Day Five - Embassy appt

I should go back and make a couple more notes about day four, gotcha day.  Michelle, my friend who had been snowed in at Atlanta and Mike and Paula, the fourth family in our group, arrived somewhere around 10:30 a.m.  They were on the same flight but didn't know it until they arrived in Addis!  We were told the kiddos would be there at 10, and in this case, the go with the flow was good.  The arrived like this:

And Michelle and her mom:

Here Michelle gets off a plane after traveling what seems like two days and she looks fresh as a daisy and has makeup on!!  Geesh, I didn't even BRING makeup!  Good thing they got there when they did as they were not there probably more than 30-45 minutes when they brought the kiddos! 

Ok, so back to Embassy day.  We were all being picked up at 8:00 a.m. in hopes to get to the Embassy early and get through the process of getting Little J's visa approved.  The Embassy gives certain agencies "appointments" on a certain day of the week so there were many more families than just our four.  Thankfully we did seem to arrive first but there were many Ethiopians there also, there was hardly an empty chair.  It was a little uncomfortable, not knowing what they thought.  We had been told by our agency that other than these necessary appointments we should not go out in public with our kiddos as many Ethiopians are not happy about their kiddos leaving the country, perhaps never to return, like their future is leaving.  Our wait was not too long at all, I would say we were all done within a couple hours of arriving.  When it was our turn, we had to answer a few questions and then that was it. 

After we had Little J in our possession on Tuesday, we didn't leave the guest house much other than to go out and get bottled water or to get a coffee or lunch.  The guest house was down a dirt alley (although the busiest ally I've ever seen!) and was right off a major road.  There was a coffee place right on the corner named Kaldi's which was just like a Starbucks.  We got lunch there a few times and we also got lunch from a place called Zola's which had Italian (pretty good) and traditional Ethiopian food.  Michelle, Paula and I had walked there one day to get lunch, really not more than 1/4 mile and were just going to wait for it.  They insisted they would deliver it to the Guest House.  What's more, the bring some regular dishes and silverware, not plastic, so they even come back to get this stuff.  The other funny thing about our meals, if several of us went together to get something to bring back, try as hard as we did, they would always combine the check into one!  Our communication skills I guess were a little lacking!

This day was pretty low key, so we spent time outside in the courtyard or in the lobby (the doors to the courtyard are always open).  We had great weather the entire time we were there.  I was a little worried about it being hot, most of you know how much I love the heat - NOT - so thinking of warm, humid weather was ugh, especially because I brought 3/4 length sleeves shirts as it was respectful to keep my elbows covered as a women and shorts were not acceptable for either gender.  We were there at a really great time, not too hot, not too humid, all God's timing I am MOST sure!

You won't want to miss tomorrow, we went out to dinner at a special restaurant and Mike, Paula and Matt were all a part of the wonderful entertainment - little did they know ahead of time!  Sadly, I never got the video uploaded so a year later, they have never seen there efforts.  I hope I can get it to upload, I am a total rookie at this thing but it is DEFINITELY worth seeing!