Culture

We had a fantastic afternoon today at the new Ethiopian Community Center in south Seattle. It opened a few months ago but the event today was the first one we were able to go to. Several local adoptive families organized an afternoon of eating and dancing, topped off by a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. What could be better?

After napping for the first twenty minutes (truly, dead-to-the-world-napping) Madeleine was thrilled to wake up to a roomful of new faces and proudly ran around showing off her "Opia dress" to everyone. She was one of the youngest but gamely joined in during all the activities. She also devoured an entire roll of injera and a mound of doro wat to boot. This girl loves to eat!

As soon as the coffee ceremony began the smell of incense filled the room and it was almost like being back in Ethiopia.

The children all crowded around to pass out the popcorn.

Maddy didn't need to fight her way in though - she was content to stare at the kernels that fell on the floor...

...and then protected them with fervor (as though anyone else wanted to eat dirty popcorn). I watched her closely as she played with this popcorn for 10 minutes. The moment I looked away, satisfied she wasn't going to eat it, down the hatch it went. Ughh! I wonder how many disgusting floor germs she swallowed today?

Last weekend I went to a Central Asian Traditions cooking class at PCC Natural Market with several women from my Kazakhstan adoption group where we learned how to make Kazakh Mantu, as well as dishes from neighboring countries. How lucky we are to live in an area with such rich culture!