Last year, I spent Christmas in Yirgalem with 10 other volunteers, and then I traveled a day and a half to spend New Year’s Eve in Bedele with my boyfriend and a few other friends. This year, my holidays were pretty chill.
I went to Fiche for the first time to see Chandler’s new site and we spent Christmas Eve/Christmas holed up in his house drinking hot chocolate and watching Christmas films. We only ventured out to buy supplies like bread and eggs – because Chandler had thought everything through except meals…sort of important, right? : )
The day after Christmas found us a couple of miles down the road at a bridge carved hundreds of years ago. But it was the surrounding scenery that was really captivating.
Gorgeous, right? We got ourselves a coke at the little cafe perched on this lookout and spent a good while enjoying the view.
And then we were off exploring. There were hundreds of these little puddles as we made our way down to the lagoon just below.
Chandler claims this was an actual waterfall when he first came a couple of months ago (instead of the water trickle it had become) – but I guess that’s the difference between rainy and dry season. Either way, it was incredibly beautiful. Though we did nix our initial idea to go swimming due to the stagnant water – no one wants schisto.
After that, we made our way to Addis and watched a couple of films before heading to my site for the new year. Chandler picked The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (much better than I would have expected – I highly recommend it. It had some beautiful scenes in Greenland and Iceland and of the Himalayas). And then it was time for my pick…Frozen of course. Because it just isn’t Christmas without a Disney film, and all the better if it’s new!
Thanks to a lovely friend, we spent New Year’s Eve at Haile Resort in Hawassa. It was heaven. No exaggeration…heaven. First of all, let’s talk about the bathroom. We had a shower and a bathtub. A shower AND a bathtub. And all of the products were organic and heavenly smelling. Green tea ginseng, I believe.
And then there were ceiling fans…ceiling fans! In every room. And flat screens. We watched the ball drop at 8am in bed. Perfect. It was hard to leave, ridiculously hard. Because on top of all that, the breakfast buffet was just so good. And while the pool was too cold to spend more than a few minutes in, it didn’t matter, because afterward you could just lounge around in their lounge chairs. Or take a hot shower. If only every day could be like those two days.
Eventually, we had to leave. Though we stayed right up until the very minute of our checkout time. But the photograph above is of my first view in 2014. No complaints here, I had some great holidays this last year.
Abroad With Ashley 