Friday, November 19, 2010

Nov 9-10th Heading to Ethiopia

We left our home on November 9th. We flew to Chicago, then Frankfurt, then Addis Ababa. We arrived in Addis late on November 10th. The travel was made more bearable as we met other adoptive families along the way. It was such a blessing to travel with them and share our adoption journeys together. Once in Addis we had to get visa’s (this took a long time), change money (which Brandon did while I was in the visa line), get our luggage (which was there waiting for us after our long wait in the visa line), and head to Kings Hotel. We took our luggage all the way to the airport shuttle when we were met by men who carried our luggage up the shuttle stairs. They then wanted to be paid by each of us. The hotel driver should have stopped the men and we didn’t know what we were doing. Be prepared on this.

We arrived at Kings and they had a room for us on the 3rd floor. We were so tired that we decided to just go to sleep and shower in the morning, but I wanted to at least wash my feet. I tried to turn on the shower and nothing happened. There were many buttons (new showers on 3rd floor) and I could not figure it out. We went down to the desk and they came up and discovered we had pretty much no water coming out of the shower (like less than a drinking fountain). The man took us to a shower on 2nd floor and that worked well. He then gave us the key to that room too, and told us to shower there the next morning. Yes, that is right, we did have to go downstairs to take showers. (Note: more to come on this in other days, but if you are leaving soon, request a room on a lower floor as the water will more likely work and be warm) We fell into bed exhausted, but praising God that we were so close to our son!

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