Days One and Two of Trip One to Ethiopia- Thursday and Friday, February 18 & 19, 2011

The day had finally come. The day we had been waiting for for over a year, the day God had promised four years ago would come - the day to make the journey on the other side of the world to meet our son! We left home around 1:00pm, and our long-time friend and former pastor had offered to drive us to the airport about 2-3 weeks earlier and I accepted his offer on the spot. We got there plenty early, so he and our good friend Becky (who came to see us off) sat with us until about 3:40 when they called us to board our flight to Chicago. It was a quick flight and we were in Chicago within 50 minutes. All of our flights went pretty smooth and we never had a long delay or any problems, thank the Lord! I know for the next trip that I do not need to take 3 books and 2 magazines along because I never read any of them, which is strange for me because I am a big reader. Nothing could keep me interested for some reason. I will however have music on my IPOD next time. I’m not sure what happened, but when I went to use the IPOD, it had no music on it- 1000 + songs, deleted – WHAT? Love my kids, but I am thinking they might have had something to do with this. Actually, that wasn’t such a bad thing. I watched several movies and just tried to sleep or get comfortable the rest of the time (not usually successful).

We were in the air about 16 ½ hours and total travel with layovers was about 20 hours, just the right amount of time for layovers; long enough to get where we needed to go, but not too long that we were bored in between.

****Not too far- we are almost there Amani!!****

****View from the plane overlooking the desert****

When we got to Ethiopia, we knew where to go to get our Visas, so that didn’t take too long- 5 people sitting at a table, everything hand-written, no computers to check people in. People were right, just follow the yellow signs and get in line ASAP. A driver from the hotel was waiting for us when we got there, and we were to the hotel in about 15 minutes. We got checked in and started to unpack a bit, then went down to the bar to relax for a little while. After sitting down there for about 20 minutes, the song “I Believe in You” by Don Williams came on (the song my dad and I danced to for our Father/ Daughter dance at our wedding) and I felt like that was a sign from God that our parents and families were with us in spirit - a 1970's Country Western song playing in an Ethiopian bar??? However, we heard that song 2 other times while sitting in the hotel restaurant, so then it seemed less like divine intervention and more like part of a track, oh well, it was comforting at the time.

We didn't sleep great at night- too mixed up in our sleep schedules and too excited to go meet our boy the next day!!!