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)!