All of Us Online: We Made It!!!!!

I was starting to wonder if we would ever make it to Ethiopia! Our crazy itinerary got even crazier than we had anticipated. After mechanical problems on our plane from Atlanta (which would delay the flight about 4 hours) we were booked onto another flight directly to Amsterdam so that we could make our connection. However, when we arrived in Amsterdam there was a mix-up and they had no gate for us to pull up to. We were on the plane for about 45 minutes waiting for the ground crew to get stairs out to the plane and bring buses to drive us back to the terminal. During this 45 minutes, our flight to Ethiopia took off - without us! Remarkably, I was much calmer about this than Tony. I think it's because I was so tired and not operating at full capacity.

Once we got off the plane and into the airport, we waited in the longest line EVER to try and get another flight to Ethiopia. The airline representative was trying to blame us by saying that our connecting flight had been waiting for us and they had been making announcements throughout the airport. That's great and all, but we weren't in the airport - we were sitting on the tarmac WAITING FOR STAIRS!!! Once they agreed that it was their fault (sorta), they nicely offered to get us on another flight in 3 days. I really could have used a valium or a drink or both at this point. Instead, I just stood back and let Tony handle it. In the end, they put us on a flight to Frankfurt, Germany later that evening and then on to Ethiopia from there.

We were supposed to have arrived in Ethiopia on Saturday night but ended up arriving on Sunday morning about 8:00 a.m. I was so worried we were going to miss the meeting with our group to head to the orphange (which I thought was at 10:30 a.m.), and I was starting to panic. It seemed to take forever to get through immigration and customs, but we finally made it. THEN ... we waited and waited and waited in baggage claim for our luggage, but it never arrived. OH COME ON!!!! We had to fill out some paperwork for our lost luggage (which took forever) before we could leave the airport. Finally at about 11:00 we met up with our driver and were on our way to the hotel. I was so relieved to find out that our meeting with the group was actually scheduled for 1:30, so we would have time to shower and change. Oh wait ... no luggage, no change of clothes ... so we would have time to shower and put our dirty clothes back on. As crazy as it sounds, I was thrilled about the shower and didn't really care about the clothes. We were finally in Ethiopia and would be meeting our daughter in a few hours - It Was All Good ....

Until we got to the hotel and had a problem with the sink in our bathroom. Everytime you turned the water on, the water would flow right out of the pipes and onto the floor. I discovered this while brushing my teeth right after we got there. The maintenance man came right away to fix it, but then he stayed and stayed and stayed. I was aching to take a shower since I felt so disgusting - remember that we left Spokane on Thursday and it was now Sunday. I kept whispering to Tony that he needed to go tell the guy to leave or I was going to get in the shower with him in the bathroom - I was THAT desperate for a shower. Finally he left at about 12:30 and I jumped into the shower. I turned it on with great anticipation but there was NO WATER. I know that you think I am making this stuff up, but all of this really happened. Apparently this happens on a somewhat regular basis. We were told to just keeping trying the water every 5 minutes or so - It will come back soon. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So there I was standing in the shower with no water. I turned the faucet on full blast so that I would know when the water came back on and decided to take a "bath" with a bottle of water and a bar of soap. I had really wanted to wash my hair, but whatever. At this point I was just happy to take what I could get. I needed to hurry because the meeting was in less than an hour. About half-way through my "bath" the water came back on. The hot water in the hotel in scaulding - literally, like boiling hot - and when the water came on I was standing right under the scauling hot water. I defintely got clean since I think it burned off my top layer of skin.

In the end, I was able to take a quick shower and wash my hair - Ahhhh, I felt human again. One of the ladies in our travel group voted us the "freshest looking couple with no luggage". I think this was a compliment, but I'm not sure. We were able to join our group on time for the paperwork meeting and then it was off to Hannah's Hope to meet our kids.