Our First trip to Ethiopia

Our journey to Ethiopia started on Tuesday Nov 30. Our flight was to leave Omaha at 2:39!! We were so excited, nervous and alot of other emotions were going thru us as we anticipated out flight to take off!! We were wondering if our flight was ever going to end but we safely arrived in Ethiopia and were brought to the Jemimah Guest house where we would be staying during our time in Ethiopia! We finally got to our room at 11:40 Ethiopia time the following day! So needless to say it was a LONG flight!!

Thursday Dec 2

It was an Amazing and Exhausting day!! We started out with breakfast at the Guesthouse and we then set out for the Holt office at 8:30 for our orientation and tour. We then were off to go and meet Kendra for the very first time! This is a picture of the Care Center that she was staying at!

Words can't explain how we felt when they brought her down the stairs to meet us for the first time! She was beautiful! We played and held her for awhile and when I snuggled her in I could tell she had a fever. Sister Martha came and took her temp then and it was 101. They gave her some meds and brought her back and she snuggled in and went to sleep. She really didn't want to do anything else which was kind of hard.


We then left to go eat lunch at the Golf Club. It was a beautiful day so we were able to sit out on the porch for lunch. We then went to the leprosy hospital. That was an amazing experience to see all of the "handicapped" people making all different kinds of things from using the loom machines and the embroidering and some people were carving wood. We purchased a little outfit for Kendra, a table runner and a beautiful table cloth and napkins for Kendra to have someday.




We then were scheduled to go back to the Holt offices to meet with the lawyer to go over questions that we could possibly be asked for court and the Embassy appointment. We were then able to go back to the Care Center to see Kendra again and also meet with the pediatrician. They told us she didn't have rickets anymore and that she was fine and healthy! I then went on to ask if they had checked her out and listened to her? She was very rattly. They then checked her out and the Dr said that they would come to get her and take her to have a chest x-ray. Soon a driver came and the nanny came and took her from us and brought her to the hospital to have the x-ray done. It was a very emotional time of really wanting her to be home so we could care for her. We arrived at the guest house again at 7:30 p.m. and we were exhausted. We went down and ate some pizza and went to bed early!


Friday Dec 3

The beds are extremely hard and there were alot of dogs barking and such so I didn't really get much sleep! Terry told me it was 5:15 in the morning so I decided to get up a little early so I could have a warm shower!! It was even HOT!!! The bad thing is when I got out of the shower Terry had looked at the clock a little closer and realized it was only 3:00 a.m.!!! So I tried to go back to bed! We were to be ready earlier today since court was supposed to start at 9:00. We sat around until 9:45. The room was full of adoptive families. Everyone seemed to be out of the room very quickly. We were the last family that was called into the room. The judge asked us 5 questions. She wanted only yes/no answers. She was very hard to hear and understand. At the end she said "She is yours"!!!!


Court took the whole morning so we went back to the guest house to change and went to Kaldi's for lunch. We were then able to go back to the Care Center to say good bye to the kids before we had to leave. When we arrived at the Care Center we were told that she was admitted to the hospital last night. A son of another couple that we traveled with was also admitted so they took us all to the hospital to see and say good bye to our kids. We were first able to meet with the Dr to discuss the diagnosis. They told us that she had pneumonia and that they were giving her meds and IV. When we went to see here she was still pretty out of it. I was able to hold her for a short time and then they wanted her to just sleep in her bed. The trip to the hospital was a experience I don't think I will ever forget!!




Bethel Hospital is a private hospital that Holt uses in Ethiopia. When a child from the Care Center is admitted one of the nannies will stay with the child 24 hours a day. They have 12 hour shifts. There is a Dr. and nurse on staff if they would need their help.


Since we had to make a trip to the hospital our shopping time was really cut so we were only able to shop for about 30-40 minutes. And as you know I love to shop so needless to say we didn't get too much bought while we were there. So we are hoping that we will get a little more time when we go for the Embassy appointment.


We went back t0 the guest house for the evening and went to a wonderful Italian restaurant called Avanti with a few of the other families we were traveling with.



Sat. Dec 4

We were done with Holt now so we were able to sleep in and get everything packed up since today would be the day that we would be leaving Ethiopia! We hired a driver from the guest house to take us to do some site seeing. Workineh took us to Emperor-Minilik's palace and Museum - Empress Titu. It was on top of the mountain. We were able to go thru the different rooms of the house of the Emperor and Empress. See the very first church that was built by them also in 1877.



When we were done seeing all the area we went back down the mountain and there were women carrying bundles of wood they had put together and had them neatly put together and were carrying them on their backs. There were also some women that had wood stacked on the donkeys. It had to be alot of work for the women carrying them.



These women were part of a union for womens woodcarriers union. We saw the sign at the bottom of the mountain where they would carry these large loads of sticks. We were able to a few shops for about 15 minutes and then went to eat a Lucy's gazebo and Restaurant. It was a beautiful place and also had good food. We went back to the guest house to just hang out until we had to leave for the airport. Our flight left at 11:40 p.m. Ethiopia time! Before we had to leave for the airport I called to the Holt offices to see if I could at least have an update on Kendra before we had to leave. They called back and said that she was still in the hospital - had no fever and was a little more alert and starting to eat a little again. So that was somewhat encouraging but was still VERY hard to leave since we really didn't get to see the real personality of Kendra. We ate a little Ethiopia food - Ingure at the guest house before we had to fly out. The flights home were very long. The first one being 8 hours the second being 11 hours and then 2 hours to Omaha! We arrived at home to a wonderful welcome from the boys!! We missed them very much but also knew that they were well cared for while we were gone!