Almost midnight on March 10 (Wednesday), I left Honolulu for San Francisco. This was the first leg of my incredibly long journey - literally half way around the world - to Ethiopia to meet my new daughter. She had already been my daughter for 8 days, but I had never seen her in person yet.
My flight arrived in San Francisco after about 4 hours of flying - it was just after 7am local time in San Francisco. I turned on my phone so that I could get a message to/from Kristan, who would be meeting me here and then making the rest of the trip with me. She would be my adoption doula. However, Kristan’s flight was delayed by 5 hours! After some sleuthing around, I found out that Kris was able to get on another flight, so she didn’t have to wait around.
I haven’t seen Kris for almost 2 years, but still... seeing Kris is like seeing my sister. She and I just have a soul connection and we know each other’s hearts. We don’t need words... but words we have! We spent the hours waiting for our flight to Dubai catching up - talking about everything and nothing.
Around 3pm we were boarding our flight to Dubai. It would be a 16 hour flight. And we got Economy Class seats. We knew it would be a long flight, but we were ready to go, to get on with our mission. We flew Emirates Air from San Francisco to Dubai without incident... well... other than the two of us crazy American women laughing and giggling.
At one point, I took the middle seat, and Kristan took the window. There was a gentleman on the aisle seat who did not speak English - and I think he really wasn’t sure what to think of Kristan and me. Anyway, I am now banned form sitting in the middle seat - and here’s why. I fell asleep. The gentleman fell asleep. He coughed. In my dream-like state, I thought his cough was Lauren’s “I’m going to puke right NOW” cough, and I startled awake cupping my hands under his face - and then pushing the flight attendant light and searching for a bag. lol Yeah. I know. Nice.
We arrived in Dubai and were very very tired and confused. We weren’t sure where to go, or what to do. Eventually we got to the right way out, and we got to our hotel. I exchanged $20 for some Dubai money so that I could give the bell hop a tip. We went into our room - it had 2 double beds, nicely made and REALLY comfortable. We got up, went to breakfast in the restaurant, and then headed back to the airport for our last leg.
One of the things I really enjoyed about Emirates Air was the room and meals. If you have an 8 hour + layover, they will put you up in one of their hotels and even give you a meal voucher. Nice.
Saturday, March 13, we boarded our last flight from Dubai to Addis Ababa. It was a short/easy flight after the 16 hour flight the day before.
As we came into Addis for landing, there was no city skyline to see. We could make out the compounds, which were familys’ homes. We could see the brown of the dirt, and the little bit of green. As we touched down, we realized we were in a completely different world - so much different than anything we knew. The grass along the runway was way overgrown, not nicely manicured. The runway itself seems rough. Along the sides of the runway, in the weeds, were soldiers - armed with machine guns, spaced every 20-30 yards. We saw a man walking along the runway.
Inside the airport, it was so far removed from our 21st century surroundings. The walls were all cement. We commented that we had seen nicer insides of parking garages in downtown Seattle. The air was warm, and there was a much different smell in the air. It was a little hard to breathe.
We got through security/immigration, and then we exchanged some money. The gentleman behind the counter was very no nonsense - and we were having a hard time figuring out how much money was what. I exchanged $600 US for Ethiopian Birr.The exchange rate was 13.3 birr per US$. So each birr was worth about 7.3 cents. Ten birr was about $.73. One hundred birr was about $7.30 US.
Kristan and I found our bags THEY MADE IT!!!! We loaded them onto the carts (those of you who are traveling, GET A CART!!! we didn’t in Dubai and really wished we had) and headed through the last bit of security before entering Ethiopia.
Security was a very old looking, run down xray machine with a conveyer belt that we weren’t sure would work. Our bags were put through, and we loaded them back up onto our cart on the other side of security.
Krsitan and I pushed our luggage loaded carts out to where our driver was waiting for us. Abenezer was a good looking young man holding “Ethio Comfort Guest House” sign. We walked over to him, introduced ourselves and he immediately took my cart. Kristan was soon literally PUSHED out of the way by a man wanting to help her to the van with her stuff. She and I exchanged glances, not sure what to do, and just decided to let him push it - and she’d tip him when we got to the van.
However, because we didn’t know the $$ yet, Kristan tried to give him a $1 Birr... basically 7 cents. He shoved it back at her and shook his head no, holding out his hand for more. Neither of us was sure what to do, but Kristan reached in her money stash and pulled out a couple of $10birrs ($.70 each) and gave them to him. We really hadn’t figured out the exchange value yet.
We were officially IN ETHIOPIA. My daughter was somewhere in this city. Somewhere, maybe we had flown right over her. Maybe we were only a couple of miles away. I was anxious, but also wanted to get rested and do some shopping before meeting my daughter. I knew that the real hard work would be after I collected Chaltu on Monday morning. That was still a day and a half away - and I wanted to get comfortable before taking on that new role - Mom to an adopted toddler.
I’m going to continue this series tomorrow... the happenings of Saturday and Sunday in Ethiopia. Then I will continue throughout the week... hoping to do a blog post a day. But... I am now the mom of an adopted toddler who is adjusting to her new family - so while I will try to get my thoughts down in a timely manner - realize that time is a bit more scarce than it used to be. :)
I felt pretty prepared - I had read another adoptive mother’s very frank travel journal which REALLY prepared me. I also read a book called Weaver’s Craft: Toddler Adoption which helped me in other ways. NOTHING could have prepared me for so much of the week - so much of what was experienced and seen and heard and smelled.
