Omaha....and Ethiopian Food

First of all, sorry for the mass download of blog posts from us lately. If you're keeping current with our blog, I applaud your tenacity! I think being called fabulous and all has maybe inflated mine and Roger's ego and now we're super-inspired to blog even more! Or maybe we've just had some blog-worthy stuff going on in our life lately. I'm not sure.

Anyway, since it's already Thursday, I thought I should probably get around to writing about our very fun weekend in Omaha so as not to give our friends Josh and Sara the impression it wasn't a momentous and enjoyable time that we had with them. Because it SO was. Josh and Sara get the Most Supportive Friends Award because -- wait for it -- they went to an Ethiopian restaurant with us and shared our first experience eating Ethiopian food!!! And they aren't even adopting from Ethiopia (gasp)!! And it was so fun and hilarious and I will remember it forever. Roger and I had Googled "Ethiopian restaurants Omaha" last week in the off chance there might be one, and low and behold there was. Obviously Springfield is not the cultural epicenter of the Midwest, so we were totally going to take advantage of traveling to a bigger city. I called up Sara on Wednesday or Thursday and informed her of our exciting discovery and how we really wanted to try it, and she was all for it......until I gave her the address of the restaurant. I detected a slight decrease in her enthusiasm, but she was still very supportive and said if we wanted to go, they would totally go with us. Then we get to their house on Friday afternoon and we're discussing our plans for the weekend and the restaurant comes up again. At that point Sara's husband Josh pretty much flat out told us we were not going to go because it wasn't a safe part of town. I told him I kind of expected that and I was sure it would be fine. After all, I had read two raving reviews online, so it had to be great; right? Josh agreed that we would at least "drive by" so as to see for ourselves that we probably wouldn't want to get out of the car. Well, guess what? We checked it out (in broad daylight), it looked perfectly safe, and it was great. Well, as great as eating Ethiopian food for the first time can be. As we were walking into the restaurant I was giggling like a little girl I was so excited. I felt like you do right before you ride a big roller coaster; excited and nervous at the same time. The lady who waited on us was the restaurant owner and she so sweet and beautiful and helpful, truly. I think she may have thought we were complete idiots when we were ordering because we ordered like four huge different dishes, which was of course too much food, but we all wanted to try everything. And it was very reasonably priced so it was no big deal for us to do it that way. She was so nice and explained what everything was on the menu. Even though the menu had pictures, that still of course didn't help us out any because we know nothing about Ethiopian food, except injera which we knew was some type of bread. So we had plenty of food that we all loved trying and commenting on. The only "negative" part of our dining experience was when I took a bite out of a whole hard-boiled egg covered in a red spicy sauce and Roger about threw up. And that was only negative for Roger because we all thought it was hysterical he was so freaked out by it. Eggs have always weirded him out and I knew he would react that way, so that may or may not have been my incentive for trying the egg. Roger and I also drank mango juice with our meal to be even more "authentic." It smelled like tomatoes, but tasted like mangoes. The other very cool thing about this restaurant is it was attached to East African Grocery. After we ate, we wandered over there up and down the aisles and it was full of Ethiopian goods, like ghee and sesame candy and dried lentils and a bunch of other stuff I know nothing about. As we were wandering around looking totally out of place, oohing and aahing over everything, Roger was totally caught staring at a very beautiful Ethiopian girl, who was probably in her mid-20s. Seriously, I'm a little worried I might go over to Ethiopia and come home with a child minus one husband. As he was blatantly staring at her, she asked him if he was a student and he totally looked like a deer in headlights. He didn't even answer her at first because he was so caught off guard. Apparently she thought we looked out of place and that was her best guess for why were there. Since Roger was still stammering around, I jumped in and explained to her that we were adopting a baby from Ethiopia, and she kind of looked at us for a minute and then said, "Oh," with a combination of surprise/indifference, if that makes any sense. And that was that. I am so intrigued by what Ethiopian people think of white families adopting children from their home country. Anyway, it was a great experience and so much fun. The restaurant also had a TV showing an Ethiopian channel that consisted of music videos of people doing Ethiopian dances and singing songs. Very interesting. Like I said before, it was a great experience and so much fun. I am definitely looking forward to eating Ethiopian food again, now that I have a better idea of what it is.


The rest of the weekend consisted of a little shopping, some more great eating, a hockey game that I didn't watch any of because I was too busy talking, and tons of great conversation. Sara and I have been friends since we were about 13, so we have that special knack that all lifelong friends have of picking up exactly where we left off, no matter how long it's been since we last saw each other. Relationships like that are so precious. There's nothing more comforting and fun than spending time with a friend who has known you your whole life, who totally gets who you are because they know your whole story, who has shared your excitement and happiness over the wonderful times in life and also knows your struggles and heartbreaks. I even told Sara I was going to blog a photo of us together from 1995 (sexy hair, stick legs, matching Garner jackets, and all) just to demonstrate how long we've been friends, but since I'm so technologically inept, that will have to wait for another day. Josh and Roger get along so great, which is awesome because when you get married and your friends get married, you're never quite sure how everyone will get along. Of course, Roger is the social chairperson in this marriage, so it's rare for Roger to meet anyone who he doesn't like and vice versa. I also was very proud of myself and only bought 2 baby things all weekend. I'm supposedly on a baby clothes spending freeze, but it was such a great deal I couldn't pass it up!

(Dinner at Mark's, a restaurant in midtown Omaha)

(Olli, Josh & Sara's sweet dog who I totally get a kick out of since I had a Schnauzer growing up)

(At our Ethiopian feast)

(Couldn't have said it any better myself!)