Ethiopia-Day 2

First off, I should warn everyone that the slide show for this day is pretty much entirely photos of Gabby. Sorry, but we don't ever get tired of looking at her beautiful face!! There are some pictures from our drive to Nazareth at the end :)

I woke up this morning feeling pretty good after a very decent night's sleep. Poor Chad hadn't fared so well, and his stomach was feeling pretty awful. The plan for the day was to spend the morning with our girls, and then Woudneh was picking us up at 11 am to drive about 2 hours away to Nazareth, which is where Gabby is from.

We headed down for breakfast and the guys went to get the babies right away. We headed outside to the courtyard with them and enjoyed the sunshine. The best part about the guest house and transition house is that the transition home (where all of the kids waiting stay until we are able to bring them home) makes a U-shape, and in the middle sits the guest house. We were never more than a hundred feet from Gabby's room, which was super convenient and made it easy for us to spend some quiet time with her in our room. This picture is of the transition home-where we stayed was right behind where I was standing to take the picture.



I had brought the Ergo my girlfriends gave me at my shower to try out, and Gabby and I both LOVED it! Highly recommend one for anyone adopting a baby-I think it will be awesome for travel, and it was super comfy. We played with the older kids for a while as well. There was a swingset, and Chad taught them Ring Around the Rosie :) They were all so sweet, and just wanted some attention and love. It made it much easier to know that they all have loving families anxious to get them home and give them just that!

It was getting close to 11 am, so we took the girls up to the front porch and waited with them for Woudneh, trying to get as much time as possible with them. We waited and waited, and used the time to get tons of photos of the babies with us. After a while, Gabby got fussy and we realized she was hungry. I got a bottle from the nanny and got to feed her-it was wonderful! She fell asleep while she was eating, so we took turns holding her while she slept. Around 12:30 the staff told us lunch was ready, so we ate (we still aren't sure what it was!). After lunch Chad went upstairs for a nap. Poor thing, he was feeling SO lousy (and he never lets on when he's sick, so I knew it was bad). We hung out with the girls in the main room of the guest house (pictured below).



After a while the nannies came to take the babies for their baths and the rest of us rested on the couches. Then they brought them back and we snuggled some more. It was such a wonderful chance to just relax with them and really soak in tons of time with them. Such a blessing! Chad came down from his nap feeling a little better and spent some time snuggling with Gabby as well. We finally asked someone to check on Woudneh, and were told he would be there at 5 pm. We thought it seemed odd that we wouldn't leave until then, but just nodded along.

Woudneh arrived around 5:30 with tons of apologies. The donated eyeglasses he was trying to get Customs to release so they could be used with the eye clinic mission had taken all day (and quite a bit of money) to ransom! Luckily he was able to get them, and now had 1,351 pairs of glasses to pass out to people who desperately needed them. He explained that we would be driving to Nazareth and then staying overnight, so we quickly ran upstairs and packed an overnight bag. Always an adventure!!

It was really neat to get out of the city and see a different part of the country. It took about 2 hours to get to Nazareth, and we saw some interesting things along the way. We saw a huge crash site where a river of gasoline was spewing and hundreds of people were bringing their gas cans to stock-quite the risk, but gas is over $5 a gallon there, so I imagine you do what you have to!

We arrived in Nazareth around 9 pm and checked into our hotel. Woudneh had told us that it was very luxurious, and only $24 a room, and it was very nice (much nicer than the guest house). We went to a hotel down the street for dinner and ate by the pool. We were excited to see many American-friendly options on the menu. Chad got pasta, and I chose a cheeseburger. Imagine my surprise when it arrived and looked like a huge hunk of meatloaf (very spicy meatloaf-they put peppers on top!) between two pieces of bread with mozzarella cheese on top. Different. We headed back to the hotel and enjoyed the vastly superior shower. We hopped into bed (two double beds), ready to enjoy a good night's sleep. Well, we attempted to hop. The mattresses were like bricks. Seriously. I was almost convinced that they were actually box springs (we had that happen on a Chinese cruise, it was awful). I attempted to put the comforter on top of it to soften it, but it helped not at all.

We eventually fell asleep, but I woke up at 1 am and could not get comfortable. Chad was awake as well, as he had heard a gun shot outside and was on the balcony investigating! We laid awake for most of the night, but around 4 am we fell asleep until we needed to awake at 7:30. Poor Chad, two bad nights in a row!!

