Ethiopia Part 1: Getting There

Ethiopia, in three parts (maybe four)

I have lots and lots of photos and video, because I spent a LOT of time at the orphanage. Unfortunately the photos have a lot of very adorable children I can't post in them. So you'll have to make do with what's left and maybe see the rest in person.

Thursday
I went in to work early so I could hopefully get out by 11. Of course that didn't happened and I finally told my boss, "I HAVE to go now" at noon. Nothing like feeling rushed as you head off half way around the globe. And to think, all that and they just might not need me when I come back. Very nice.

Here is the van all loaded up for the airport. We had plenty of time and enjoyed a snack with Christian and my Dad at the airport. Our flight left around ten, but they fed us dinner on it anyway. We managed a few very uncomfortable hours of sleep and arrived in London around mid day.

Friday/ Saturday
We were in London. We stayed for 24 hours at a hotel near the airport. We took a walk around the dingy airport neighborhoods, and had dinner. It was our last good night of sleep, and made for a really nice way to get adjusted to the time. We left mid day Saturday and flew to Damascus, then Ethiopia. Unfortunately dinner came after Damascus, I'm not sure why anyone would go to Damascus. Judging by the food they loaded on our plane there, it would kill me to stay there for any length of time.

Sunday
We arrived in Ethiopia around 1 am. When we went to collect our luggage we got our first taste of Ethiopian hospitality. Okay, never mind, Ethiopian hospitality was great. I'm not sure what we got at the airport, American sucker treatment perhaps. We had a half dozen "porters" insist on "helping us with our luggage. They managed to utilize THREE luggage carts and of course 3 porters. We tipped them with $5 bills and they led us to "customs". The "customs agents" scrutinized our luggage. Then responded with, "well why didn't you bring more?"
It was at this point that we somehow had a complete change of porters,who walked us out to meet Yohannes (about 25 ft further). Yohannes would take us to the hotel. The porters, in order to release hold of our luggage then asked "tip?". Of course the first set was long gone by then and we had to scrape up another set of 5s. Overall we did very well, apparently it cost Sunday about $50 to get her luggage out. By the time we got to the van there was of course another set of "airport helpers", a pretty motley crew. We were down to only $20s at that point, so we were pretty determined to load our own darn luggage into the van (not to hard when there was only two of us and a whole 15 passenger van.

At the hotel, Yohannes checked us in and the porters carried all 300 pounds of luggage up to our room on the 3rd floor (3 flights of stairs, so technically the fourth floor). All we had to carry was our lousy carry-ons, yet we were huffing and puffing up those stairs trying to keep up with the guys with 70 pound suitcases on their backs! It was the altitude, we're not that fat. Man I huffed up a lot of stairs last week :)
We had a "deluxe" room, with two beds, which actually was a suite. It was on the top floor, with balconies on both sides of the building, and awesome views. Plus, the super deluxe "shower room" in the bathroom. There were about 14 different directions to get wet, but unfortunately no way to get the water to drain. It got pretty gross in there after a week of dusty feet.

We went to bed and woke up around 11 for lunch (rice and chicken and veggies). Then decided to go for a walk until Almaz was planning on coming at 2pm. We quickly met up with Danny who made us feel safe trekking around the neighborhood.He took us to his church where we could see the new church they were building, and them walked us over to the main road. We got our bearings and figured out where the shops were, which came in handy later in the week for bananas and juice for the the little peanut.

Coming soon... Part 2: Going to Hannah's Hope.