Early on Easter Sunday we left the SLC airport for our long awaited trip to Ethiopia.
Adam can sleep on planes, I can't. Enough said.
We stayed in Washington D.C. that night and caught a direct flight the next morning to Addis Ababa.
The flight was 12 hours long and landed at 7:15 a.m. local time which was 10 p.m. our body time so we started a new day without any sleep at all. We were 1 of 3 West Sands families coming in for court on the same day and the in country staff of West Sands picked us up from the airport and had everything arranged for our stay in the country. The other 2 families' children were at 2 different orphanages in Addis, but our son was in Adama which was about 1 1/2 hours out of Addis so we were informed that we would be traveling to Adama and would stay in a hotel in Adama that night. We were also told we could have AJ with us at the hotel so we would get to spend about 24 hours with him instead of only seeing him for a few hours at the orphanage.
Pictures of the country side on the way to Adama.
We arrived at the orphanage without any rest or opportunity to clean up after such a long flight. It wasn't exactly how I pictured the moment we would meet our son, but in the end I guess it doesn't really matter. This is the moment we saw him for the first time.
They took us to a cool hotel that had bungalow style rooms with an outside entrance. Each room had it's own shaded lounging area.
I got a kick out of the locks on the doors.
It was about noon when we got to our room and fortunately for us it was AJ's nap time so he promptly fell asleep while I held him. We were more than happy to lay down and take a nap, too, since the jet lag was really starting to kick in. I'm not sure if he always takes 3 hour naps, but on this day he did and it gave Adam and me just enough rest to keep going the rest of the day.
After our nap we got out a few of the small toys we brought and got to know him a little better while playing. There wasn't any air conditioning and the room got really hot so we went outside and hung out on the private lounging area in front of the room. The shade and the breeze coming through made it quite comfortable.
AJ has a cute little walk. Here we are heading to dinner.
We ate at the restaurant at the hotel. We weren't sure what to get AJ so we ordered spaghetti off the kids menu and he ate every single bite.
We went back to the room and talked on facetime to family back home before putting him to bed.
He warmed up to us and we saw a lot of smiles and laughs. He loved the little cars and books and liked putting different shoes on and off his feet. He also loved to throw his toys and then go pick them up again. He went right to sleep after we turned out the lights and slept until 8:30 a.m. the next morning. We slept with a net over the bed and kept a fan on us all night because it was HOT. I seriously would have died without the fan.
The only time he cried all day was when we started putting him in the van to take him to the hotel with us. I'm not sure he remembers ever being in a car and it was obvious he was scared. I held him tight (no car seats in Ethiopia) and he sat very still and starting falling asleep. I think the day went well. He is obviously a normal 2 year old boy who is very busy and all over the place. He is also very loving and enjoys being snuggled and cared for.
