Ethiopia Part III

Day 6- Embassy Day

Embassy day is the day that the U.S. government recognizes your adoption. You dress nicely, wait in a very sad looking waiting room, just to talk to a guy thru a glass window. I was expecting the US Embassy building to look a whole lot nicer than it did. I would show you pictures...but there were no cameras allowed. This was also the first time Hannah had to go into time out. She sat in a corner of the waiting area with me for a couple minutes, shed a few tears, and returned to playing with her friends. The whole Embassy appointment was a lot more uneventful than we originally thought.

Later that day, Hannah found herself in her second time out. This time Daddy put her in it. She was not happy. She proceeded to tantrum for an hour and a half while Kurt held her on his lap. Micah and I played in the room while Hannah screamed. Eventually she gave in and told Kurt she would listen to Daddy. I think everyone within ear shot thought we were torturing her. :) So on this momentous day no pictures, except for Hannah screaming while on Kurt's lap.

Day 7

We went on a sight seeing trip with the other two families who were picking up there kids. We traveled up to Entoto Mountain on a "minibus." The view of Addis Ababa from the mountain was breathtaking. We found out that many of the Ethiopian olympic runners come from the village on top of the mountain. They train by running up and down the windy road. I found the donkeys traveling down the mountain with wood and eucalyptus on their backs to be hilarious. They just followed the road and would trot down with all these branches bouncing on their backs. The heart wrenching part was seeing women with just as large of loads walking up and down the mountain, knowing the very little amount of money they would be paid for their effort.

We toured a beautiful church, said to be where the Arc of the Convenant had been hidden hundreds of years earlier. We also visited a church carved out of rock in the side of hill, the Arc was hidden there prior to moving into the other church they built to house it. Then we traveled down the road to visit the weavers. Men and women work on the weaving machines making different linens to be sold. It takes them five days to make one tablecloth.

This evening we went to dinner with all the families and some of the CWA staff to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant. Micah and Hannah were the only ones not wearing their traditional clothes we had bought them while at the weaver's stores :( Hannah ate a TON of food. I could not even beleive everything she shoved into her mouth. In ethiopia it is custom to feed the people you love. Since you eat with your hands, you are being fed from the other persons hand right to your mouth. So here is Hannah with her little fist over flowing with squishy spicy ethiopian food holding it up to me to eat. Of course you have to eat it all, otherwise it would hurt her feelings. I was sweating...the food was SO SPICY. My stomach was quite upset after that meal. We just let Hannah and Micah eat as much as they wanted because we knew it was the last time they would have Ethiopian food while in Ethiopia. Unfortunately both of the kids were VERY SICK the next day. We learned that we need to put some limits in place with eating otherwise they would make themselves sick.