Nate ~ It was kind of funny actually. The night before, we had prepared ourselves to be up until crazy hours of the night, but then we were basically done by about 8 PM. Then, then the next morning we were ready with enough time that we were nervous that too much was being forgotten. In the end, we never felt like anything major was left at home so that was a blessing.
We checked our four bags in at the counter, but questioned the lady when the bags were tagged to go to Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. Our travel agent had said that the bags would be check through to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. When I asked, the lady said that because we were in D.C. for 24 hours, the bags would not be held for us and we would need to pick them up. That worried me. How were we supposed to pick up our four checked bags, along with our total of four carry-on bags and haul all of them on a shuttle bus to the hotel where we would be staying in D.C.??? In my head I said, "Simple, we won't." I had no idea what we would do, but I knew that taking the luggage and totes to the hotel was not much of an option to me.
The first two flights went as scheduled. We flew from Des Moines to Chicago, then from Chicago to Washington D.C.
When we arrived in D.C., Nathan called our travel agent, Kari, and told her the issue we had with our bags. She was awesome!!!! To make a long story short, she told us to go to the Ethiopian Airlines baggage office, they sent us to a different baggage office, and a nice lady told us she would keep our bags for us and lock them in her office overnight. What a blessing!!!!!! Truly, this was a blessing but it also made me nervous. She didn't take our names down nothing. Just a promise that in the morning we would see her and she would recognize us. To say the least, my trust meter wasn't very high.
Nathan called our hotel to ask about the shuttle van, we waited for just over a half hour for the shuttle to arrive, rode to the hotel, waited until our room was ready, walked to a convenience store to get some lunch (from Des Moines to the hotel - it was just after lunchtime), were lazy for the afternoon, ordered in a pizza, went to bed early, slept well, and got up early to eat breakfast at the hotel and head to the airport. As we post here now and in the following posts about our trip you are going to start seeing a trend towards pizza. In my defense, in Dulles, I had no idea that I would be so nervous and apprehensive that not much Ethiopian food was going to sit well. (They spice their food very heavily.) Anyway, just a note: look for pizza references!
We weren't sure exactly how long it was going to take us to find the office where we had left our luggage, pick up our luggage, and check the luggage to Addis, so we wanted to have plenty of time. And we did!!!! Crazy enough, she DID recognize us and gave us our luggage without any problems. Trust renewed and my stress levels decreased just a little bit.
It didn't take us long at all to get our luggage picked up and checked in at Ethiopian Air, and then we headed to our gate. We were there PLENTY early and were able to sit and wait. And stand up and wait. And use the restroom and wait. Lots of waiting!!!!! (and waiting and waiting and waiting....I'm not impatient about things as long as I don't have to wait!)
It was finally time to board the plane and we walked on, hoping that it would be easy to switch seats with someone so that we could sit together for the 13 1/2 hour flight. That worked out fine and we got as comfortable as we could for the long flight.
Neither Nathan or I were able to sleep (I rested a little bit), although we tried, and jumping seven hours ahead of D.C. time (eight hours ahead of Iowa time) really messed with our body clock. We arrived in Addis around 8 a.m. local time (midnight on our bodies), walked off the plane, stood in line to get our visas, went through immigration (I couldn't find the address of the guesthouse where we would be staying and I felt very flustered as I scrambled through my backpack trying to find it; needless to say, I will have that address in my pocket when we go back!!!!!), waited for our luggage to arrive on the carousel, exchanged USD for Ethiopian Birr, went through customs (which ended up being SUPER easy for us, praise the Lord!!!!) and looked for someone holding a sign that would tell us they were there to pick us up. (Love you, Yonas...but we didn't see you!)
As we were on the airplane in D.C. and getting ready to leave, I noticed a family get on and told Nathan that I "thought" I knew who they were. I had been e-mailing with someone from our adoption agency who had the same court date as us, and I thought that it might be them :-). Because I wasn't confident, and because I am often too "shy", I didn't say anything. But when we got off the plane and loaded onto the shuttle that took us from the plane to the airport in Addis, I made eye contact with her and she said "Are you Pam???" Silly me. We could have talked on the plane if I had just said something!!!!!
So, once we had our luggage and went through customs in Addis, we waited for the Haskins family to join us in waiting for our ride.
We had been told that sometimes the drivers are not allowed inside the airport, but then sometimes they are :-). If we didn't see anyone holding a sign that said "AWAA" we were to walk outside the airport, turn to our right, walk down a hill that would lead to the parking lot, and look for our driver there.
Our very white and out-of-place group drew lots of attention as we tried to find where we needed to go. A lady from an office that said "Tourism" asked us if we needed her to call someone for us :-).
Another long story made shorter ~ Nathan and our new friend, Dan Haskins, walked all around the parking lot looking for someone who was there for us. (By the way - The American-ness that was Dan and I was very clear here as we were CONSTANTLY asked if we needed a taxi. In fact, if someone heard us say no to someone else, they must have thought it was still an option because they would just ask us too.) Becky, their two children, and I stood around looking out of place. When Dan and Nathan came back, we decided that someone needed to go back to the airport and have the nice "tourism" lady call our agency. Dan headed towards the airport, and, just then, we saw an Ethiopian man coming our way with a sign that said AWAA :-). He had been there the entire time, but we had somehow missed him!!!!!! (Glad you found us, Yonas)
He introduced himself to us ~ Yonas. ("Hi, Yonas!!!!! We know you will be reading this!!!!!") Yonas became a very good friend during our six days in ET. He is AMAZING!!!!!!
And that is the end of our "Traveling to Ethiopia" adventure. It's on to "Day #1"
