Friday. Today Breanne went shopping with Tiffany in the morning and I stayed at our room with Josanna. That went good. She just napped most of the time. In the evening, a bunch of us went out for a traditional Ethiopian meal. They had some great dancers there. They were pulling people up there to dance with them. I went up and danced a bit.

To add to Breanne’s blog: We met some really nice/friendly people from Nashville, Tennessee at the Embassy that were also adopting. When we went to leave the Embassy it started down pouring rain and hail. We waited for 20 minutes, but it never let up, so Sintayou went to get Ibrahim to bring the car around. One of the ways that some of the boys make money on the street is by holding an umbrella for you. So some boys did, and we gave them 10 BUR each (about 75 cents). We received Josanna’s VISA and passport just fine. Yea!

This was a long day. To supplement what Breanne wrote, the standout moments for me were: stopping the car several times and giving out bread to the children. As Tiffany put it: that was an emotional moment. The children were so happy just to receive a little piece of bread. They would grab for it and almost push to try and get more. We had to make sure that each child got a piece. We also handed out suckers and bananas at different times. Sometimes we would just throw the suckers out, and the kids would grab them kind of like a parade. One boy started dancing when he got three suckers – it was funny! At Winchi lake, we rode horses down to the lake. The boy that led my horse asked for a tip, but Jon Michelle said no (the tips are given out to everyone back at the top of the mountain), so the boy was very sad. Once we got back to the top, we tipped about 200 BUR, and that gets divided amoung all that helped. I felt bad that the boy didn’t get very much.
When we got back from Ambo, we afficially took custody of Josanna.Breanne cried, and I was emotional too. We rode back with the Feikens and had dinner at YGF. Oh, and lunch was interesting – there were monkeys at this resort place that we stopped at. I had something called “Kitfo”, and traditional dish. I’m surprised that I haven’t gotten sick from the food!

Today is Tuesday. We went to the orphanage in the morning, then back to YGF for lunch, then traveled to Ambo in the afternoon. On the way to Ambo, Ibrahim and Jon Michelle stopped and bought some “chut”. I gues it is a stimulant plant that people chew here. None of us had any, but it was interesting seeing all the people on the street chewing it. On the way, we also stopped and had coffee and some had sprite. There were some kids there, and we took a few pictures. When we got to Ambo we went straight to the hotel. The room was OK. It did have a shower and warm water and a toilet that half worked (tp would go down). Before dinner, we walked up and down the streets of Ambo. A lot of people are out on the street – just walking or sometimes selling. Actually, it seems everywhere we’ve gone in Ethiopia has had a lot of people on the street. Most everything that people sell are to meet basic needs: food, clothing, shoes, for example. We seemed to be the only white people in Ambo, so we did draw some attention. They called us “tourists”. That night, we ate at the hotel’s restaurant. Right before dinner there was a power outage (one of several while we were there). I guess they can still cook using gas if the power goes out. Dinner was good – I had shishkabob with tomato soup. We made plans to get an early start and go to Winchi Lake (6:30am).

Today we met up with the Fiekens and we all went to the orphanage together to see our girls (their girls’ name is Eva). We had a nice visit at Toukoul orphanage. We were not able to tour the orphanage due to security and privacy concerns, so that was a little disappointing. We met a few new people today, and received a more structured itinerary/plan for our stay. in the afternoon, we went to the Hilton Hotel and exchanged $300.00 USD. Then we went shopping at a little store and spent $400.00 USD, or about 5,000 BUR. Luckily they took half USD and half BUR, since we didn’t have enough. Then we went and had coffee at a place called Kabu.

Today we saw/met Josanna for the first time. She is a cutie! We were surprised that Josanna didn’t cry at all: in fact, she laughed several times. She seems to like me and enjoyed being entertained by peak-aboo and some tickles. We had a nice 30 minute first visit with her. Breanne cried a little at first. The driving and traffic here is crazy! People walking everywhere – on the sides of streets, in front of cars. No stop lights and very little road rules. We made it back to YGF hotel in the afternoon and just spent the rest of the day relaxing.

On the flight from Portland to Amsterdam we swatched a lot of movies. Flight took 9 1/2 hrs, but didn’t seem that bad. Had a 2 hr layover. Exchanged 20 USD for about 12 Euros. Tried to buy us coffee in Amsterdam airport but lines were too long. Slept a little on the flight from Amsterdam to Addis. Germany beat Argentina in the World Cup, 4-0. They annouced it on the plane. At the Addis airport we waited a long time to get our VISA and passport stamped. They scanned our bags one last time through the machine. There were a lot of people waiting as we left the airport. Our driver, Efraim, had a sign that said “Smith KL543”. In the parking lot, there were many people waiting around (taxi drivers and such). We lost $500.00 out of Breanne’s backpack (not sure where) :-(.