What a day! I can't even begin to describe the out of the ordinary experiences we had that day and it was just the 1st day! The long flight was definitely not a fun thing to do, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We flew Ethiopian Air and although there were a few American families going to pick up their babies, the plane was mainly full of Ethiopian people. Even though we were definitely the minority, it never felt strange or out of place. It felt so right and we knew we were exactly where God wanted us to be.
There was a very sweet Ethiopian man sitting near me and he asked if our trip was for business or pleasure. I was able to tell him about our adoption and how we would be meeting our little girl very soon. He thought that was wonderful and he asked to see a picture of Hannah. He was so sweet and told me that what we were doing was amazing. He said there are many groups that come help Africa and what they do is great, but he said it's nothing like adopting a child and having that child become a member of a family forever. This meant a lot to me. I will always remember this man's face.
As soon as the plane landed in Addis Ababa, I began to cry. I couldn't believe we were actually in Africa and so close to our little Hannah. It felt very surreal stepping off the plane. It also felt kind of weird seeing guards standing around with machine guns!! However we felt very safe.
Our drive to the Guest House was a wild one! David, our driver, was amazing but I'm still not sure how we made it there without crashing. And...all of our bags were stacked on the top of a bus with no ropes! We don't know how those didn't fall off while we weaved in and out of traffic. No one pays attention to traffic signs (and there are hardly any of those!)...everyone just drives wherever they want to and there was a lot of honking! It took everything in me not to scream as our driver squeezed between cars quickly. We did arrive safely and the wild ride ended up being Joseph's favorite part of the trip! :)
That first night we thought we would just crash from exhaustion, but it was hard to sleep knowing we would be meeting Hannah the next day. And it didn't help that we could hear Ethiopian music cranked very loudly from a few streets down...and of course the honking.
I will post about our next day tomorrow.
2 comments:
What a great response from the man sitting next to you! So encouraging. I always kinda wonder what they think about the whole adoption situation.
Looking forward to the next post. :o)
I am loving getting to 're-live' my trip to Ethiopia and yet still 'pre-live' going to pick up MY little girl through your experiences!!
The honking - that's just to say hello!
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