Home & Together

We're home!  I wasn't able to post again before leaving Ethiopia since the Internet was so sketchy and slow.  So this is a little after-the-trip update.  


We spent the last few days in Ethiopia mostly hanging out at the guest house with Ellie.  There was a lot of getting-to-know-you that needed to happen, and it was good.  She typically needed feeding 2 times per night, which wasn't too bad.  
On Friday we toured the Robera Coffee Factory.  That was pretty cool to say the least, but Amber and Eleora weren't digging it too much.  Amber hates coffee, both in smell and taste.  Ellie hates loud noises.  I did manage to haul away 40 kg of roasted coffee to bring back home.  Awesome!


The flights home were pretty grueling, but we were blessed in a few big ways.  First of all, we weren't sick.  Amber and I were feeling really ill the day before leaving.  We were worried that we'd both be ill with a baby on a plane for 21 hours or more.  We were feeling good on travel day!  Despite making a trip to the Emirates office in Addis Ababa to secure seating, a bassinet, and a hotel voucher for our stay in Dubai, we were denied all of the above.  We ended up being granted all these needs along the way!  Finally, Eleora was a really good baby.  She ate and slept without a lot of drama for the whole trip.  I love how God provides for needs as they come up.  I only wish He'd give me forward notice that it's all taken care of so I wouldn't worry.  I guess that's where faith comes in.


We're dealing with the jet lag now, which isn't pleasant.  Even still it's nice to spend time as a newly expanded family.  I'm back to work tomorrow.  Time to experience the normalizing of our 5 person group!


This morning I uploaded a final collection of pictures from the trip to the album on SmugMug.  It's especially nice if you use the "slideshow" feature.  I hope you enjoy it.

Giving

We spent most of yesterday at our guest house. With 5 newly adopted
kids and a lots of families present here, it was pretty lively in the
lobby all day. We did make one trip out of the house to the Emirates
office in town. That turned out to be an ordeal of sorts. Our
objective was to get seating assignments and a bassinet for Ellie on
the long Dubai-to-San-Francisco leg of the trip on Saturday. We were
told that we were too late for seating in general, and that all
bassinets have been spoken for for some time already. Also, the hotel
is full on Saturday so we won't have a room to go to. While we were
getting this news, Ellie decided to unleash a major load in her pants.
Actually, it was all the way up to her shoulders. The bathroom key
was missing, so we had to undress her and change her in the drafty
hall. Awesome. The best event of the day was that our friend Missy
was able to take a flight home last night with her sick little girl
Quilla. Their story is long, but Quilla really needs to get home to
her family so she can receive some good care. It was excellent to see
how God was able to make her adoption and quick departure happen much
faster than anyone expected.

Today we were able to visit the Kids Care orphanage to deliver half of
the donations that we brought along on this trip. The first half was
donated to the AWAA transition home that Eleora came from. It wasn't
really much of an event or experience since all the donations are
given to the storehouse manager, who catalogs it all and stores it
away. Today was somewhat similar in that we unloaded the orphanage
donations to the ladies who organize their storehouse. But we were
also able to distribute lots of goodies directly to the kids in the
open courtyard. It was so neat to see their faces and excitement!
Thanks again to all the contributors who gave goods (or money for
goods). Both the transition home and the orphanage were very
grateful!

Some of the ladies of the orphanage prepared a traditional coffee
ceremony for us in the oraphanage courtyard. This included the
roasting of the beans, grinding, brewing in a ceramic pitcher, the
burning of incense. Everything is cooked over little charcoal
burners. The coffee is served in little ceramic cups, and salted
popcorn is offered on the side. Compared to drip coffee, this was
more mild and smoky. The burning incense and charcoal creates part of
the atmosphere. It was really something!

After seeing so much need everywhere, it was really great to provide
such a large amount donated goods to the transition home and the
orphanage. Saturday we plan to give our collection of soccer balls to
the street kids ministry.

I've posted a fresh crop of photos on the SmugMug album, too.

http://bryanbooy.smugmug.com/Travel/Ethiopia-Getting-Eleora/12963734_RNZTN#943537234_GE7LV

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Bryan

Gotcha Day

Today was "Gotcha Day", the day we finally took Eleora home with us!  Yesterday was "Metcha Day", the day we met her for the first time ever.  Unfortunately it was only a 2 hour visit, and we weren't allowed to take her home with us.  But today was different.  Today we visited for a couple of hours and then left with her on Amber's lap!  Since we haven't had Internet access for a couple days, there's a lot to recap.  Here goes.

We started off Sunday with breakfast at the guest house where we're staying.  Personally, I've fallen in love with the fried potatoe pancake thingies that taste a little like Lefse.  Most of us attended church at the International Evangelical Church.  The pastor there is from the US, but the congregation is very multi-national, including people from Europe, Australia, China, America, and other African countries.  Afterward we had Italian food at Makush.  This restaurant is also an art gallery, and showcases some really good work from Ethiopian artists.  Afterwards, most of the families went to the Transition Home to spend time with their kids.  For reasons unknown to us, only "court families" could meet their kids.  "Embassy Families" had to wait until Monday before meeting their kids for the first time.  We are an "embassy family", meaning we're here for an embassy appointment so we can take home our child home for good.  Court families are here for their first court visit, where they officially declare their intention to adopt their child.  Anyway, Amber and I opted to visit the National Museum instead.  It was pretty cool.  We saw a number of historical artifacts, especially from the days when Ethiopia was a kingdom.  We also got to see Lucy's bones (the prehistoric hominid, not the lovable red-head).  Pizza dinner was back at the guest house.  We also ventured out as a small group onto the local streets near the guest house.  There was definitely a tension between us and many of the Ethiopians crowding the rough sidewalks.  It was also heartbreaking to encounter the homeless women and babies begging for food or money on every street corner.  

