Day 31: Got Milk?

Hello friends!

Today was a nice day to sleep in just a little, like 7:30 am. To get my bananas eaten up that I had gotten from Tigist, I had one of those and some apple juice. Afterwards, Hannah and I went to meet Dr. Jean so she could look at the data we had collected so-far and see where the gaps are. She called it our halfway check-in. I'm glad she's able to help us understand what we have done so far and challenge us with even more questions.

Right before we left for lunch, Dr. Jean told us that we would be going to do another market survey as well as visit a milk processing plant in a town north of Addis. She helped us prepare some questions and then we all went to lunch. I love being apart of the forages people, all 8 of us sat at a table together to have lunch. I had the lasagna and potatoes. After lunch, Hannah and I went to change into our rubber boots in case it was muddy and then we headed out with our driver and translator. We drove all the way up to town way up in the mountains (over 9,000 ft elevation) and arrived in Sululta (the genetics building is named after this town). It wasn't market day so we went to grain shops and a processing mill to do our market survey. To end out our time there, we stopped at Elemtu Dairy Processing Plant. It was really really cool to see. They were not working unfortunately but we still got to see the equipment. I sat down with one of the workers and asked some questions. He told me that they buy milk from over 10,000 farmers. That is a lot of milk! On our way out, our translator actually bought us some yoghurt! Before we left for Sululta, Dr. Jean said how much she loved their yoghurt so we made sure to get her a couple cups.

The drive out there was so beautiful! I honestly love going way up into the mountains. The weather is cool and the scenery is gorgeous!

Now, tell me that isn't beautiful. Tomorrow we go back to Debre Zeit for even more farm visits and surveys. I'm hoping to get most of the visits done before the last full week we are here. This weekend, Dr. Tadelle said that we were going to eastern Ethiopia for the weekend to see the animals out there. That should be really fun! Time is really going by fast! 3.5 weeks left!