Days 3 & 4 - Jan 22 &23

Ok, miracles do happen! I am going to at least get the next two days blogged. It won't be near as long as day 5 (gotcha day) for those of you anxiously waiting! (a.k.a. Mom)
Well, we got checked into our hotel, up to our room, and a few essentials unpacked, and off to bed for us! We were so tired and hoped to get up early and get the day started. We didn't want to deal with jet lag too much, so we forced ourselves to get up, get ready for the day (which I have to say, I did a pretty good job keeping the water in the tub when I took my shower sans shower curtain), and go down to breakfast on Friday morning. We slept each night with our windows open and it was great! Our room was a little warm most of the time but not terrible. So, we woke up to a beautiful morning. We had a room that faced the back of the hotel and had a great view of the city. We were able to watch people come and go, people working, it was great! Here is a couple views out the window.

After breakfast, we were a little tired and still needed to finish unpacking, so we went up to our room, unpacked and got settled. We had to go through our bags of donations because we had a few of our things mixed in, so we pulled out all the donations we brought and went through a bunch of the stuff. We took these little teddy bears that had letters for the kids, but we tried to spell Ethiopia with them for a picture, apparently we didn't bring any T's.

This is part of the clothing donations we were given by another AGCI family to take. We had fun going through it and seeing what all was there. This is for you Dave. There were a number of Seattle Mariners items in there. We were thinking of you as we found them!

After we were done getting organized, we decided to take a little nap. I woke up around noon and let Dan sleep another hour. Unfortunately, when I woke him up, he had my stomach bug. He ran to the bathroom and was throwing up and had diarrhea for the rest of Friday and Saturday. By Saturday afternoon he was starting to feel better, but still not great. So, we obviously did not get to go out and see the city and learn about the culture. Now we will just have to go back! :) We hung out in our room, ate snacks and read our books. We brought a number of travel games, which was a God thing, because we about pulled them out and left them at home. We spent hours playing Rummikub, Speed, Sequence, Solitaire, and other such games. It was not ideal, obviously, but it was a nice way to spend our last two days of just the two of us. Our TV in the room didn't work, so no, no TV either. Also, yes, there was Internet at the hotel, but no, it did not work in our room. Come to find out after some trial and error and a little investigation, the router for wireless on our hallway was right by the elevator in the center of the building. Therefore the Internet worked outside our room, but not in our room. The other halls we check out, the router was halfway down the hall, so all the rooms had Internet on those halls (we know so b/c other families in our group were also in the end rooms in their hallway). On Saturday afternoon, Dan was feeling ok, not great, but ok, so we went for a walk. We walked out the front door of the hotel and took a left. We headed up the road to a market area. We didn't take any pictures as it was really busy and we didn't want to offend anyone. It was fun to see all the people coming and going, the goats and cows. It was just amazing to see life in Ethiopia in action! We basically turned around and headed back to the hotel so Dan could take a nap. We went to bed Saturday night anxious and excited about the fact that the next day we would finally be meeting our son! Here are a few pictures from our walk. A view of the hotel from a distance and some scaffolding on a building we walked past.

So, that was our Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately not as exciting as we had hoped, but it was ok. We were finally in the same city as our son. There was nothing that was going to stop us from meeting him the next day. We were so anxious!

On another note, for those of your who made it this far, please pray for us! We are feeling very unsettled and are seeking God's guidance as to what our future holds. Please join us in prayer as we seek the Lord's will and guidance. Thank you in advance!

Also, keep checking, I have already started on the big 'gotcha day' post!