Monday was "Metcha Day".  It started off with a couple hours spent at the Hilton filling out all the immigration paperwork for our appointment at the embassy on Wednesday.  After some lunch at the Hilton we left for our first encounter with Eleora at the transition home.  We were the first family to be united with our child, so we handed our cameras off to another family so the moment could be photographed well.  We waiting in the front courtyard, and Eleora was brought out to us by one of the nannies.  It was a little awkward, because it started to rain hard at the exact same time, and Ellie didn't exactly like that.  We stepped under the awning of the front porch and things were fine.  It was one of those moments you never forget, similar to experiencing the birth of a biologically born child.  We had conversations with the staff psychologist and physician, where we learned as much as we could about her.  When the time came, we had to leave her with the nannies and walk away.  That wasn't easy, but it was okay knowing that we'd be back the next day to get her for good.  The entire crew headed to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant for dinner.  It was really fun!  We ate some really great stuff using Ingera to grab handfulls of lamb and chickpeas.  The honey wine was way different (better) than what we've tasted in the US.  This restaurant offered a great live show, wich included traditional music and dancing.  All I have to say is that Ethiopian dancing is all about the shoulder-action.   

Tuesday (today) was "Gotcha Day".  But before getting Ellie, we got to do a little shopping.  Thankfully, our driver/guides took us right to a small collection of shops that offered the best stuff for good prices.  Compared to all the other shops I had poked my head into so far, these definitely were a step above.  We pretty much dropped all the cash we had on souvenirs.  After we get Ellie, we won't be able to shop or be seen in public in general, so this was our one chance.  We had another lunch at Makush before heading to get Ellie.  It was great to be reunited with her, especially knowing that we won't be giving her up again!  We brought all the intended transition home donations along with us, so thanks again to everyone who contributed!  This only included half of the donations, since the other half will be going to the orphanage on Thursday.  We changed Ellie into the clothes we brought for her, and left her orphanage clothes behind for other kids to wear.  She was good on the bumpy drive home.  The rest of the evening was spent hanging with all the other families.  There were 3 other kids that got to come home with us today, so the lobby was a fun place to be as a group!

<a href="http://bryanbooy.smugmug.com/Travel/Ethiopia-Getting-Eleora/12963734_RNZTN#937638751_68rWW-A-LB"><img src="http://bryanbooy.smugmug.com/Travel/Ethiopia-Getting-Eleora/DSC0003006/937638751_68rWW-M.jpg"></a>

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Bryan

Steps 2-26: Get to Ethiopia and Do a Ton of Stuff

It turns out the Internet was more elusive during our travels than I was hoping.  So this is my first post since San Franciso a few days ago.  A lot has happened since then.  

Our flight from San Fran to Dubai was exceptionally good.  We were way back in the tail, where there were fewer chairs and a little more room.  The on-plane entertainment system was really good, but I found myself glued to a channel that displayed all kinds of trip data and on-plane cameras.  For the first few hours we saw a ton of cool stuff outside, including Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Shasta, Crater Lake.  It was like having an aerial tour of CA/OR/WA.  I don't think the pilots intended it, but it was amazing!

Dubai was pretty interesting.  The airport is POSH for sure.  We had a forced layover overnight, so we were given hotel and meal vouchers.  It was a good experience.  We caught one more flight to Addis Ababa yesterday morning.  Once again it was a nice comfortable experience.  Emirates is definitely a good airline to go with for such a long trip.

We arrived earlier than scheduled and breezed through the visa and customs process.  The airport is pretty rough as airports go.

I'm out of time again, so I'll try to post more later.  Here's a link to a batch of photos I uploaded to SmugMug last night.  Enjoy!

Ethiopia Photos

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Bryan

Step 1: Go to San Francisco and Wait

The flight to SF was a good one. It was a really small plane, but we
didn't experience any turbulence. Thanks to Dacer for dropping us off
this morning.

Packed

Packing is such an ordeal.  Even with weeks to prepare, the final day is a lot of work.  Actually, it's not the act of putting items in a bag that is so hard. It's all the mind-racking and list checking to make sure you've got it all.  Amber actually did a lot of prep-work for the last several days, getting all the donations arranged into the 4 big bags, and making sure we have all the baby supplies.  I can't tell you how many times we've weighed each bag with one of those handy bag scales.  Each of our four bags is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50.3 lbs each.  We figure as long as we can round down to the nearest pound we should meet the 50 lb per bag limit, right?!  It's an ugly obsession.  

What's uglier is the tighter restrictions on baggage that all airlines have imposed.  Emirates (our airline) only allows ONE carry-on.  By carry-on they don't mean what most of us think of, one of those smallish suitcases that you can get enough stuff into for a weekend.  No, this is more like a messenger bag's worth.  Oh, and it can't weigh more that 15 lbs.  Let's see here, my notebook weighs about 7 lbs, so I'm halfway there just with that.  I initially figured that Emirates probably won't actually weigh my carry on, right?  Well, other travelers we've heard from say that they actually DO weigh it.  I will be that guy walking to the gate wearing extra clothing, jackets, electronics, headphones, neck pillow, etc. just to circumvent the carry-on weight restrictions.  It's all about getting as many donations to Ethiopia as possible!
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Bryan

Testing Testing 1-2-3

I've read numerous reports that it is rather difficult to post to Blogspot/Blogger from Ethiopia.  I figure if I can't actually log into our blog then I can at least post to it via email.  So this post is a test run of such a post.  If I can at least get to Gmail, I can still post to the blog.

Here's a test link to my SmugMug Site.

And hopefully this new picture of Ellie I just attached looks okay on this post, too. 

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Bryan