Another day in Addis Ababa

Today was a very well balanced day. Not too rushed like some of the days have been. This morning started out a little rough (again). Mikias’ woke up at 4:30am and refused to go back to sleep. He was in a very good mood but both of us were so exhausted from the all the excitement of the last few days that we were not much in the mood for playing with him that early in the morning. We finally got him to go back to sleep around 7am so we slept as well…right through breakfast.

Most of the morning was spent at the guest house just hanging out and relaxing a bit. Alemu and Ben took a quick trip to the Ethiopian Airlines office to confirm our tickets for Friday’s flight. We were able to secure a front seat with a fold-down bassinette for Mikias. Big sigh of relief. The best news came when Gizesh (a guest house worker) turned the faucet in the bathroom and water came out!! This immediately made the rest of the day much easier. We will never take water for granted again.

This afternoon we hit the town with Alemu again. He took us to another market area because we were interested in purchasing some fabric. This market was much less chaotic than the Merkato and we got some great deals (with Alemu’s help of course). We discovered that children had been yelling “white person!” in Amharic at us as we drove down the street. Alemu finally clued us in on that one.

Then we stopped at the University Museum at Addis Ababa University. This was a great experience and we highly recommend this to all families making the trip here for upcoming adoptions. We learned a great deal about Ethiopian history and customs. The tour guide we had was very knowledgeable. This helped us understand a lot about the country and we hope to share some of this with Mikias when he grows up.

We made it home before today’s large rainstorm. This seems to occur in the afternoon every day now. We spent some more time at the guesthouse enjoying Mikias. We finally got our first family picture taken today. We realized that no one had taken a picture of the three of us since we got Mikias. Also, Joanna learned how to wrap Mikias to her back (see picture). This is a very common way to carry babies here. Gizesh and Hewot were able to help Joanna out a lot.

This evening we went with Alemu to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant about 20 minutes from here. It was fantastic traditional food and entertainment. We have had injera (Ethiopian bread) a few times in Michigan, but that was nothing like the injera here. This was much better. Throughout the entire meal there were various dances performed that represented the various regions of Ethiopia. Some of the dancing was simply unbelievable. We ended up recording quite a bit of video.

We are still trying to meet Mikias (Henock’s) birthmother while we are in the country. The orphanage director is trying to locate her but was unsuccessful today. We are hoping that she is located and we can meet her before we leave. When we do meet her we will travel to Debre Zeyt, just south of Addis. We will also have the opportunity to visit the orphanage in this town where Henock was originally brought. This all may happen as early as tomorrow.