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Ethiopia Day 1 at OneTrueMedia.com

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Ethiopia-Day 1

Okay, I am going to try something different. It seems like uploading all the pictures and putting them in the right spots is taking me forever, and keeping me very unmotivated to document the trip. So I am going to make a slide show quickly for each day and post it along with a description of our day (all the photos in the slide show will go in order throughout the day, so you should be able to follow along). I know it's not ideal, but I promise to move faster now!!

When I left off, we were on our way to the guest house and transition house. The drive was LONG, and we got our first taste of Ethiopian driving. We've traveled quite a bit, and have experienced Thai driving, which we thought was crazy, but we both agree Ethiopia wins! The exhaust was immense, the roads were bumpy, and it takes forever to get anywhere. By the end of the week we were totally used to it though! After about 50 minutes, we arrived and I saw the sign for our agency's home that I had seen in other blogs. My heart began to beat faster when I realized our daughter was right behind the gate!

We got out and the staff took all of our luggage inside for us. We had only one suitcase plus our carry-ons that were our things, and the rest were filled with donations, so we had them leave them downstairs, and they went through and sorted all the items to distribute. It was about 11 am at this point, and they brought out some breakfast for us to eat. They had told us they'd bring the babies out right away, so we tried to quickly freshen up and then picked at the food. I think we were all bundles of nerves!! We were so happy to see the rest of the eye clinic mission group hanging out in the room, and they sweetly offered to film and take pictures for us, which was a huge help. As we were eating, we spotted two nannies carrying two babies towards us through the window, and knew the moment had come!

The first nanny asked for the family of the other baby, and then we heard a nanny holding a baby covered in a soft pink blanket ask for "Lina's family." That's us! She handed her to me and I just drank her in, crying and smiling. She was even more beautiful than her pictures. She seemed a little unsure, but content. After hogging her for a few minutes, I let Chad have a turn. She got a bit upset, but calmed down after a minute. We took her upstairs to our room, where she got fussy again, but I quickly realized that she was tired. I rocked her for a few minutes and she fell asleep easily in my arms. I got to nap with her on the bed for a while, which was wonderful!! Chad hung out with us and also tried to get the internet to work on the computer so we could e-mail home and tell them we'd made it.

At some point a couple of hours in, they came to tell us lunch was ready (yes, about an hour and a half after the breakfast they'd made!), and we brought Gabby downstairs with us. Chad was going to hold her and we'd take turns eating-neither of us minded missing a meal to hold her! But then the nannies came in and took her back to her bed, so we ate and took a nap to recover a little. After we woke up we grabbed the babies back and spent some more time with them. It was a wonderful way to start our trip to get to spend so much with her the first day. We were totally and completely head over heels in love!!

Woudneh came back at dinner time to take us out to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant. We ate a bit, and Chad was thrilled to get Tej, a honey wine we've had at our local Ethiopian restaurant here. As we ate the dancers came out and started to perform. They also pulled us up to dance throughout the evening-it was fun! We were all SO tired, but Woudneh kept telling us the best part was still to come. He also told us we needed to stay awake until 10 pm or so, so that we'd end our jetlag. I thought I was going to fall asleep sitting at the table!! The big number was a dance re-enacting a marriage ceremony. They brought JW, KC, and Chad and I up on stage and sat us in chairs with the happy couple in between. They brought out another plate of injera and a pot of spicy meat, and then began feeding us, and encouraging us to feed each other. It was funny, but the meat was spicy, we were tired, and they just kept shoveling it in!! We had a great time, but were thrilled to head back to the guest house.

We were disappointed to learn that our shower totally stunk. It was a bit like having someone squirt you with a water gun while they stood directly overhead. After our long travel and first day, we were happy to take whatever kind of shower we could get, but it was kind of funny! At least it was hot! We were also surprised to learn that our bed pillows didn't have pillowcases, rather they had the decorate shams that came with the comforter. Again, it wasn't a huge deal, just kind of funny! Despite a lot of noise outside, I slept for a blissful 8 hours, but poor Chad got only about 4 hours of sleep and woke up in the middle of the night with stomach pain :(

First Trip-Travel

Alright, time to relive our trip!!

