Ethiopia Trip One

Our time in Ethiopia was absolutely amazing. We saw incredible poverty and incredible love. Visiting Yosef was amazing and the highlight of the trip. He is smiley and loves to be held. He’s small for his age, but that’s okay, we know he’ll thrive when we get him home. So, here’s kind of the highlights of each day of our trip:

Saturday-
I dropped off Elijah with his grandparents, to me marking the start of the trip. I had been fearing this part. He had been saying for a few days “I miss Mommy Daddy”. I was afraid he would have a fit when I left him, but he didn’t. In normal Elijah happiness he waved and said “bye bye Mommy I love you” and continued to play with his legos. We were leaving early the next morning. So I went home to finish packing. When I went online to double check what time we needed to be there I also noticed some of the baggage limits. Arghh, I was over the weight limit on almost all of our bags and had to repack everything. I should have checked that earlier. We went to bed and we were so excited and nervous.

Sunday
We flew out of Dulles Airport in DC, which is about a 3 hour drive from us (this saved us like $400). Our flight left at 10:00am. We got breakfast on the way and went smoothly through security and everything. We flew Ethiopian Airlines. The first thing we noticed was all the beautiful Africans waiting for our plane. There were also a few mission teams. Then 12 stewardess walked onto our flight, all absolutely beautiful. The flight was 12 hours long and they are 8 hours ahead of us in time, so we landed at 8:00am Monday. They had movie screens and games in the seat backs in front of us, which helped pass the time a lot. We were so anxious that we slept very little.

Monday-
We landed and we were very anxious. We didn’t know what to expect with getting Visas and going through customs and everything. We were also afraid because we didn’t know the language and we were afraid of stories we’d heard of pick pockets and such. It actually went pretty smoothly. The people telling us where to go spoke english. We got through Visas and everything great. Then we got our bags and exchanged some money. Then we went through the gates to the waiting area. There was a huge crowd of people justProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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aiting for people getting off flights. It was at this point we definitely knew we weren’t in America anymore.  We didn’t see the person who was picking us up, so we had to wait for her in this lobby for about 20 minutes. It was a little scary. We were pretty much the only white people in this lobby, which we didn’t mind, but we were definitely getting some stares. The bathroom we visited was gross, which seemed to be a theme in all public restrooms. No toilet paper or soap and this one didn’t even have a toilet seat or lock, but considering we also saw people later going on the streets I guess this was an upgrade.
So, our representative from the adoption agency picked us up and brought us to the car. On the drive is when we really first got to see the city of Addis and the poverty. It was worse than what we had expected. The driving shocked us. There are no lines in the roads and seem to be no real rules at all. Animals and people walk on the same roads as the cars in most places, no cross walks, no street signs. Amazingly though we saw no accidents the whole time.
They took us to the guest house to let us get settled into our room. While we did they brought another group of families to the House of Hope “transition center” where the babies were. We were just very shocked and anxious at this point. We knew very soon we would meet our baby. We had very little sleep, but the adrenaline was very high. We met a few of the other families. Pretty soon they came back to take us to the House of Hope.
They took us up to a waiting room and Hermella, our guide, brought Yosef in to us. Steve held him first (he got to hold Elijah first too, but I’m okay with that). Yosef just had this shocked look on his face the whole time. Poor little guy had no idea what was going on. He looked just like his pictures. Absolutely adorable. He is very small for his age. He’s 14 pounds and is 6 months old. We had already known about a small special need he has, he has ankyglossia (tongue tied), the skin under his tongue is attached all the way to the tip of his tongue. We had known about it but hadn’t seen pictures. It is a more severe case of it, but is easily fixed with surgery here in the US. If he were to grow up in Ethiopia he probably couldn’t get this fixed and it could greatly effect the quality of his life. This was just our first time to see it in person. He can still eat, but not as quickly and has a special cereal he eats, just more watery than the other kids. This first day he was more kind of tense and fussy, which made us a little worried. We played with him on the floor some. He fell asleep for a while and when he woke up they brought us a bottle to feed him.
Then we went back to the guest house for lunch, leaving Yosef with his nannies. The guest house fed us all of our meals. They fed us kind of americanized Ethiopian food, less spicy than they eat. It was very good. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day for them. At lunch every day we had Injera, which is a kind of Ethiopian flat bread, kind of like a sourdough crepe. You use it to pick up your food. Most meals were mostly roasted vegetables, stews, and soups with just a little meat.
After lunch we went back to the House of Hope. We also were going to help work on fixing up the House of Hope a little. We helped move furniture and started painting the walls. This day we really just watched since we had just met Yosef and wanted to spend more time with him. He loosened up a lot on our afternoon visit. He loves to be held. At about 5:00 we went back to the guest house and had dinner. We went to bed immediately after dinner, but still didn’t sleep very well. I woke up at midnight and didn’t sleep much after that.

Tuesday
After breakfast we went to the transition center and spent some time with Yosef. He actually seemed to recognize us from Monday. He was much more smiley and playful with us this day. We put him down a little bit for a nap and helped paint some and put on those wall decal things to decorate. We went back for lunch and some of the other families went home after lunch. The rest of the week we spent with the Perry and Olsson families. We really got along well with them. Their babies came from the same original orphanage as Yosef so our kids have similar origins. In the afternoon we spent some more time with Yosef and painted a little more.

