Ethiopia so far!

It’s good to be back! I love how comfortable it feels to be here. I feel right at home as we have our friend and driver, Alazar, come to pick us up at the airport and it takes away any worries I have away from the start. We’ve been here 4 days and this is the first time I’ve gotten some down time when we haven’t been on the road or recovering from jet lag. Although our schedule is nonstop now, it started out slow (at least for me). We arrived in Ethiopia at 8:30 am, which was upsetting to me b/c I was hoping for it to be the evening so I could SLEEP! I had gotten no more then 2 hours of sleep including the night before and the plane ride… so I was VERY tired. But I was determined to not miss a day of fun. When we got to the Grace Guest House I laid down for a nap with every intention of waking up for the drive out to Nazaret on the first day. But I was not an easy person to wake up and I was so enjoying my ZzZz’s that I decided to take the first day off to rest. And good thing I did b/c I slept so deeply that next thing I knew my mom had returned 7 hours later and I had not even woken up for a second… just in time for dinner :P. I was a little upset about missing the trip b/c I had never been out there, but I may get a second chance on Thursday. I’ll have to decide between going out to Wolita again to help my mom in some of the orphanages in the southern region, or go to Nazaret instead to take some kids back to the orphanage and bring others’ back

to our transition house. Both would be wonderful, but it will probably come down to which my mom would need more help with.

But after my “day off” it has been pretty busy. The second day Alazar drove us out to Woliso to visit both of our orphanages out there. It’s the rainy season right now, so it’s quite cold every day, and EVERYTHING is just soaked everywhere we go. The road’s become very muddy especially when we get pretty far out of Addis Ababa, and makes for some very troublesome experiences. Sure, the car get’s stuck a lot, and sometimes we have to take longer detours taking twice as long as we wanted… but the biggest problem is that it’s impossible to take pictures!! How am I supposed to properly document our trip when the windows are always covered in raindrops! Even when I would roll down the window to sacrifice my personal warmth for a scenic picture, the pics do not turn out b/c of all of the mist in the air blocking the beautiful mountains that were supposed to help capture the moment… Good thing I’ve got a good couple thousand pictures from my last 3 trips! The Amanuel orphan center was crowded with 52 kids and was quite overwhelming. It was unbearably sad to see all of the big kids that had long lost hope of ever finding a family. The kids that were all smiles last time we came were now teenagers that looked as us with a gimmer of hope but knowing why we weren't taking their pictures this trip. We videoed the few kids that we needed to, and met a little baby who had not been named yet, so we decided to use a family of ours that has been in our family for a few generations J

The second orphanage, Andenet, was harder to get to, and I was afraid we were never going to get unstuck from the mud at one point, but it was well worth it. There was only about 9 kids there so we really got to know them and play with them. The kids had the cutest giggles and loved the little black baby dolls we bought at Ikea for each of the orphanages. They would just burst out laughing when I would treat the doll like a real baby and give it a bottle when it would “cry”. They were adorable, and I always hate leaving the orphanages when we don’t get to spend much time there.

I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time at the transition house and I LOVED seeing the nannies again. And I was excited to see that they were as excited to see me as I was to see them. Most of them are my age and always a lot of fun. They were as happy and playful as ever and love on those kids 24/7. I brought my computer and they would squeal as they saw pictures of kids that they used to have and couldn’t believe how big they’d gotten. They would even tear up seeing how happy and healthy they were doing. They miss those kids so much and truly love each and every one.

Tuesday, the 3^rd day was my first trip to Debre Birhan and I was thrilled that the rain was being semi-cooperative so I could take pictures of the area. The huts from the Amhara region are quite different from any other region, and are probably my favorite. They look like little gingerbread houses and the cutest things when they are grouped together which each other like little communities. Thanks to a small miscommunication with our driver, Alazar, we ended up spending quite a bit longer there then we expected but I didn’t mind so much J We enjoyed practicing our barely existent Amharic with the nannies. A lot of the kids had gotten puzzles, games, and coloring books from their new families and we had fun helping them with their workbooks and playing with the ever-popular bubbles with them.

I’m off to the transition house now to paint fingernails for the girls I promised pretty flowered nails for! I hope to post more pictures next time, thanks so much for your prayers and support!

Julie

Entire rice fields are flooded for the next couple months during the rainy season

One of the few good ones I got as the rain would allow

And this is my personal favorite because I imagined this must be what the Good Samaritan and his donkey must've looked like when he came across the Jew. It truly feels like Bible times here and this story became more clear to me this trip. The sides of the road are always busy with people headed into towns and must be very exhausted from their long walks and with precious little time.