Sunday, May 29th-Our flight plan was to leave Indy at 6 am, arrive in DC at 7:33 am, and then depart DC for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at noon, arriving into Ethiopia the next morning at 7:45 am (their time). I had petitioned unsuccessfully to take a flight the evening before so we didn't have to get up super early and start our trip sleep-deprived, but my husband (being the cheapskate that he is) felt strongly we shouldn't pay for a hotel room if we didn't have to. Boo! So up we were at 3:30 am...yuck (but totally worth it, of course!). We'll see if I can't win that battle for the next trip :)

We had almost everything packed up the night before. Three of our pieces of checked luggage were full of donations, and then we had one big suitcase with our personal things to check, plus a laptop bag (thanks Ben and Shari!), camera bag, rolling suitcase, and backpack all to carry-on. Here are our 3 donation bags:


We got up, dressed, and headed to my parents' house. My wonderful mother had stayed at our house the night before so the boys were all set, and my wonderful father had offered to drive us to the airport so we wouldn't have to park our car in long-term parking. We got to the airport at 4:30 am, unloaded, and got ready to begin our journey!! We were able to check our baggage without problems (I'd been a little worried they wouldn't check it all the way through to Ethiopia, which was completely wasted worry), and headed to our gate. Here we are waiting to start boarding:


Our plane ride to Dulles was short and sweet. We had about 4 1/2 hours to kill until our flight to Addis, so we found some nice, long, deserted benches and both laid down and took naps for an hour or so. Then we got up and navigated a maze of a tram, shuttle bus, and about 40 escalators to get to the terminal we'd be leaving out of. We walked around for a while to find breakfast, and finally settled on Max and Erma's. Yum! We had been waiting for the Godwins, the other family traveling with us, to arrive, and luckily they did just as we picked our restaurant, so they joined us and we had a nice meal together. We were all excited and happy to finally meet after months of e-mails and phone calls!

Apparently they began boarding the flight way earlier than the 30 minutes ahead of time that we're used to, and by the time we got on, most of the plane was full. We weren't able to get much overhead space, so unfortunately most of our carry-ons went under the seats. We learned a lesson for the return trip!


We sat next to a woman going on a mission trip to Zimbabwe, and although she wasn't very talkative, she was quiet and didn't take up a lot of space...good enough! Our flight was uneventful, but the poor Godwins weren't so lucky and got bitten up by some kind of bug throughout the flight, and had people vomiting on all sides of them. We each watched a couple of movies, read a little, and slept a little. The meals were pretty "eh". Don't we look awesome?


After only 13 hours (!) we finally arrived in Addis, 30+ minutes after we were supposed to.


We disembarked outside and took a bus to the terminal, where we met up with the Godwins and stood in a VERY long line to get our Visas. While we were waiting, JW and I exchanged money and got loads of birr. We all met another adoptive family with a different agency who was there to pick up their new child and bring him home, so we asked them tons of questions. We got our Visas after waiting 30-45 minutes in line, and headed off to find our luggage. There was momentary panic when we had only 3 of our 4 pieces, and the one missing was the one with all of our personal items. We had plenty of soccer balls, children's clothes, formula, and candy, but none of our clothes or toiletries. After a little while of searching Chad was able to track it down. Whew!

We were unprepared for our luggage to be x-rayed before we could leave the airport, but it was, and it was an ordeal. I think the person running it was looking for laughs, so he kept purposely running the belt back and forth to dump all the luggage onto the floor on each end. Fabulous. A porter jumped in and grabbed all of our things before we could tell him not to, and promptly broke the handle off of our brand-new suitcase. Awesome. Then he got angry with us for not tipping him enough! Luckily we loaded up our cart and headed out of the baggage claim, where our agency's in country director, Woudneh, was waiting for us. He was with an eye doctor who was there for a medical mission trip, also through our agency, and was trying to get a ton of eyeglasses he had brought released from customs. So he got us to our van, we met our driver, and then he left and we headed to the guest house. We were on our way to the guest and transition house, and even better, our daughter!!

Best E-mail EVER!!!

This is what I woke up to this morning: "MOWA LETTER IS IN......IT IS FINAL!!!!!!"

Are those not the best words ever written?!?!

She is ours. We knew this in our hearts already, of course, but to know that (as far as the Ethiopian government is concerned) it's official is the best feeling in the world.

More to come later, including a day by day travelogue (I didn't forget, I just didn't want to post it without pictures!), but for now, let me introduce our daughter (!!!), Gabrielle Elise Hennessy.

We're Back!

Just a quick note to say that we are back from Ethiopia!  Our trip was all that we expected and more.  Meeting Gabby was one of the best moments of my life, and we are completely and totally in love.  She is the most beautiful little girl, full of smiles and giggles.  We did not pass court, as our MOWA letter wasn't there, but we are hopeful it will just be another 1-3 weeks until it makes it to court.  As soon as it does, I will post roughly 342 pictures of her :) For now, we will just say that we left a huge part of our hearts in Africa, but we know that she is being loved and well-cared for until we can bring her home.  I promise to share all the details and do a complete, day by day, travel log soon!  Thanks so much for all of the love and support while we were gone.  We would appreciate prayers for our letter to arrive SOON!