Best Birthday Present Ever!

We woke up this morning to a lovely email from the embassy telling us they are ready to schedule our appointment!  It looks like we will be traveling in two weeks.  More details to come as we schedule our appoinment and talk with our travel agent....

Food in Ethiopia

When we lived in Corpus Christi, we became friends with several international students from Taiwan. One thing they did was take pictures of every meal they ate. At our house, at their house, at a restaurant...it didn't matter. They wanted to document everything for when they went back to Taiwan. It would've been nice if we had done the same thing. We had so many delicious meals while we were in Ethiopia, but we have few pictures of them.

Our favorite thing was the traditional food, especially the shiro. The taste (and sometimes texture) of the traditional food is different and takes some people a while to get accustomed to, but not us. We had traditional Ethiopian meals at least once a day for our entire stay, even though there were other options. Dishes included wat, tibs, shiro, gomen, and even kitfo (raw or barely-cooked ground beef), all eaten with wonderful injera. It is kinda what we were going for here, but so much better.

We were also able to experience some of the traditional Ethiopian beverages. Ethiopia considers itself the birthplace of coffee. There is a legend about how coffee was first discovered and an elaborate coffee ceremony, but we will save that for another post. I will say that, despite neither of us having a real affinity for coffee, we both really enjoyed the Ethiopian coffee as well as the macchiatos, which were also quite popular. Our guide also insisted that we try the tella (beer) and tej (honey wine/mead). The tej had an especially unique, yeasty flavor. Just like much of the food, I'm sure it is an acquired taste.

In Ethiopia, Italian food is very popular due to the 5-year Italian occupation in the late 1930's. For this reason, many restaurants offer both traditional Ethiopian and traditional Italian food. Along with spaghetti and lasagna, we also had some really good pizza and some fairly bad pizza while we were there.

American influence is also obvious. We ate at one restaurant called New York New York Cafe and had some delicious, although different, hamburgers. Here is where we also experienced avacado juice for the first time. If you ever see it on a menu, we would highly recommend ordering it. The most American meal we had was probably our first ever experience at In-N-Out Burger. Not sure if it is a legit In-N-Out or not, but after almost 2 weeks in Addis, the greasy fast food was both welcome and delicious.

Happy Birthday!

Happy first birthday sweet boy!  We love you and miss you so much!  We so would have loved to spend the day with you and can't wait to make up for lost time soon!

Thanks to my baking skills your cake turned out sad looking.  This was appropriate, however, since it matched how we feel without you.

Tom Petty Was Right

The waiting IS the hardest part. And we found out yesterday that we will be waiting a little longer. The US Embassy in Ethiopia is requesting a few additional documents before they will clear us to come to pick up our children. Rounding up these documents and waiting for the Embassy to review them will probably add at least an extra 2 weeks to our wait time, which is disappointing as we were hoping we would be able to travel in the next couple of weeks. We are just ready to have these little guys home.

Museums

While we didn't spend a whole lot of time sightseeing in Addis (as we preferred to spend any extra time we had visiting our boys), we did have the opportunity to visit a couple of museums. The first museum we visited was the University Museum located on the campus of Addis Ababa University. The building housing the museum, as well as the University's Institute of Ethiopian Studies, was formerly Emperor Haile Selassie's royal palace. Here we learned a lot about Ethiopian history and the background of various regions and people groups.

The second museum that we visited was the National Museum of Ethiopia. This museum is famously displays "Lucy", one of the oldest human fossils. Known as "Dinkenesh" in Ethiopia, this partial skeleton was found in the Afar region of eastern Ethiopia in 1974. The name Lucy was reportedly given to her as the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was played loudly and repeatedly on a tape recorder at the archaeologists' camp the night they celebrated her discovery. The museum also houses various art and artifacts from throughout the country.

Another place we visited was Lion Zoo Park. This is a small zoo in central Addis Ababa. It was established in 1948 with a couple of lion cubs donated by Emperor Haile Selassie. The park also exhibits baboons, lesser kudu, tortoises, monkeys, rabbits, ducks, and some fish, but of course the main attractions are the 23 lions.

Trip to the South

After our 2-day trip north of Addis, we took a 2-day trip south of Addis to the city of Assela. The main purpose of this trip was to see the city where one of our little guys was born and to visit the orphanage that first cared for him.

