The Soul is Happy

I had plans to blog about my second claim to fame today, but that will have to be put on hold until next week. Because something very important happened this evening. I finally had good spicy food for the first time since I landed here. And for the first time in nearly three weeks, my Soul is well and truly happy.

Someone at the Expat forum that I'm a member of organized Ethiopian dinner night at a restaurant called Abyssinia. The invite said "...cravings of this type of food can't be controlled." So I knew I would be in good company. In order to ensure that I could make the most out of this event, I went back to the apartment to change into leggings and a top, so I could eat as much as possible. I found the stop closest to the restaurant, and upon getting off the tram, promptly got lost. This is a usual occurrence for me, so I don't even bother to print directions anymore. I finally meandered my way into the restaurant. The restaurant itself looked like your cozy neighborhood joint and held a lot of promise

I met up with four wonderful women for dinner. All of them were doing some sort of a Post Doc degree in mechanical engineering, math, physics, and other awesome sounding stuff. Earlier this morning, my math skills made me think that the 8th floor was actually the 11th floor at work. So when I found out what each one of them was doing, I felt like hiding under the table. But they were a lot of fun and make me feel welcome almost immediately. All of them were American, so we bonded over our love of Sephora, and cried together over the ridiculous prices of Manicures and Pedicures in Zurich.

The food finally arrived, and everything looked beautiful! The server brought our plate in this wonderful basket:


Inside this basket, kids, was Paradise:


Hunger levels were insurmountable by the time the food actually arrived, so photography was limited to just the above two pictures. We got one veggie platter for moi, and one meat one. I strategically stopped making any conversation while eating, so as to eat as much as I possibly could. The food itself was great - the ijira (bread) was the right consistency and the vegetables were superbly flavorful. It was definitely on par, if not better, than the Ethiopian food I've had back in the U.S.

Finally, after my hand couldn't lift itself up for another bite, I rejoined the conversation. We talked about TV shows and I shared my shameful history of waking up at 6:30 in the morning to watch LOST. There was at least one other LOST fan, but she was normal and didn't do the 6:30am thing like me. We all came to a unanimous conclusion that Robert Downey Jr. was super hot and expressed our common love for various other male actors. We ended the evening after everyone looked like they could fall asleep at the restaurant itself. I managed to stay awake until the ride back to the apartment, and despite my food-induced catatonic state, wrote up this post, just for you. So now I'm off to bed, and have a busy weekend lined up, so won't be back until Monday. Until then, I leave you with images of this once again:



Guten nuit!