Starting to get my legs back

To be honest, today is the first day since I left on Sunday where I have begun to feel like I wasn't run over by a bus.  It is amazing what a 10 hour time shift will do to your physical and mental well being.  Ethiopia (or I should say Addis Ababa, as we haven't been anywhere else) is overwhelming in many ways.  The smells, the sights, the food, the noise, the traffic, it all is so different than my cold world of Edmonton.  The people here are very nice, friendly, and everyone I have met has been great.  The crew along for the Round Table and Cupping Caravan are great too.  We have a good contingent with representation from Greece, Germany, the USA, and me the one Canadian.  Today was a networking day, and a day of cupping.  I got to see first hand the new grain pro bag with a ziplock (exciting).  We also finished the day off with a bit of a crazy cupping outside of the Hilton, and I say crazy as there were about 50 people cupping around a table with only three bowls per coffee.  It is always a bit of a gong show when that many people are trying to get around a table in a reasonable amount of time.  We were then over to Trabocca's office to cup the coffee that Menno and his crew have for sale this year.

To be honest, I am itching to get out of Addis and into the country of Sidama and Yirgacheffe.  I am bracing myself for the long trip, but am anxious to see the country side and the coffee.  It seems odd to travel half way around the world to spend time at a Hilton hotel (as nice as it is).  Once again I am reminded of the relationships we build in the specialty coffee world, and that is what continues to drive me forward; that and the great coffee we get to drink.  Tomorrow morning we are supposed to do a bit more cupping, and then the rest of the day is free (Lion Zoo here I come).  Then it is off to the south of Ethiopia on Sunday morning.  Events like this one continue to reinforce how much I have to learn, and how little I really know about coffee.  Ethiopia is a whole new world for me, both in terms of flavours, regions, culture, quality.  It is easy for me to start to think more of myself than I ought to when I just spend time in Edmonton.  There people tend to think of me as the "coffee guy".  Here I am a nobody, someone who doesn't understand much of anything going on.  Sure I still know what I like, and what I don't, but apart from that, I am back in kindergarden, looking wide eyed at all of the things which I have never seen before.  It is what makes the world of specialty coffee so interesting and exotic; albeit sleep deprived and exhausted, I wouldn't trade it in.[gallery]