First Impressions

We made a last minute decision the week before we left to take a family friend along with us. I.'s knows Jonathan from NH. I met him about a year ago. Jonathan was adopted from Ethiopia to NH when he was 10 years old. He is now 21. He was able to go back a couple of years ago with his mom and visit. We decided it would be good for all of us to include him.

We left at about 11 a.m. from I.'s parent's house. Carol took us to the bus station in Newport and we took the bus from there to the Boston airport. I think it is about 2.5 hours. We said goodbye to Z there. I lost it. He seemed to do okay but it was very hard for Mommy.

We flew Lufthansa from Boston to Frankfurt. We got a pretty good dinner on the way of pasta and vegetables. We also had a movie. I., Jonathan, and another man good in trouble for laughing. They were told to quiet down as people were trying to sleep. Simply ridiculous. We had a 5 hour layover in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt airport is terrible. There is nothing to eat, nowhere to sit, very small bathrooms, and two or three security checkpoints before you get on your plane. We then flew from there to Khartoum, Sudan where we refueled. I. and I slept most of the way there. We did not get off the plane, just stopped for 45 minutes. We could see a lot of the city from where we flew in. I. saw camels walking on the side of the runway and we saw huge artillery guns there as well. Interesting. Then it was on to Addis.

May 29, 2008

In Addis. We got to the guest house around 10 p.m. There is a 7 hour time difference from NH so it was only 3 p.m. there. Our flights were uneventful and actually seemed to go pretty fast. We met our driver, Zodu, after getting our bags. He took us out to the van. It was raining pretty hard. After a long trip it was very refreshing. We loved it. We could smell different smells even as we got off the plane: a dusty, spicy scent. We drove through the rain about ten minutes to the guest house. We couldn't see much as it was dark and wet but I did notice a little place called the denver Cafe with a big bronco on it. Maybe we will find time to try it out.

The guest house is nice and big. We have this whole place to ourselves but then can eat with the other adopting families at the main house. My stomach has been queasy, partly from eating at such different times. Everyone is super friendly. Keenan and Solomon fix our food and assist us in anything else we need. We arrived at the guest house, were shown to our rooms, and met the director, Helen. Helen is Ethiopian but lived in Boston for 30 years. She has been very involved in adoptions and just opened this guest house in the last two years, hoping to accomodate adopting families. Our bedroom is pretty big but sparse. We do have one big unit that has shelves. The bathroom is quite nice with a big tub and shower. There is no shower curtain.

We were served dinner then at 10:00 p.m. I ordered a cheese sandwich and the guys ordered an Ethiopian meal. The cheese sandwich was a little strange and I did realize after that we are supposed to avoid dairy. We went to bed with our mosquito net up. There isn't supposed to be a problem in Addis with Malaria because the elevation is so high, over 8,000 feet. But we wanted to be cautious just the same. The staff probably was laughing at us. We both took an Ambien in order to insure good sleep on our last night before picking up K. I. started acting weird almost right away. He was being rather obnoxious. He didn't remember but I banned him from taking anymore.