A late night made for an early morning! I couldn't quite fall asleep last night so it was about 1:45 am when I finally fell asleep. Hannah and I had out last introduction meetings this morning starting at 8:30. First up was the library. We headed to the building 'Infocentre' after breakfast. I wasn't sure what to expect out of the library but it turned out to be mainly conference rooms and a few documents on the projects. The reason for no books was due to the availability of the work and research that you can find on ILRI's website. After meeting there, we headed to our official introduction to the IT. That meeting was so incredibly long and to be honest was not geared to short-term interns/students like Hannah and I.
After about an hour of almost falling asleep yet still trying to listen to the IT guy we made out our way to Sululta to meet our driver Mikhel (I thought it was Miguel originally). He took us into the bustling city to get our SIM cards for our phones so we can contact people within the country. I will be honest, I was a little scared and worried. There are so many people walking the streets, selling items in small open shops, and very many cars not exactly following the lines on the road! Once we got to Ethio Telekom, I was thankful we had Mikhel to translate and help us get our SIM cards. The card only cost 15 birr (about 60 some cents). It actually cost 20 birr to get the card cut down to fit in an iPhone. Once we had got the card cut down and put in our phones we were set!
(I didn't get very good pictures of the actual shops because we were driving)
Once we retuned to campus, we walked to Sululta to meet Dr. Jean Hanson. Dr. Hanson is a very awesome and very intelligent lady! She is from England and so far she has been the easiest to understand! She took us out to one of the fields that were being planted and talked about what they were trying to do. The field she showed us was planted in sections. Each of the four corners were being planted with different variety of seed (I think it was clover) while the whole middle section had already been planted with oats. She told us this would allow each of the different seeds being planted to have their own kind of 'diversity'. Especially so they wouldn't be cross-pollinated and be considered contaminated. Dr. Hanson also informed us that this type of soil in the field is one of the hardest to grow crops in. When it gets dry it starts to crack and when it gets wet it get clay-like. Definitely not like Iowa's black soil!
(This is Dr. Jean Hanson)
(The fields are all hand planted!)
(They use stakes and string to make sure their rows are straight when they use the rake)
After touring the field, Dr. Hanson took us to some of the greenhouses where they were growing a few plants that they needed to collect seeds before they could plant them. They were plants where they did not have enough of the seeds to be able to plant them in other places. She took us around to the back of Sululta where she showed us around the new labs that had just been built. There were several ladies all working on what looked to be extracting DNA or something of that sort. She also showed us some more green houses that were growing other sorts of plants. She took us to the brand-new climate-controlled, automatic greenhouse that wasn't even fully set up yet because it was so new! Then she took us to the older set of labs where there two people working on projects. They had a lot of equipment that I recognized from competing in the State Iowa FFA Biotechnology contest! It was pretty cool to see.
Once we had finished up with Dr. Hanson, we made our way to eat lunch at the cafeteria. The main dish didn't look too appetizing so I went with the vegetarian dish that was a pizza calzone with really awesome stir-fried vegetables. It was super good! They also gave me rice with tomato sauce but I just couldn't eat it all!
(My half eaten calzone)
After lunch, we went back to our rooms and just relaxed for a bit. We both took naps and agreed to meet up around 3:30 pm to see what we wanted to do the rest of the evening. Around that time, Hannah came running and knocking on my door and when I opened it she ran to my window, opened it and pointed out a Giant Tortoise! We ran outside made friends with the big guy! I named him Jerry!
Once we were content with meeting Jerry, Hannah and I went to the gym at the Zebu Club. It's a super nice facility with really nice equipment. I did my physical therapy for knee there as well. Later on in the evening we went to dinner. This time, we shared an egg sandwich and fries because the proportions are quite big. It was really good though!
Tomorrow we don't have anything planned so it might be a sleep-in and just chill out day, we'll see!
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