In Our Arms!

We made it to Addis safe and sound; there is really nothing to say about the peculiar time vortex of international travel that seems to simultaneously fly by and last forever. My theory is that it converts your energy into distance so that you are left drained on the other end.

Unfortunately, our luggage is in parts unkown. When we arrived at the Bole airport in Addis Ababa we sailed through customs only to stand staring at the baggage return carousel for an hour. We have been assured that our luggage will come in on the same flight this evening, arriving in Addis at about 9:30 Wednesday evening. We shall see.

In better news, all of our adoption related activities have gone well today. We met Sintaheyu (sin-TIE-you) this morning around 8:00. While he didn't come running to us as some other families have experienced, he did insist that Larisa pull up a chair at the table where he was eating breakfast. After breakfast we headed out for our appointment with the US Embassy. The "appointment" involves putting your name in a queue with a couple hundred other people and waiting for your name to be called. Once we were called, the discussion lasted about 3 minutes, and I was torn between relief and disbelief at the amount of resources necessary to facilitate that 3 minute meeting.

We are now back at the hotel and having lunched and napped, Sintayehu is ready to be entertained (keep in mind all his toys are somewhere in the air over the Mediterranean Sea). Currently he is pretending that our rolling carry-on bag is a mekina (car), and he and Larisa are making seal and sheep sounds at each other... two... more...days...