New Year's Coffee Ceremony

A coffee ceremony was held for the guests at the hotel where I'm staying. Ethiopian coffee is always served with popcorn, and they also served some toffee candies. In addition, there was a round bread that originated in Tigray called ambasha; one of the front desk attendants is a young Tigrinyan woman, and her aunt made it. The head of the household is usually in charge of cutting the ambasha, I was told, but the hotel owners are currently in the US. The hotel owner's brother is planning to move back to Ethiopia after living in the States for the past 30 years, so they went to help him move. Apparently, the uncle had bought a car in Washington D.C. that he plans to take back to Ethiopia, but first they drove it from D.C. to Minnesota, then on to California, and finally to Georgia--sounds like quite a trip! Anyway, Yared is taking care of the hotel while they're away. He cut and served the ambasha bread, handed around the popcorn and toffee, which we snacked on as we waited for the first cup of coffee to be served. Yared told me he had also been to America in 2008; he lived there for 18 months on the CIP Chicago program studying computer science. While we drank our coffees, I talked to him about the program and how he did a homestay near the United Center with a CIP alumnus from Brazil. It was a lot of fun.