The landscape in this part of the country was quite a bit different as there seemed to be a lot more agriculture. Among the many agriculture-related things we saw were oxen plowing fields, greenhouses (apparently Ethiopia exports a lot of flowers), roadside stands selling watermelons, and a cattle feedlot.

As a bit of a treat in the evening we visited Sodere Resort. This is a popular vacation destination for Ethiopians. The main attraction of the resort is the hot spring that is used to fill a recreational swimming pool and and Olympic-sized swimming pool. The Olympic pool was empty for cleaning when we got there, but we were told the hot springs put out enough water that it would be full again by morning. Our swim in the other pool was warm and relaxing. The resort also had a number of monkeys that liked to steal unguarded food off of the tables and run up into the trees with it. Too bad we didn't get any pictures of that!

Monasteries, Church Caves, and JFK

Here are some other pictures we forgot to include in our trip to the north. Ethiopia is known for many of its monasteries and we got to visit one before we returned to Addis. We were met outside by a Monk, took our shoes off and began the tour. He was a wonderful guide, very knowledgeable, was delighted by our questions, and could throw in some good jokes.  
  

The inside had stained glass windows depicting famous Saints of Ethiopia (who rode lions!), famous Bible stories, and some of the disciples. There were also a lot of paintings and other works of art. In the back was the chair where the Emperor used to sit when he would visit.  

Here’s one of Jonah. 

Then we got to tour the museum that was near the monastery. We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but learned a great deal about the Ethiopian orthodox church and its practices. This is also where we first learned of Ethiopia’s love for John F. Kennedy. In one glass case there was a gift from JFK that had been given to the patriarch of the church. Later in the trip we met a business man at the hotel and restaurant that he owned who told us JFK’s inauguration speech changed his life and proceeded to quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you....” Later still we went to the Ethiopia University Museum and saw the Kennedy Library.      

After leaving the monastery, our guide figured it was time for us to get some exercise. J We then hiked/climbed up a steep path up a mountain side. I seriously didn’t think we would all make it without injury as it was so muddy and treacherous at times. At the top was a church in a cave. We also saw where the monks who run the cave church lived and were told that once they go up they never come back down, even 50 - 60 years later.    

We rounded the day off by going out to eat and heading back into Addis where we got to meet our sweet Asnaka for the first time.

New Back Yard Art

Trip to the North

The landscape changed quickly as we left the capital.  Our elevation climbed as we saw mountains and beautiful scenery. 

Here is what we would think of as a scenic overlook in the states.  We stopped to see something described to us as the “Ethiopian Grand Canyon”.  It was very beautiful, but as you can see we were quickly ambushed by school-aged children wanting to sell us baskets.  They had great English and were proud to point out where they went to school, and told us that they were trying to raise money for school supplies this coming year.  We all bought a few baskets, but something tells me that they wanted to sell us more!  J 

We met so many kids in the north that were simply asking us for pens.  They shared that they needed to get ready for school in September, so rather than begging for money or candy, they were asking for pens.  It broke this teacher’s heart when our van full of 7 Americans could only scrounge up two or three pens from our backpacks.  I wish I would have known of this need before traveling! 

Houses were also quite a bit different outside of the city.
   

We didn’t see any fences; rather people were always out with livestock, including some very young kids. 

We began our descent from around 10,000 feet (thanks GPS!) to see more farmland, lots of monkeys, and our destination:  the Nile.

We got to walk over an old bridge and saw lots of monkeys down by the water.  I’m not sure if they were washing, playing, or drinking, but it was neat to see “wild life”.  Our Ethiopian friends were about as impressed as Americans would be in a park full of squirrels.   

Just looking at these pictures makes me miss the cool weather, the beautiful scenery, and most of all our sweet boys.

In an adoption related update, all our boys’ paperwork will be submitted to the Embassy tomorrow (August 11^th), so I’m going to guess that we will be given our travel dates in a week(ish)!

Falling in Love with Ethiopia

After a good night sleep we headed up to the fifth floor for breakfast.  They had this great breakfast buffet with fresh omelets and a wonderful balcony with an amazing view.  We even saw some wild green parrots on the balcony!

We then met up with two other families to take a trip to the north. This was our first foray into the city during the day and we began to get to know Ethiopia!  We saw fruit stands, shops everywhere, crazy construction, livestock in the road, congested traffic, and people, people, people!   

This post was meant to be about our trip to the north, but there were so many sights just leaving the city, that I couldn’t resist!