Ethiopia Trip Day Four (Tuesday)

This morning we woke up at 7 and got ready to go do some shopping. The plan was to drop the kids off at the orphanage as the government urges families of adoptive children to not take them out in public while in Ethiopia. I think this is mostly due to the potential of some bad press.


We dropped off Tibebu and took the ride through the city to a market where we power shopped for an hour and a half, trying to find whatever we could that we thought might be important to him later in life. The market was very similar to markets I had been to in other countries with many similar items.







We did our shopping then ate at an Italian restaurant. This was clearly a very fancy upscale restaurant for Addis Ababa.

By this point we had gotten to know our travel group pretty well so it was fun to have a day out without the kids to get to know eachother better and swap stories. Came to find out, day three was a hard day for most of us. Transition is hard. Taking care of a baby is hard. Transitioning and taking care of a baby in a foreign country is really hard. All of us ladies had had breakdowns on day three and four. Whether it is the lack of sleep or the strange food or the lack of comforts, these days in Ethiopia have been difficult.

This morning, I sat on the bed crying to John that I didn’t feel well and Tibebu was snotting, couphing, drooling, ect. John looked at me, coughing, drooling, snotting and said, “Well what do you think he thinks of you?” I am having a hard time distinquishing between being in this foreign place as being hard or adopting a child as being hard. It is probably a little bit of both. So many emotions are swirling around in my head and this is the day they decided to come tumbling out. It was a good day for a break from the kids. We are so thankful to be with a group of parents going through the same things as we are.

We got back to Hannah’s Hope to pick up Tibebu and found him freshly bathed, eating his bottle and falling asleep for his nap. He is very loved among the special mothers and their faces just light up when we come into the room with him. He had no problem coming back with us and seemed happy to see his strange white parents again.

We got back to the hotel, played a bit then John and Tibebu went to bed and I met some of the other ladies in our group for drinks and French fries (the only thing on the menu that I could stomach at this point). It was great to hear more about their lives and their children.

I went to bed feeling like a cold was coming on and woke up with a high temperature.