Enkutatash (The Ethiopian New Year) is celebrated this weekend. It’s now 2001 in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia follows the Julian calendar which is 8 years behind our Gregorian calendar from January to September and 7 years behind from September 11 until January 8. The Julian calendar has 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month of 5 days (or 6 days in a leap year).

Enkutatash means “queen of jewels”. When the Queen of Sheba returned from visiting King Solomon in Jerusalem, the chiefs welcomed her back be replenishing her treasury with jewels. Today when Enkutatash is celebrated there is dancing and singing as the rainy season comes to an end and all of Ethiopia is green again.

People celebrate with feasts, dancing, exchanging New Year’s greetings, cards and bouquets of flowers.

I was on the porch sorting and organizing the goods for our rummage sale and Lexi was helping. She kept asking to keep things and I told her that we needed all this stuff to stay on the porch, it was going to help us bring our baby from Ethiopia home. Here’s how the rest of the conversation went:

Lexi: We bring the adopted baby home?

Me: Yep. We are going to bring the baby home. Do you want a new brother or sister to come to our house?

Lexi: Yeah.

Me: Do you want them to come to our house and stay forever?

Lexi: Yeah. The baby from Ethiopia come to our house.

Me: Okay. (at this point I was done and getting ready to go in the house. Lexi was staring intently at the front door). Are you coming with me?

Lexi: (still staring at the door) No. I waiting for the baby from Ethiopia.

(hmmm….how do explain a several month wait to a 2 year old?)

I know it sounds cheesy but a group of people adopting from Ethiopia got together and created a Secret Pals group. Basically, everyone gets a name and for the next 6 months or so, you send a small gift to your secret pal. I got my gift in the mail yesterday. And my secret pal rocks! They sent me a tote bag with my name stitched on it. Kinda fun getting a present when it’s not Christmas or your birthday.

We have 2 pieces of paper left to complete for our dossier. One is a reference letter from a friend and the other is a letter to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Ethiopia that Kevin and I have to write, explaining our intentions to adopt an Ethiopian child. After we have those 2 documents we get everything notarized, write a huge check and send it in. Honestly, we should be done in the next week. My goal is to have it sent off before Christmas vacation starts (in 9 days).

Oh and here’s a cool twist in our adoption journey. I recently found a friend from college on facebook who is wanting to adopt a boy, from Ethiopia. She and her husband have just started the process but it’s nice to know that I am already friends with someone who will have a family that looks like ours.

Ethiopia, like any other country, has several religions and holidays, but the majority celebrate Christian holidays. This is probably due to the age of the country. Ethiopia is said to be the Beginning of Civilization. Ethiopians claim the Ark of the Covenant is housed in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Many believe that Ethiopia was converted to Christianity when Phillip met the Ethiopian traveler (the traveler was an important official of the time) in the book of Acts. While others believe the overall conversion of the country happened later when a ruler was converted.

I’ve been looking into the customs and holidays of the country, trying to see which ones we could adopt into our family. For the most part, they celebrate many of the same holidays we do - Christmas, New Year’s, Easter - but the dates are slightly different because Ethiopia and most of the Western world are on different calendars. One of the holidays that they celebrate is Epiphany (which is when the Magi reached Jesus as a baby).

I think Epiphany is one of the holidays I would like to add to our family’s celebrations. Partially because it’s not a completely foreign holiday to me. It feels like a good way to bring the 2 cultures of our family together and celebrating a holiday that is already a part of our family’s beliefs.

I’ve started reading a book called “There is No Me Without You: One woman’s odyssey, to rescue her country’s children.” by Melissa Fay Greene. I’m only four chapters in but so far I am really liking this book. I tend to gravitate towards books in the “social justice” genre. Books that are written by journalists who live the life of the subject they are writing about such as “There are No Children Here“, “Ordinary Resurrections“, and “Among School Children“. This book is one of those.

The problem with reading those books is I usually read them and get frustrated, angry, sad, and fed-up with “The Man“. What ever the issue is in the book I want to be able to help. I end up slamming the book shut on the last page and start thinking, “how can I fix this?” and then get more frustrated because I can’t.

This book has lots of statistics in it that show the plight of Ethiopia and it’s people. And this while reading, I feel the sense of urgency that this is a country in need and for once, I am actually doing something to help.

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When we bring our child home it is mostly like that he or she will be over 6 months old and already have a name. So we now have 3 name questions. What to name the baby, how to name the baby, and do we change the baby’s name?

What to name the baby is giving us the same trouble as it did last time around - we can come up with girls’ names but we don’t necessarily agree and as far as boys’ names go, well, we just can’t come up with those (so let’s hope for a girl).

How to name the baby? Do we use an “American” name? Do we try and find an Ethiopian name we like? Do we Americanize an Ethiopian name? And that goes along with do we change the baby’s name. I don’t think we’ll change it completely (if we change it at all). We’re leaning towards keeping their given name as a middle name and giving them a new first name.

To be honest, out of all the choices we’ve had to make in the process so far this, for me, is one of the hardest decisions.

But if we do decide to change their name, do you have any suggestions?

Some people may know that we were considering several options for our adoption. Our list included a domestic adoption, Korea, China and Ethiopia. CHSFS allows people to dual list which means you can be on the waiting list for both an international adoption and a domestic adoption. You do all the work for both and wait and see which one happens first, then your name is pulled from the other list.

When we started our pre-adoption classes (PAC) we went in with the intent of dual listing for domestic and Ethiopia, but after 2 days we realized that the majority of the couples at PAC were there to adopt domestically and that putting our names is both books is an incredible amount of work. We decided to focus only on Ethiopia.

We chose to do an international adoption because we entered the adoption process with the thought of kids need a home, and we can offer that. We didn’t really feel that we need to adopt an newborn that people were lining up around the block to adopt. We’ve already had the newborn experience. I don’t feel like I am missing out on anything by adopting a toddler.

We chose Ethiopia because the country requirements lined up with what we needed. When you adopt internationally each country has different requirements. The age of the parents, whether or not you have biological children, the number of children you have, the age difference between you and your spouse, country fees, length of stay in the country, travel expences all play into choosing a country.

CHSFS helped start the care center where the children live in Addis Abba. This was a huge factor for me. They have a campus with a medical staff, a 2:1 ratio of nannies to kids under 1 and 3:1 for kids over 1. (In case you were wondering the requirements for Minnesota daycare is 4:1 for kids under 16 mo, 7:1 for kids 16 mo - 33 mo, and 10:1 for kids 33 mo - 5 yrs.) Ethiopia also only requires a 5 day stay in the country compared to some countries that require 2-6 weeks. We also have the opportunity to travel to the south of the country where many of the children were born. While traveling in that area there is a chance we could meet birth family (which is very rare in international adoption). The care center also makes a DVD for each child. What’s on the DVD varies but it documents their time at the center, it may have interviews from birth family/parents, scenes from where they used to live - whatever the care center can get.

And lastly, Ethiopia, in general, approves of adoption. Some countries don’t really talk about adoption, it’s sort of a taboo or an embarassment but people have been telling us “You don’t adopt an Ethiopian, Ethiopia adopts you.” And that’s very reassuring.