oh is it safe to travel to addis ababa i think it is everything online says it is but how are you
really supposed to know that until you get there i just finished traveling in ethiopia for 10 days
and right now i'm on my balcony in zanzibar but let's not get ahead of ourselves let's bring it
bring it back bring it bring it back in one week i leave to go to ethiopia and i'm so excited
but i'm also so scared and it's really hard to admit these things but i want to make this video
and share with you what i'm scared of because well i mean in theory i'll make it out just
fine on the other side and be like what were you scared of but i really want you to just
know what it's like to travel there whether you decide to travel there too or you just want to
experience something else through my eyes but this video comes from an honest place so let's get it
i try really hard when i'm traveling to other places to blend in as much as i can and
i just i feel like that that's not going to be possible in ethiopia i feel like i will
so obviously be a foreigner i 100 stuck out when i was traveling in artists and right now because
i was traveling during january 2021 there's just there's not a lot of tourists there at all and an
artist you can literally travel and drive around for a very long time and never never see anyone
that isn't ethiopian a funny story even when i was traveling in so i flew from florida to doha
doha to addis ababa even at the airport when i was in line to get onto the plane every single person
on that flight was ethiopian and someone turned to me and didn't ask where i'm from but they ask
what are you i think the thing that made this challenging for me is that there's a culture of
staring in ethiopia and it's not a mean staring or a threatening staring it's a curiosity staring and
it's acceptable at least from what i understand to stare there and so i stared at them and they
stared at me and that is scary i'm scared of being left alone ever i have a friend that lives out in
ethiopia and he'll be with me most of the time if not all of the time but i'm sure there will
be moments i'm on my own i feel so lame for admitting this but it's true i just feel like
it's going to be such a foreign place and i can always make do on my own but i'm just scared of
being alone out there it ended up not being from a safety perspective but more from like a discomfort
foreigner feeling perspective anytime i was out on my own even doing really simple things like going
to get a sim card for my cell phone things were just different there so for example you don't get
in line at the cell phone place you sit generally in the middle area and then when a table opens up
with someone who works there they don't call you over they just sit there and stare at you and you
eventually try to jump to the you basically race the person next to you to that desk and so i like
i was just like oh is it my turn is it your turn it was really confusing the other thing is even
though i got a sim card it's really hard to be connected in addis the power goes out all the time
your sim card is suddenly not working or different depending on where you're at in the city there's
just no connection over wi-fi or sim card and so it was just very disconnected there actually it
was so disconnected there that i ended up leaving my friend's place to go check into a hotel just
so i could have good wifi for a little bit and so i checked into the hilton link in the description
below if you want to see that video but once i got there i actually never ended up leaving the hotel
i'm scared of being a woman that's traveling in ethiopia this is really hard for me to admit but
i get scared of how men are going to be approaching me in other countries i've traveled
solo a lot i've been to eight different countries alone and it's always different everywhere and so
most recently when i was traveling through mexico all the men were you know pretty respectful in
tulum but in playa del carmen i i had problems i had a lot of problems and i didn't go out a lot
on my own i was scared and i don't know what it's going to be like in ethiopia but while i didn't
spend that much time on my own i will say that i guess i was fine and i realized that there aren't
a lot of women who work out with kettlebells and jump rope in artists this is a hard video to make
sure that like button if you're enjoying watching me sweating while making this and consider sharing
it with someone who might be entertained by it and tell me in the comments below what you
would be scared of okay next i've been working really hard on my craft of flying my drone and i
i'll admit i'm kind of a badass at it and i can hand launch hand land that thing from moving
boats while wearing a bikini but you know i'm not going to be doing that in ethiopia but i am scared
of flying my drone in public places i try to be really discreet about it but i don't know how well
it's going to be received to see a woman flying a drone and in ethiopia and a woman that looks like
this oh drones oh drones i did so much to message the aviation office the marketing communications
government office i did a lot to get in touch to understand the drone situation there but my
understanding is in addis drones equal bombs so i basically never took my drone out i just did
not want to risk it so i didn't fly until i went out of town into the mountains which was awesome
and to be totally honest i'm scared about what kind of hate i'm going to get in the comments
because sometimes it's really funny what people write but sometimes it's like really freaking mean
i've been training so hard i've been spinning every day and doing the lunges and the squats
and working on my legs to get them strong but i'm doing a bike ride through the mountains of
ethiopia and i'm so scared that i'm going to suck that's going to be a whole separate video
if you want to see that check that out but i i'm scared i'm i'm scared i'm going to suck on this
bike right oh sucking on the bike ride it ended up being totally different than what i expected make
sure you check out those videos and i'll give you the details on that when i'm back in two months
and i'm sitting on this couch and i'm editing these videos i wonder what i'm gonna tell myself
that i should have been as scared as i thought or maybe that i should have worked on my guns
who knows let's find out oh and the coffee i drink coffee every day in the states but
drinking coffee and artists one little cup oh you get the shakes for hours shakes shake shake
shake shake shake shake share share share it's like that when you have coffee just a little bit