June 26 & 27, 2013 - Travel Day(s) - Part 1

We are coming home.

These two days are a jumbled mess in our minds at this point.  We spent Wednesday mostly laying low, although we were able to connect with two sets of friends that we have met out here, and had our little farewell meetings..

First of all, we met with F,C&L for coffee in the morning.  This again was great, as we have many things in common with this family, not the least of which is having children from the same orphanage at the same age.  The two kids seemed to be getting more and more comfortable with each other, and interacted a bit more again than we've seen thus far.  It was also great to have another chat with like minded friends in Ethiopia.  We are blessed to have them as friends, and hope that we can stay in touch whenever they can get back to Canada.

2nd, we went out for lunch with another adoptive mother, and her step daughter and family friend.  We went again to Makush, and had a lovely meal with them.  She has just returned to Addis to pick up her little boy.  We hope that she too, will soon get to travel back to Canada.  We were able to share some of our little tips on how we had adjusted with Eli, and she is hoping that this will help her as well as she takes custody of her son (again, who is a similar age as Eli).

Finally, around 2:30 or so, we returned to the guesthouse for one final afternoon nap for Eli and Hilary.  I was able to go out and get another haircut from the barber here.  I had gone once earlier, and I really enjoy the style (although Hilary thinks that I look like a bit of a goof).  It was very busy when I got there, and so I thought it might take quite a while before I would be able to get in, but there was a young man who was waiting, who said that I could go in front of him.. When all was said and done, I was out of there about an hour and a half after I got there, and when it probably could have been almost 3 hours.  I tried to pay for his haircut ahead of time, but due to a misunderstanding, it did not end up happening...  But, as I was walking back to the guesthouse, I ran into one of the shoe-shine boys, so I was able to give him a little bit of money... Probably not the wisest way to contribute, but I felt that a connection has been made, through A,B&I, so I felt like being a bit generous here...

We ordered some supper in, and were almost ready to go at 5:30, but our driver was only scheduled to pick us up at 6:30.  I also had to deal with the last payment for our room for the last couple of weeks that we had been there...  I went in, and gave my mastercard, which has been used both other times I had paid for the room, but this time, it was returned "invalid transaction"...  We tried it 4 times, and each time, it was rejected.  I was not worried about there being room on the card, but I was more worried about the fact that Mastercard was rejecting it... We tried my Debit card... also didn't work..  I started to panic a bit.  I had a little bit of cash on me, but not enough to cover the room.. Were we going to miss our flight because I could not pay my bill?  So, I got out my computer to call Mastercard using skype or my gmail chat, but of course, the internet was freakishly slow, and actually cut off a call once.  That was a no go.  I could've tried calling from the room, but the connection is brutal on the phone, and we would be charged quite a bit per minute to do that...  Suddenly, I remembered that a friend had offered that if we needed some cash to pay for the room, we could always ask him...  So, I got the driver to quickly drive us to their guesthouse, I borrowed what I needed (You know who you are... Thank you so very much), and got back to our guesthouse to pay.  We were able to leave at just after 7 (about a half hour or so later than I had wanted).  We were stressed by this time.

We got to the airport and there was a huge line out of the front doors of the airport.  It seems that we were required to scan our luggage before even entering the airport.  We got through, but Hilary had to have something in her bag looked at, and it was just a package of AA batteries, so they saw this, and we were on our way.  There was another huge lineup to check in, but there were a couple of airport employees (at least I think they were), who were able to just whisk us to the front of the line.  I'm not sure how I feel about it all now, knowing what I know now, but we gave them a tip, and we were through the ticket lineup in less than half an hour (even though we probably skipped ahead of 50ish people in the lineup).  Other adoptive families, have you had this experience?  Others who have travelled out of Ethiopia?

Once through the ticket lineup, we went through another couple of security areas, and then we were at our gate.  Sadly, I had not realized that there would be no place to buy water, or snacks for this marathon of a flight, and so we sat there waiting, and getting a little tired without having our snacks (good thing Hilary thought ahead and brought snacks for Eli)...  Hilary had not been feeling very good all day, and the waiting didn't help the cause.  The stress of the final moments at the guesthouse, and the stress of the long flight, and coming home, were getting to all of us.

Finally at 9:30, they asked us all to board the plane.

....to be continued