Monday, July 26, 2010

Ethiopia: Days 1&2

Sorry this has taken me so long to write. Life is crazy with 3 kids. But we are getting into the swing of things.

We left on Saturday morning to head to Ethiopia. I thought that I would be a basket case leaving the other two kids,but I did well. If you have kids you are leaving behind, I would recommend saying your good byes at the house and not the airport. My kids were comfortable saying bye at home and it really made things go a lot smoother.
We flew into Washington DC for a 5 hour lay over. AS soon as we got to Dulles we went to find our next gate. I'm glad we did this because there was a huge line for boarding passes. We stood in line got our boarding passes then went to find ways to pass the time. We then boarded Ethiopian airlines for our 16 hour flight to Ethiopia. The flight went way better then expected. The food and service was great. I don't sleep well on planes so I think I only got about 2 hours of sleep, but I had a feeling that would happen.
We finally set foot on Ethiopian soil on Sunday night. We got off the plane, down an escalator and saw a big yellow sign that said "Visas". We stood in line for a little less then 30 minutes, Paid our $20 each and moved to the immigration line. Passed immigration, found our bags, exchanged money, put bags through yet another scanner, and out the door. It was very easy to find Travis in the crowd, thank goodness. He introduced us to our wonderful driver, Solomon, and off we went to the guest house.
Once at the guest house we met up with Genet, she showed us our rooms and gave us a tour of the house. We also received a cell phone to make calls. The cell phone is how you can call your driver and the main way Travis communicates info to you. Before he left he let us know that we would not be getting Elliott until Monday afternoon. I was a little bummed, but then Troy and I decided that it would give us an opportunity to get out and see the city. So, we settled into our room and got a great night of sleep. We, after all, were meeting our son the next day.

1 comment:

Zach said...

Thanks for sharing about your trip. I was curious about Ethiopian Airlines. Glad to know they are a good airlines to use.