We all got up early Monday morning after a somewhat restful night, repacked our carry-ons and went down to breakfast. Bryan has been taking seminary classes for the last few years during the summer breaks. This has worked very well every other year, but this year our trip to Ethiopia has made it a little harder to get his work done. While S and I got eat breakfast in peace, Bryan had works on school things. Thank goodness for wifi at hotels or none of his school work would've been done. After breakfast we got on our shuttle with all 14 bags again and head back to the airport.
Now, what I didn't mention before is that we had been told that Ethiopian Airlines might not take our rocking chair box if United didn't check it through. This was the cause for most of my freaking out on Sunday and we were definetely concerned that we might have to leave the rocker in D.C. ,hoping we could get ahold of friends in D.C. to pick it up for us. I prayed heading up to the ticket counter that we wouldn't have a problem and this time our ticket lady was MUCH nicer and actually helpful. We can't say enough kuddos about Ethiopian Airlines. They even gave us tape and scissors to try and reinforce the now falling apart box as best as possible. The attendant even offered to switch our seats around so we could all sit together (didn't even know we would be sitting apart). Finally all of the bags were out of our hands and we wouldn't have to worry about them again until Ethiopia. GREAT feeling.
We had some more time to kill at the airport so we went to our terminal, found a bagel shop (GOOD bagels) and took a load off. Our plane boarded perfectly on time with us on it and off we went to Ethiopia to become parents.
Nearly 13 hours later we arrived in Addis Ababa. Flying into the country was beautiful. The farmland outside of Addis reminded me of a beautiful patchwork quilt, very unlike our perfect squares and circles in the U.S. We flew past cloud covered mountains as we approached the airport and I was immediately drawn to the beauty of the countryside.
We were very happy that we had S with us on this trip as she navigated the Bolle Airport like a pro. In no time we were waiting in the visa line to enter the country. S already had her visa, so she went ahead of us to get all of the luggage. Good luck S! She amazingly wrangled all of the luggage onto 2 luggage carts by the time we made it out of the visa office and so we headed to the front to try and find our ride.
Yet again, we missed our ride to the hotel and ended up having to call the hotel to come and get us, but it was all ok, we were finally in Ethiopia, with ALL of our luggage. Yes, even the poor rocker made it. We were too tired at this point to be much good and were thankful when we arrived at the hotel and find out that we had a couple hours to take showers and nap before heading to Hannah's Hope. In just a couple hours we would meet our daugher...or so we thought.
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