We're home

We arrived home safely yesterday afternoon. What a whirlwind of activity starting with our Friday in Ethiopia...

Friday morning we all (with the exception of the boys and Mom Karwan) went to the Merkato to do some shopping, but mostly just to experience the atmosphere of the largest market in Africa. Joanna and I had spent quite a long time here with Alemu in '07, and we were anxious to show our parents what it was all about. This time we had two guards escort us through the market because of safety concerns...makes you wonder how unsafe we were in '07...oh well. Overall it was a good trip. We only stopped at one vendor to purchase baskets, but we took advantage of it.



Following lunch we had to concentrate on packing our things. We had stuff strewn all over our room and needed to get it all under control. In the afternoon, we had a traditional coffee ceremony at the lodge that Alemu had arranged. Luckily, he brought along Gizesh who we had met in '07. She was able to see Mikias and we were able to visit a little bit despite the language barrier. We also were able to see Getachew, the man who does much of the court and embassy work on behalf of AAI in Ethiopia. We got to know him quite well in '07 and we were glad that we had a few minutes to catch up. Again, it was great that we were able to make these connections with people we had met before. It makes us feel more connected with Ethiopia that we have people there that remember us and whom we consider friends.



After dinner, the entire group loaded up and made our way to the airport. I'm sure we were quite a sight with all of our luggage and kids navigating our way through the ticket counters and baggage screenings. Our flight was delayed leaving Addis, so we had a little more time than we would have liked sitting in the airport. We finally took off around 11:30pm to begin the long, long trip home. The plane ride was brutal and seemed to take much longer than our trip there. There wasn't a great opportunity to get any significant amount of sleep since we were now dealing with both Mikias and Taye. Taye started eating much more than we planned for and we got worried that we'd run out of formula before we got home. It turned out all right. He was also agitated and had some trouble sleeping. There was a certain spot on the airplane by the doors where he would fall asleep. So, Joanna and I spent a long time standing up there with him trying to get him to sleep. After 17 hours in the air we finally arrived in DC completely exhausted. But the fun had just begun.

Since we were late arriving, we had even less time to go through customs, collect our baggage, go through immigration, re-check our bags, get our boarding passes, go through security, and get to our gate. The baggage took forever. I think they must have had one guy unloading the whole plane because it was so slow. By the time we hit immigration, we were getting a little worried that we wouldn't make it. We tried to send Mikias with our parents ahead to get through the gates but that didn't work since he wasn't on their itinerary. So that left Joanna and I with the two boys and a ton of luggage. By the time we hit security we were literally running through the airport. But, we made it!!

We arrived in Detroit on time and were greeted by many family and friends. How good it felt to be home after that travel experience. There were several families at the airport that we've gotten to know through the Ethiopian adoption process. It was great to see all the Ethiopian kids there to greet their newest friend.





Check out this video of our arrival at the airport. At the beginning, you'll see some of the other families that we traveled with arriving too. Thanks so much to the Kubiks for putting this together so quickly!



Last night, Joanna's sister, Caroline, helped us out a ton. She stayed with us and helped with the boys through the night and did a zillion loads of laundry. It helped tremendously to have her here. Thanks Caroline! Other than that, since we've been home we've just been trying to settle into a routine with sleeping, eating, etc. I'm sure it will take a while to get readjusted.