Welcome, friend. Come on in and grab a cup of coffee while I show you some snapshots from our recent court trip to Ethiopia~!
Here’s how the week went down.
On Tuesday February 17th at about 1:30pm, John calls me and says something to the effect of: “Are you sitting down? We need to be in Ethiopia THIS Saturday!!”
What?? So the rest of that day and all the next we scrambled to get our 4 boys taken care of, pack our necessities, get cash from the bank, and get our documents in order. (Thank you to our family and friends who helped us tremendously in this regard — you know who you are!!)
On Thursday we started our trek by heading to Harrisburg in below zero frigid temps to get some final documents state certified.
We stayed overnight with family in Virginia, and on Friday morning my brother dropped us off at Dulles International at 7:30 a.m., with departure at 10:30 a.m.
On the twelve hour direct flight, we enjoyed the view as we headed over NYC, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Canadian ice flows.
Then we didn’t see anything else until the lights of Italy sometime in the middle of the night. Afternoon? Night? We were so mixed up with flying East and over several timezones.
The continent looked dark until we experienced our first African sunrise.
Then we saw the rugged terrain of Ethiopia and the capital city of Addis Ababa.
We landed about 7 a.m. local time on Saturday, February 21st. It took almost two hours to get through customs at the airport. Our driver was waiting for us outside the airport and had a hard time loading our two suitcases into his 1980’s Corolla.
He drove us right to the Guesthouse. Boy, was that drive ever scary! Pedestrians and cars play chicken with each other to get the right of way. No stoplights. Several traffic circles. Honking horns warn people to get out of the way.
This is exactly what it was like! But it’s a lot easier to watch this from above. Imagine being in a small vehicle with no seatbelt down in the middle of all the action.
We were experiencing jet lag and culture shock!
But seeing Africa on our local weather forecast was amazing. We were finally here!
We had about one hour at the guest house to freshen up before our driver took us to the foster home to meet our sweet girl!
{Read about Day 2 here}
Near the end of the traffic video, I noticed there were pedestrians trying to cross also! THAT was beyond hair raising to see them so utterly vulnerable. We’re so glad you picked an agency that was experienced in the country and could provide for your transportation with a driver to stay with you, etc.
Yes, the vast amount of pedestrians mingled right in with the cars and animals was absolutely crazy! But our driver was great!