We found out about a week and a half before we were to leave that our court date was August 5. We thought there might be a chance, because other families that received their referrals on the same day or the day after had already gotten their call to travel. I "calmly" answered the phone on July 21 and our caseworker told us that we also had a court date of August 5. The next week was a blur of packing our things, donations, making sure our boys were taken care of and leaving lots of directions and instructions for my parents for while we were gone. We never considered an August court date, so this whole thing happened a lot sooner than we expected. In a way, getting ready to travel to Ethiopia in about 10 days was easier than having several weeks. It all had to get done and it all did and we didn't forget anything. The only bad thing was the huge cost of our airline tickets, but she's definately worth it.
We drove from here to Atlanta on Saturday, July 30 to spend the night there, leave the car in the hotel parking lot and get a shuttle to the airport at 4 a.m. I slept maybe an hour or two rather restlessly, we got up and dressed and headed to the airport. The United ticket counter doesn't even open up until 5 or so there, so we sat in line for about an hour waiting, checked our luggage, found our gate and waited some more. Our flight from ATL to IAD was uneventful and very short compared to the next flight. When we got to IAD, we found our next gate and waited there for about four hours for our flight to Ethiopia. We saw the people who had just spend the last 13+ hours of their lives disembark and head to customs and met up with another family in our travel group, who were on our same flight. We visited with them, shared photos and stories and got some lunch before we boarded around 11 a.m. We flew Ethiopian Air, which compared to Delta, which we took on our way home, was a lot nicer. Nicer plane, better food, better service, better headphones for 13 hours of movies, socks and a toothbrush, which felt really good when we were finally getting closer. Both of us slept a little, but mostly we caught up on every single movie that we were even slightly interested in. We played solitaire, visited with the woman sitting next to me, and stood to stretch from time to time. Overall, the time went pretty quickly and faster than I thought it would. We landed in Addis, got our tourist visas, found our luggage, went through customs, found our driver and other fellow travelers and all head to the hotel bus for our ride to the hotel. Truthfully, the whole Addis airport thing was the most stressful time of the whole trip. I felt out of my element, desperately needed a shower and was exhausted.
Our hotel was about 20 minutes from the airport and we just stared out the windows the whole time taking it all in. Very different from our little world in Tennessee, but after reading blogs and looking at pictures for the past 12 months or so, I pretty much expected to see what I saw. We checked in, found our room and immediately unpacked stuff so we could take a shower. Our schedule, which we picked up when we checked in, said we'd be going to Hannah's Hope, our daughter's transition house, at 1. We had about two hours at that point. We got cleaned up and went downstairs to wait for the van to come get us along with the same famiy we met at the airport. I fell asleep on the hotel lobby couch waiting, but quickly jumped up when Scott said the van was there. HH is about five minutes from the hotel. We turned off the main road and onto another road, which was unpaved and very bumpy, and before we knew it pulled up to the big black gates of HH.
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