First full day in Addis!! Today we were given a more extensive tour of Tebare-id university, and all the workshops that the biomedical students go through. Tegbare-id is a technical university, so their curriculum is extremely hands-on and focuses on practical skills.

The biomedical students are training to be device technicians, so they get a lot of groundwork in electronics, then move up to working on actual devices. The electronics classrooms are pretty well stocked; they actually reminded me of Abercrombie at Rice. In the upper level biomedical classes they work on actual devices, and have to complete a design project at the end of each year! Pretty impressive.

The students are undergoing final exams right now (just like in the U.S.) so there weren’t very many actual classes going on. One thing that shows the dedication of these students: so as newcomers/foreigners we got a lot of looks everywhere we went. Until we went into a classroom where students were taking a final exam; NONE of them looked up from their work. So at the very least Mel and I should be able to bond with the students over stressing over finals!

Then we got to hang out in the teacher’s lounge for a while (I felt so important!) and got repeatedly crushed playing checkers. We also tried to learn some Amharic words (Amharic is the language spoken in most of Ethiopia), garnering laughs from everyone around. But we made some progress! I can now say thank you (ahmesugenalew), OK (eshi), excuse me (yekerta), not spicy (alecha), coffee (bunna), and a few other words. Those last two are especially critical!

And now we’re back at the guest house. Still haven’t seen much of the city, but now we’ve got the whole weekend to explore!