landscape for thousands of miles. It's mostly all restored sections, but it was easy to imagine Chinese soldiers protecting their land atop the wall. I highly recommend visiting the Great Wall if the opportunity ever presents itself.



The second most awesome thing I saw in China was in Urumqi, in Xinjiang province. This province borders 6 other countries - Mongolia, Russia, Tajikstan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan. As a result of its location and history, the province has a culture that's completely different than what ever thought could exist in China. Here's another map!





Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to Urumqi, but I also spent the majority of my time there in a hotel in meetings, so it wasn't that interesting to see. We went to a cultural show one night that showcased a lot of song and dance from the Xinjiang province, which was cheesily touristy, but really interesting at the same time. I wish we'd had more time out there.

I was back in Addis for about a week before I went on another trip (this time for pleasure!) to Lalibela, in northern Ethiopia, and I'll post about that extremely soon.