Ethiopia part I

Okay, we've finally recovered from all the illness in our house (James--ear infection X2 and bronchiolitis; me-- sinus infection) and James is taking a nap, so I thought I'd share some of our trip. Better late than never!!
Jan 24-25

This was a really long day(s) of travel! We arrived at CVG at 10:15 am on Saturday. Katy and Brett Wolfe got there at the same time, so we were unloading together. We were worried about the weight of our bags, but they weighed in at 51, 51, 50, 49, and 46 pounds! We paid for the 5th bag, and didn’t get charged for the two overweight bags! From CVG, we flew to JFK. Our first flight was late arriving, but thankfully our connecting gate was right next door. From JFK, we flew to Washington Dulles. Then we met up with the rest of the families in our travel group while waiting in line for our boarding passes, then all ate dinner as a group (9 families in our group).
After dinner, the really long part began – 8 hours to Rome, then 6 to Addis Ababa.

We were able to sleep about 5 hours the first leg, then napped the 2nd trip.

When we finally arrived, we stood in line for visas, then got our bags and went out to meet Johannes. When we got through the secure part, he was standing with a sign that said AGCI families and wearing a UT volunteers T-shirt (what a greeting, thanx to the Mizes, I think)!!
We walked through the parking lot with ALL of our luggage (5 bags per family), loaded it onto a van (which was completely packed!!) and a bus. Then we piled onto the bus and rode to the Union Hotel. Along the way, every time we stopped street kids would come up to the window and ask for “food, money, candy, t-shirt?” One kid grabbed Matt’s arm and said “Hey partner, hey partner.”
It was late when we finally got to the hotel and got checked in, but Matt and I took the time to quickly unpack and grab a bite to eat. We ate chicken and rice – good comfort food. We both took an ambien and got about 6 hours of sleep.

January 26

I woke up about 5 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. I got up and checked e-mail, then came back to the room and showered. There was a buffet breakfast with fruit salad (papaya, banana, oranges, watermelon, and pineapple), toast, injera, scrambled eggs.

After breakfast, Almaz came to the hotel to go over our paperwork with us. We also exchanged money at that time and ordered our coffee. After paperwork, Almaz took ½ the group to Hannah’s Hope to meet their kids.

We were in the second group, so we had to wait about 20 minutes so that there weren’t too many people and too much excitement all at once. During that wait, I felt totally sick to my stomach, like when I’m about to present at a meeting. I was so nervous!! When Almaz came back to get us, she said that Samuel was asleep. He was still asleep when we got there, so our first encounter was a beautiful sleeping boy.

He did wake up before we had to go back to lunch so we got to see him awake. He didn’t cry at all when we picked him up. He was very serious and looked around, taking everything in.
We left the children at Hannah’s Hope for their naps and went back to the hotel for lunch. We then met at Hannah’s Hope, got our children, and loaded into the vans for the trip to the US Embassy. Samuel looked out the window the whole way. At the Embassy, they lost Samuel’s medical form, so everyone in our group had finished, and they took all the families in another group before they “found” our form. During that time, Samuel got tired and hungry, and became REALLY mad. Even Almaz couldn’t calm him down. He wouldn’t take a bottle or fall asleep. He was screaming during the entire time we were talking to the embassy agent. All the Ethiopians in the Embassy were trying to help us calm him down by giving us advice, but that only stressed us out more and made us mad. Samuel did calm down and go to sleep, however, once we got in the van to go back home.
When we went back up to our room, we made the mistake of trying to give Samuel a bath – he was really just way too tired. He screamed the entire time and got himself so worked up that he puked all of his rice cereal all over me. He screamed for about 1 ½ hours until I finally got him calmed down and to sleep. He woke up at 11 wanting a bottle, and started screaming again. We think it was strange place, and Matt was wrong color, wrong gender when he went to comfort him. We did finally get him settled down and the rest of the night went pretty well – bottle at 2 and bottle at 6, but no screaming.