Wednesday
Wednesday was very similar to Tuesday. We spent time in the morning and after lunch with Yosef and painting at the transition center. One of the highlights of Wednesday was buying some roasted corn from a lady on the side of the road. Yes, not the wisest health decision in a third world country, but we didn’t get sick so that was good. On about every street corner there were women and sometimes children with husks of corn they would heat up over hot coals. We wanted to try it. Our guide Hermella thought we were silly for wanting to put butter and salt on it.
This day we also got to see Yosef’s nanny’s interact with him some more. Very often them would stop and kiss on the babies and play with them some. We were comforted to see them respond to the babies when they cry. They don’t just let them cry, they help them. They feed them, keep them clean and hold them a few times a day. They do spend a lot of time in their cribs and don’t get the same interaction as in a family, but they are well cared for overall. That was comforting. They keep the place very clean. They hand wash everything, including cloth diapers for about 25 babies, in a wash basin and hang them to dry. They work very hard and it is incredible to see.

Thursday
Thursday morning was our big day. This was the day of our court appointment, the main reason for this trip. We left the guest house right after breakfast and drove to the courthouse. We went up like 3 flights of stairs and into this big room with about 40 other families. It was very crowded and kind of hot. We all just waited until they called us in. They called us in by orphanage. There were also some birth families there who were there to go before the judge to relinquish their children. That was sad to see, but also interesting. We were told that Yosef’s birthmother would not be scheduled on the same day we were there. We waited about 2 hours before they called us. We went in as a group and we were asked about 5 yes or no questions as a group. We just answered yes, yes, yes, yes, yes... and the judge said okay, your adoption is approved pending your approval letter from the ministry of women’s children’s and youth affairs which will come in 15-20 business days. The whole meeting with the judge lasted about 1 minute.
As we left some in our group had to stop at the bathroom. We were again pointed and stared at by some of the locals as we waited outside the bathroom. As we left the courthouse we were kind of bombarded by some young boys wanting to clean our shoes and sell us lottery tickets. I just held tightly to Steve’s hand and went quickly to the car. One little boy (about  9 years old) just looked in our car window and kept asking for food.... break my heart, we didn’t have any with us. It was kind of emotional thinking that could have been my Yosef in a few years.
We went back for lunch and then to the House of Hope for some more time with Yosef and some painting/decorating. Yosef had a fever this afternoon, but after a nice suppository of baby tylenol (given by the nurse), and a nap in Daddy’s arms he started feeling better.
Thursday for dinner we went to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant to celebrate. It was about my favorite non-Yosef time of the trip. This restaurant was clearly part of the higher-class of Ethiopia, in a much better neighborhood. They had live entertainment with traditional Ethiopian music and dancers, which was absolutely amazing. The food was good, but overall the food at the guest house was better. We paid the equivalent of about $20 american money for Steve and I, including a beer, tip and helping pay for our guide. Everything there was cheap, and our money went far compared to here.
After dinner on Thursday we called home to check in with Elijah. Poor little guy, as soon as he heard our voices he started crying and saying “miss you Mommy, miss you Daddy”. That broke our hearts, but we knew he gad been having a fun time. Cathy told us he had been playing with his cousins, went to the park, Busch Gardens, swimming, playing in sprinklers, and having a fun time. I guess next time it will be better not to call.

Friday/Saturday
This was our last day in Ethiopia. When we went to the House of Hope. Yosef again had a fever and kept spitting up everything fed to him. After another nice suppository of tylenol and some antibiotics this time, and a nap I finally got him to keep down some watered down cereal and a bottle. He was starting to worry me, but after he kept down his bottle he was much happier and played nicely with us all afternoon. He fell asleep in Steve’s arms just before we left. There were definitely tears as we left and I still tear up whenever I think about leaving him. They told us we should be able to come back in September to bring him home.
We left at 9:15pm in Ethiopia and arrived back in DC at like 10:00am (plus factoring in that 7 hour time difference). That flight was torturous. There were several families on our flight home that were taking home their kids. I was happy for them, but it kind of was hard to see. We had a few delays, but slept a few hours this time. Then fought traffic for like 5 hours driving home (which should have taken 3 hours). We joked that our whole time in Ethiopia with all the crazy driving, no street signs, livestock in the roads, etc we saw no accidents, but saw 4 (!) fender benders on the drive home. We were just as excited to get home to Elijah as we were on Sunday to get to Yosef.

Overall this trip made us incredibly thankful for America! I have never been so thankful for simple things like paved roads and sewer systems. They told us we would probably go back in September to pick him up. On that trip we will be there about the same length of time. On that trip Yosef will be with us the whole time. We’ll literally pick him up when we get there and he’ll be ours the whole time. We’ll just have to let him visit the House of Hope for a few hours on the day we go to our Embassy appointment for his Visa and the day we go meet his birthmother he’ll stay with his nannies.

We will be able to share pictures of Yosef after we get our letter from the ministry, which will finalize the adoption. We took lots of pictures and video to share once we're allowed to.