Hey everybody, we’re doing great in Ethiopia. Text messaging isn’t working, Internet is sketchy, power was out all day. So sending any updates has been hard. Sorry.
But despite the bewilderment of international travel, we had an awesome day meeting Milo. He’s so tiny and adorable. We had several hours with him today, he mostly watches everybody with his big, big eyes.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
Today is our first full day in Ethiopia. We’ll have an orientation briefing, cover miscellaneous stuff, meet with case workers and other folks, and then the big moment:
We’ll get to meet Milo for the first time.
It will be a brief visit, but our first chance to see him in the flesh.
With the wonders of transatlantic flight and time changes (Ethiopia is about 9 hours ahead), we’ll end up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the early evening (after a brief fuel-stop in Rome).
After making it through customs we’ll head to the guesthouse where we’ll be staying. Then I think we crash.
We’re leaving for the airport at 10:00 a.m. We’ll hopefully have a tear-free goodbye with Lexi (yeah, right) and then head to the airport for much waiting and metal-detection.
Lexi will be spending the ten days while we’re gone with her grandma, hopefully having a blast and being spoiled and not dwelling too much on the fact that we’re gone. We’re not sure how this is going to go, but we have lots of friends lined up to step in and help out if need be.
This afternoon we’ll fly to Washington, D.C., for about a three-hour layover, then depart for Ethiopia in the evening.
I’ve written blog posts like this for each day of our journey, explaining what the itinerary says we’ll be doing (Abby wrote up an overview of the whole trip). You can also follow along with what actually happen on Twitter, as I hope to post a handful of updates per day (assuming local technology cooperates). Depending on how much computer access we get, we may try a few blog posts from Ethiopia as well.
Thanks for following along!
In less than 24 hours we’ll be on a plane for Ethiopia to bring home our son. It’s been such a long wait. And it’s almost here.
As the hours tick down, I love how all the extra stuff falls away and doesn’t matter anymore. My last day has been flittered away with random tasks here and there, none of which really matter. It doesn’t really matter if I heard the conference call my wife already heard a week ago. It doesn’t really matter if I write that blog entry today or not. It doesn’t really matter if I clean off my desk or not.
As I’ve told about everyone I can, you can follow along at our adoption site. My latest blog posts (if you come here you already know where to find them) will be there—many are just pre-programmed updates of what we’ll be doing each day— as well as my on-the-ground Twitter updates (assuming it all works).
I’m awash in emotion right now. I’m so excited to meet Milo and hold him in my arms. I’m eager to see his homeland and the country where he was born. I’m worried about Lexi and how she’ll do without us for 10 days (and how Grandma will cope with 10 days of Lexi). I’m expecting to be broken as the reality of this 19-month journey finally comes together.
Some things in life just wash over you, flooding you with grace and love and mercy and hope. That’s already happened so many times in this journey, but now we’ll be diving into it. Can’t wait.
OK, never mind yesterday’s post. Looks like I will get to be a techno-geek while we’re in Ethiopia picking up our son. At least a little bit.
A friend has stepped forward and offered to pay for my Twittering. They shelled out for four updates a day for our 10 day trip (each international text message is 50 cents), and then some. How cool is that?
So when I’m thousands of miles away you can know almost immediately when my son spits up on me for the first time. Seriously though, we’ve had so many friends supporting us in so many ways, it will be fun to share this experience with you as it happens, a little bit at a time. Of course that assumes I can work the 9-button keypad fast enough to send four messages a day (I’ve used my cell phone exactly one other time to send Twitter updates).
I didn’t ask anyone to do this, I wasn’t expecting it and I’m pretty humbled.
Follow me on Twitter for the whole Ethiopia experience.
We’re furiously trying to get ready for our trip to Ethiopia next week. While I’m quite the tech-addict in my day-to-day life, I’m not a very good techie when I travel. I didn’t get a cell phone until 2006 and while I bring my laptop when I travel, I use it primarily for watching movies on the plane.
For our trip to Ethiopia I think I’ll be even less of a techie. Our laptop has no battery life left, so it’s useless on the plane (plus I’m not sure 3 hours of movie for 18 hours of flying justifies the extra baggage). My iPod battery is also toast, so it’s useless (though I think Abby’s may be good). On the plus side, we are delivering a laptop to the care center, so we might be able to use it en route. Which might work out really nice. Something tells me we won’t have time to watch movies on the flight home.
Two weeks from today we’ll be heading to the airport. We’ll spend a few hours on the ground in Washington, D.C. (never been there before), and then fly across the Atlantic (never done that before). We’ll spend maybe 45 minutes on the ground in Rome (my first contact with Europe) and then fly off to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (yeah, never been there either).
If you noticed the trend, you could probably guess my international travel experience begins and ends with Canada. So this is going to be new and different. Plus that whole thing where I get to meet my son. It’s hard to put into words exactly what we’re feeling right now.
We’re excited. We’re stressed. We’re giddy. We’re tired. We’re overjoyed. We’re busy.
We’ve got a lot to do. Our to do list keeps getting longer, but we’re hacking away at it. It’s amazing how the things of everyday life begin to fall away as you realize what’s really important. Some of my side projects are being neglected right now. Other distractions I just don’t have the time for. I do still manage to find time for certain stress-reducing diversions (preserving sanity is a priority). There’s somehow time for tickling, laughing or just sitting with Lexi. What needs to happen does, and the rest falls away.
We got our travel dates today. On March 18 we’ll be leaving for Ethiopia and Milo will be home on March 27.
We’re kind of giddy.
Today has been a blur of airline tickets, travel documents and to do lists. Kind of of overwhelming, but very exciting at the same time.
It’s finally happening.
Our adoption case cleared court today and Milo is officially our son.
Woot, woot!
We’re obviously ecstatic. You can check out all the pictures of Milo over at Flickr. Many thanks to everyone who prayed that we’d make it through court OK.
From here they’re telling us it will be roughly 6-8 weeks until we can travel to Ethiopia and bring Milo home. Before today it was 5-6 weeks after we cleared court. I don’t know what changed that time frame, but I’m trying not to be bitter about it (It’s hard to be bitter on a day like today when we get the news, but I’m also tired of time frames always getting longer. I want to bring my boy home.)
I don’t know what else to say. We’ve been in this process since August 2007 (nearly 19 months now) and sometimes it feels like a labor that won’t end. But we’re getting close. So painfully close.
I wish adoption were easier. But I keep telling myself it has to be this hard and slow and expensive to make absolutely sure everything is in Milo’s best interest. And that’s worth it.
Update: OK, I’m still trying to tell myself that. But waiting sucks. This story of a kid crying for her adopted siblings made me bawl. It’s part joy, part longing, part aching—and part anger for the circumstances that make adoption necessary and the red tape so profuse. My head understands all that, but my heart doesn’t care.
Another Update: OK, the shifting travel times were apparently just a mistake. Forget 6-8 weeks, we should be able to travel in 4-6, which means late March or early April.