Thursday, July 9, 2009

I hate Ethiopian Airlines!!!!

I came home from Game Night at Big AHOPE, all ready to shower and go to bed, then get up early for our flight to Harrar. At about 9:45pm,
Jen came back into the house with bad news. Ethiopian Airlines called
to say that our flight was cancelled, not delayed, cancelled!!!! We tried calling the tour company but of course couldn't get through. So we got up and went to the Hilton at 7am-- but of course the girl working at the tour company couldn't possibly help us without her manager-- even though we said that a driver, her driver was supposed to pick us up at the Harrar airport at 8:30am. So we went to Ethiopian Airlines where they told us we were rescheduled for Sunday at 4pm.
Less than 2 hours before we were due to return to Addis. So we went to the pastry shop to drown our sorrows in chocolate crossaints and hot cocoa. When finally our tour manager(mind you, she couldn't figure out how to use the credit card machine when we made our reservations) arrived, she was like "yes, my branch manager called to say your flight was cancelled, but it is too late because I paid for your hotel and the driver rented the car and went to the airport(HELLO WE WERE IN YOUR OFFICE at 7AM!!!). So we would lose 50% of our money for cancelling. So we went back to Ethiopian Airlines to see if we could
get out Saturday AM and save part of our trip, but no despite the fact
that there were 3 flights between the two days, we were on the Sunday afternoon flight. Yet they were confused when we tell them we want a refund. So now we had to decide what to do, so we went back to see about a driving tour of Harrar at another tour company. We ended up booking with them for a three day driving trip next weekend. All in all, we had to spend 6 hours at the Hilton, Jen says "oh well, this is Africa" but I think it is ridiculous!!!!!

You are my Sunshine!!!
We were asked to work with the kids at the CDC on something for their family day. I decided we could teach them You are my Sunshine. I didn't realize Melaku, the social worker there meant we should work with all 70 of them, but he did so he and Girma, the nurse gathered all of the kids and we started teaching them the words. Have I mentioned that I am fairly certain I am tone deaf?? And we have to keep singing alone so the kids could get the tune. The kids actually giggled the first time we sang. But they learned the words pretty quickly. Next week, we will make crafts to go with the song.

Castelli Restaurant
We went to a great Italian restaurant in Piazza on Friday. It is
called Castelli, white tablecloths, red roses, very fancy, quite the
date night dinner-- Jen and I were laughing about that.I had homemade raviolini that was spinach, some filled with cheese,
some with cheese and spinach, delicious crusty bread, a creamy tomato sauce with Italian mushrooms, a glass of local red wine and hazelnut gelato. YUM!!!!

Addis Ababa Restaurant
Thursday night, since we were already in Piazza, we thought we'd try the Addis Ababa restaurant which is written up in both Lonely Planet and Bradt. We walk into a packed place and everyone went silent. Patrons just stared at us and eventually started motioning for us to sit with them. We got seated finally and ordered fasting food for me and tibs for Jen. It was clearly a local establishment, there was even a wedding party there having their dinner. And our entire bill
together was $7 USD.

1 comment:

Signe said...

I had to laugh at this post. When we were in Ethiopia one of the volunteers from Layla and one of the other parents went to Djibouti, it sounds like they had the same customer service you did. Traveling in Africa is always an adventure, even in the Hilton!

Fun blog, I'm glad that I found it.