It's Sunday and it's a new year

Today was yet another journey. There have been a lot of them these days :) I started out very early with a trip to Bole 19 tennis club for 9AM. Hiruy (my coach) was there and we sat and watched some VERY good tennis. It was the semifinal in a city-wide tournament hosted by the club this year. There were 2 matches on and we were back and forth watching the two. One of the players, about 17 years old, had just returned from a week with the Becker family in Germany. He was really strong on the court and had a HUGE forehand. He lifted himself off the ground almost every stroke. Paul called about 10 and I made arrangements to meet him and a few others at Mexico square to go to merkato. The taxi dropped us near the mosque, one of the many landmarks in merkato then the walking began. We walked and walked for many hours, stopped at a very interesting restaurant and I finally had a famous traditional dish called "tibs". It's meat cubes and lots of garlic. There were some hot green peppers and slivers of onions dispersed throughout the dish and we gulped a handful of Coca and Fanta then kept the tour going another hour or so. I bought nothing. Paul picked up a rug and a picture then we cabbed back to his house. My foot is not good. When I walk a lot it aches. It's on the outside of the left foot about two thirds of the way between the ankle and the toes. It has not got any better in a week and may even be worse. I will go to a higher clinic Monday morning and get it looked at. They have lower, middle, and higher clinics here; the level refers to the type of interventions they are capable of performing. The higher clinic or a hospital are where one goes if an xray is required. Bummer ... this is the same foot that has given me problems at least 4 or 5 times over the past few decades. It is the same one that got messed up a bit when I had that run in with some asphalt on my motorcycyle in 2008. When we got back to Paul's today, we were invited next door to a new year celebration. There is a child care/school next door and the hosts were lovely. We had tibs, again, as well as a lovely few of cups of coffee. I intensely watched the woman who made the coffee. The beans were green and very fresh. She washed them three times in a shallow dish, massaging the beans through the water then letting it run off into a dish. After the third washing, the rinse water was black. She then let them sit in the same dish, and placed it on a small hibachi-like apparatus for heat. The final bit of water evaporated and the beans were vigorously stirred with a fork for 15-20 until they were browny-black. The aroma of the beans was intoxicating. Off they went to be pulverized with a heavy pipe in some sort of urn (grinding). The resultant brew was the BEST. The powder was poured into a tall clay pot, placed back on the charcoal, then gently poured from a long spout into small cups. The pour was so gentle it did not disturb the grounds that stayed in the pot. By the way, the balance of the goat whose meat we had just devoured was still hanging in the tree when we left; a few ribs and some assorted bones with red meat glistening on them looked ... well, different (something I had never seen before). I made a mess of my white shirt in merkato so washed it at Paul's. It was so Ethiopian washing it by hand. I ironed it then we headed out for Addis tex-mex at a place called the Family Restaurant. We had a lovely time, then I cabbed back to the Deker, with someone from LA who had joined us for dinner. I was going to watch tennis all evening but the Nadal match was just wrapping up when I turned it on so I am blogging then will turn in.