Traveling tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning we leave our house before the crack of dawn to go meet our daughter! The airlines now say that you need to check in 3 hours before international flights. Everyone says, "don't worry, you can be there 90 minutes early and it will be fine!" But, we're worry warts and we have three legs to our trip, each with a plane change. I'd rather sit around for a while, instead of trying to run down the concourse to reach the plane in time. So, that means that unfortunately we'll have to leave our house at 4:30am to get to the airport 3 hours ahead of our 8am flight. Ugh.

We've been completely nervous the last few days. I can't sleep and I keep waking up around 4:30-5am. Yesterday I made sure that we have all the supplies packed, and at least a few clothes for us. We're bringing one large suitcases and two small suitcases, as well as maybe a large suitcase of donations for WACAP if they have a bag ready to go. We could fit everything for Ken and I into one of the small rolling suitcases. The large suitcase and small suitcase are filled with everything for Netsanet that we need or might need, including diapers, formula, variety of clothing sizes, few small toys, baby shampoo, diaper wipes, baby cold medication, and a whole variety of prescriptions in case she has any number of ailments. It's shocking how much stuff one small body could require! We'll be able to leave whatever we don't use with the orphanage, and she'll use up diapers and formula while we're there. So, we'll be traveling lighter on the way home, assuming we don't buy a ton of souvenirs (I doubt there will be much time for shopping!).

This weekend we met some neighbors who have also adopted children from Ethiopia. They came back recently, so were able to give us some great tips and just tell us about the experience in general. I think it's going to be interesting to see Addis, but I think we're going to have a hard time with all the poverty there. Ken and I have soft hearts (Ken's even worse than me), and that's going to be a tough one for us. This is our first trip to a developing nation...

I think it will also be fascinating to see the city and evidence of all the history there. Addis is a relatively young city for Ethiopia (est 1887) and yet there will still be so many interesting things to see. I hope we also have the opportunity to go outside of Addis for a day and see the countryside. Our first priority will obviously be meeting Netsanet and getting through the embassy process and all that, and then we'll see if there's time left to be tourists. If not, we'll know what we want to see on the next trip!

I've been trying to learn a little Amharic before we go and I think I have the hang of at least a few words. Once we get there, though, I'm sure I'll feel completely lost! We'll have a translator for at least some of the time, but I think it's still polite to know at least a little of the language (and a good ice-breaker, since you and others can laugh at your awful accent). It's an interesting language - semitic background, similar to Arabic or Aramaic. The sounds can be difficult, since there are a lot of syllables strung together in a way that's difficult for my mouth to say. Many of the words are also very long. I'm sure I'll mess up, but I'm willing to try!

Amharic is one of several languages spoken in Ethiopia (others include Tigrinya and Oromo...), but Amharic is the primary one spoken in Addis and the one spoken by officials. Since that is the area and group of folks we'll be interacting with the most, I chose that one to try out. Netsanet's name is also Amharic, apparently, so it may be the ethnic group of her birth family.

"Netsanet" means "freedom" in Amharic... we hope to find out if her birth mother named her, or someone else. We decided to keep her name because it will give her some connection to her time before she came to us, and freedom is a beautiful idea...