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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