I awoke this morning to the sounds of kids playing in the courtyard below. After a quick, freezing cold shower, I got ready for the day. Adrian did NOT want to get up...that's what happens if you watch 15 straight hours of movies on the plane and don't try to get some sleep as your mother suggests! He was also having some asthma issues because of the altitude, so we gave him his medicine for the first time in almost a year. Glad we brought it with us!
Shana headed outside right away and started handing out some of the beanie babies we had brought. (Thanks, Beth!) The kids were thrilled! One little boy in particular would not let his beanie baby out of his grasp all day. Whether he was eating a meal or playing basketball (with some of the new equipment our donors had purchased), his new toy was tightly clasped in his other hand.
(the hearts are to protect the identity of these children):
We met the W family, who is here for court, and then the L family arrived. It was so good to see Brian, Ginny and Stone again, and we met the rest of their kiddos as well. It was also wonderful to see all of the special mothers, and they asked all about the twins and how they're doing. I showed them some photos of Jalen and Jordan, and they were thrilled! Alem cooked us an awesome breakfast, and then we played with the kids until Danny drove us to meet Allen and Susan Stoller at 11:00. Allen and Susan work with Loving Shepherd Ministries, just outside of the red light district here in Addis. They run a counseling and resource clinic and work to rescue women and children from the sex trade and poverty.
Allen and Susan first took us to the market where we purchased some items to take home: Ethiopian soccer jerseys, a scarf, some traditional clothing, some jewelry for Shana, an Amharic/English New Testament, an Ethiopian coffee pot, etc.
Some sights on the street to and from the market:
The scaffolding in ET always makes me so nervous:
It amazes me that there are rows and rows of tin shacks, and each one has a satellite dish on the roof:
This building freaked me out a bit, too:
We went to Island Breeze for lunch, where I ordered a calzone. It was very good, but HUGE! I could only eat half of it.
Allen and Susan, our hosts for the day:
After lunch, we went to the Hilton hotel to exchange our money into birr and to relax with double macchiatos. Yum! Adrian was so tired that he fell asleep while we were visiting.
The Hilton:
This car was on sale at the Hilton for 419,999.00 birr.
Afterward, we took a tour of LSM's facilities. We saw the room where the women are taught how to sew purses out of plastic bags that they find in the streets - Shana bought one of these bags when we went to the LSM Ethiopia night in Bluffton, Indiana at the end of April. We then toured the clinic, as well. Adrian even got to pretend to be a doctor!
These plastic bags.....
.....become these beautiful purses!
The doc will see you now.....
On the way back to Hannah's Hope, we drove past the Sheraton complex (a palace here! Apparently Qaddafi used to stay here for $5000-$7000 a night.) and the African Union complex. And it once again amazed me to see all of the people and animals on the street amongst all of the vehicles trying to get through. The driving here is crazy!
Back at HH, we loaded the G family's luggage into the Stoller's van. The G family recently moved to Ethiopia to be full-time missionaries, and we brought some of their luggage over for them. The Stollers are going to see that the G's get it when they come back to Addis in a few weeks for language lessons. We then played with the kids (there are so many wonderful kiddos here! I just love spending time with them!) and showed the special mothers the photo books of Jalen, Jordan, and Sintayehu that we had brought. They were thrilled and pored over them!
The swing-set area where we spent so much time with our boys 2 years ago:
One of the older girls that is here taught us some more of the "Ta-ta Gambella! Looti looti Gambella!" song that our boys used to sing constantly when they first came home. She told us that it is a game, and taught Shana how to play it. I love when I find out a few more bits and pieces of my boys' past!
This evening, we tried to Skype with the kids back home, but we couldn't get it to work. The internet is so unreliable here. I feel bad that we didn't get to talk to them today, and it doesn't look like we'll be able to all week. I hope the twins will do ok.....they've never been away from us for more than 2 days since we brought them home.
We also repacked our luggage before we went to bed. Tomorrow we head to Gambella!!! Adrian has thrown up a couple of times today because the altitude affects his asthma and makes his throat close up.....hopefully we'll all get a good night's sleep!
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