During orientation for the trip, we heard about 'Ethiopia time' from past volunteers and others. Apparently it's not just something like 'island time' where people might show up late for everything, but also an actual step back in time. They follow a Ge'ez calendar based on the Coptic calendar, which has 12 months of 30 days plus 5 or 6 extra days sprinkled in.
This means that over time they have fallen behind our Gregorian calendar and it's actually 2004 in Ethiopia! New Year's Day is almost always September 11th of our calendar do 2004 is still young over there. Speaking of young, does that mean I can drop 7 years off my age while I'm there?
More importantly, I think I could use a little bit of Ethiopian time to make sure I'm ready for this adventure. I can't believe it's starting on Monday!! That's 11 Hadar 2004 in Ethiopian time :o)
No comments:
Post a Comment