The purpose of this trip to Ethiopia was to, of course, finally meet our sweet girl. But this trip is called the “Court Trip” because we officially and legally in Ethiopia went before a judge and adopted her! She is our daughter now, even though we are home and she is still in the foster home. We are waiting for “Gotcha Day!” (So many biblical parallels to our faith in this picture.)
Right after breakfast on Tuesday, February 24th, our driver and lawyer drove us on those crazy streets of Addis Ababa to the Federal Court Building for our appointment.
About nine other couples were there at court too. Most of them were from the US, but others were from Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.
One by one, each family was called into the judge’s chamber. We were overdressed in our business casual clothes. He asked us ten easy questions as he went down a checklist. Then, he said that the court approved our adoption!
On the drive back to the guesthouse for lunch, we saw an interesting sight and had to take a few pictures as best we could out of the car window. Very colorful. Can you tell what these are??
Why, they’re “corpse boxes” of course! We had a hard time asking our driver and lawyer what these were called. We said “coffin”, “casket”, “for dead bodies”, and they still didn’t know what we were talking about! I guess it didn’t seem odd to them that they were for sale along a busy street. And so colorful! Finally, it clicked and they said, “Oh, corpse boxes!”
We visited our daughter (yes, she was now legally our daughter!) again in the afternoon. One of the nannies made coffee for us as the foster home.
Two more days of visiting and bonding with our daughter before we had to be on our way home. Trying to soak in every minute with her.
