The trip

We left Friday afternoon and headed to Amsterdam on KLM.  Blue and I were excited and restless.  The flight was long but Blue was thrilled to be in a window seat, loved the built-in personal television screen in the seat backs.  We watched movies and ate, tried to relax.... until I realized the smell of the lavatory soap mixed with stress, I'm sure, and perhaps a bad airport chicken wrap was going to do me in.  As we were landing in Amsterdam, Blue's first touch down on foreign soil was accompanied by the sounds of me hurling into the complimentary barf bag.  Lovely.  I sat in the airport terminal like a lump and did not want to get on that next flight, but had to, splitting headache and nausea.  I put on the electronic relief band and felt a bit better, but not 100%.  Our seats were further away from the bathrooms on the next flight so the soap smell was not as harsh.  Still, I'm going to write them a letter telling them their soap is olfactorily offensive. 

After some 20+ hours in the air or waiting, we arrived after 10pm Sat. night in Addis Ababa.  We had to get visas, change money, and we were the very last in line for customs.  By the time we located our hotel shuttle driver and got to the hotel, grabbed a very late dinner at the 24 hour restaurant, it was 2 a.m.  I was exhausted.  I didn't sleep well on the plane and didn't sleep well in the hotel.  Nerves, altitude, circadian rythm, no telling.  The next morning we got up, had some breakfast in the same hotel restaurant, called the orphanage and scheduled our driver.  Ayele showed up and was very nice.  He took us to a grocery store to get bottled water and a few other items and then straight to the orphanage. 

The city is overwhelmingly polluted with car exhaust.  Our car rides were with the windows down the entire trip, much to our displeasure.  It is a very pedestrian town, but there are lots of 15 passenger vans and industrial vehicles.  The traffic was a bit hectic, with virtually no enforceable rules, but we were told it was nothing compared to the traffic during the workweek.  There were well dressed people and then there were homeless people wearing no shoes, very dirty clothing.  If you looked out the window long enough, you would see something you didn't want to see.  There were lots of sheep being driven in herds, donkeys carrying five foot high stacks of grass or twigs, homeless people sleeping in grassy medians and fields, business people, stray cats and dogs. 

The residential side streets are not all paved.  Both the big kid's house and the baby house were on unpaved roads.  Going 5 mph would be painful because some of the rocks are the size of baking potatoes or cantaloupes, as opposed to our graded chet or gravel which is consistent in size. The houses are surrounded by high walls, some of which have the tops lined in broken multi-colored jagged glass bottles.  Methinks this is not just to keep the birds from roosting on the walls.  Every place we went had a gate guard that would stick his head out to see who was honking, wanting in.  At the big kid house, the gate opened and we drove into a narrow driveway underneath a laundry line.  There were a few children outside playing.  A nanny was there and said, "hi mommy," then asked me who my baby was.  I said her name and off the nanny went.  I didn't realize she was bringing her down right away.  We went into the office and I was talking to Ayele the driver about some items I'd brought for other families when I noticed a presence out of the corner of my eye.  Little Miss A. was standing right by me.  I immediately started crying like a big baby, which was not what I wanted to do, so tried to get my act together.  They had put her hair up in lots of little pigtails and she was just so tiny!  I'd brought a backpack full of goodies for her so we started digging through that, mainly so I'd have something else to focus on instead of being hysterical.  Barbie and viewmaster were wise choices.  We sat there for awhile, two other families came and we all went upstairs to see the kids, take photos, distribute packages for other families.  Then we headed out.  I wasn't sure if they were going to let me take Little Miss A. with me for some reason, but they did. 

A. loves her bath.  She eats very well, but does not like milk or juice very much.  We had some 7-up at a restaurant and she likes that alot, but is happy with water.  She likes bread, rice, Ethiopian food of all kinds, oatmeal, and over the course of a week, she would eat more than I did.  My stomach was messed up for quite awhile and I had no appetite, wasn't sleeping, but she was getting 3 hour naps and then sleeping through the night.  We tried to get her to talk above a whisper, to skip, to dance, and at one point we were jumping on the bed, just to get her to do something a little crazy.  She still whispers her words but we're working on that.  She fixes barbie's hair every day with a new style and dresses barbie in layers, always.  Jeans, a dress, a t-shirt and then a jacket.  She also likes to layer herself.  It was pretty warm there most days and she would zip her jacket up all the way, most likely out of a feeling of security, but it may have also been due to a bad chest cold she had. A round of anti-biotics and she is much better.