So it's been a while, but after being home for 5 days, I finally have the time to put info and pics from Africa on the blog. As long as Sophia stays asleep, that is. I will give a brief synopsis of what happened each day, and some pictures to go with that. We are thinking about making a photo album of all our photos for people to view on shutterfly.com or flikr.com. Anyway, here we go.

Wednesday, Aug. 27th:

Our flight leaves at 10:30 that morning. We stopped at the Mt. View H.S. library and printed out Sidota's profile. It was great to see photos of him that were current and hear about what type of personality he had. We had a long day and a half of flying, but looking back, that flight was a vacation compared to the one we had on the way back. Included is a pic from the plane of the coast of Sicily.

Thursday, Aug. 28th:

We arrive at the Adis Abeba, Ethiopia airport at about 11:30 p.m. local time. We're late because in Amsterdam there was a damaged part from the plane's accleration system that had to be replaced. We were just glad this 2 hour stint on the tarmac happened on the way there, not returning. As soon as we cleared customs, we ran into our guide for the week, Ato (meaning Mr.) Girma. He is a smiling, rounded man of about 5' 7-8", who will prove to have a lot of patience with slow people in our group, and a good sense of humor. Here is the view from our veranda.

And another from the opposite side of our suite. Because we are getting two kids, we get a room with 3 beds and its own bathroom and water heater. Another family down the hall is adopting triplets under 6 months old. Everyone else is adopting just one child--weenies.

Friday, Aug. 29th:

Our first item for the day is breakfast, accompanied with great coffee that is picked and roasted right in Etihopia, the home of coffee.

After that we get right down to business. We all are about to load onto a bus (which we will become all too familiar with) to head to the children's care center. We assume that Sid will be picked up from school (yeah, 3 yr-olds are in school) and brought to the center. On the schedule we read, it looks like we will be the last to see our kids. Just as we get on the bus, Ato Girma tells us we are getting in a nearby car to be taken to the school to pick up Sid ourselves. We are now very nervous and excited!

It is only about a 5 minute drive from the guest house to the school. As we get out of the car, you feel as if all the staff is looking at you, arriving to meet and eventually take one of the kids they've cared so much about. As we get into the class, there are about 20 toddlers sitting neatly in rows and columns coloring various letters from our alphabet. There is a camera crew from the adoption agency, so obviously we aren't a distraction. Sid is sitting in the front row (true genius). We go to other kids and view their work first, told not to rush right to him and spook him. After a few minutes, we go to where he is and help him color. They don't give you long and then you are expected to pick him up and take him away. To our amazement, he smiles when held, and wraps his arms around my neck. The nannies must have done a lot of work preparing the toddlers for these moments. He touched our hearts right away. Thanks to all of you who prayed about this exact moment. We would love to have been able to post images, but there are no cameras allowed in the children's care center or the school.

Sid left the school without incident, and rode excitedly in the car with us to go meet his sister. I truly can't explain all the feelings and emotions I felt as I got to hold my son for the first time, and listen to him point out dozens of things along the roadside that I was clueless about.

The meeting with Sophia goes a bit differently. She lives in a room with about 8-10 kids, cribs lining opposing walls of the room. She is in the first crib to the left as we enter. Three other families are already in the room with their kids, so she has already begun to sense impending doom. When handed to us, she cries for quite a while, then stops. Eventually she just sits there like a blob, insulating herself from the stress by shutting down. The visits on Friday through Tuesday all go this way. We understood it would happen, and expected worse, but it still wasn't fun to feel like we were hurting her feelings so much. Sid kept us going, letting us make him laugh repeatedly to keep our spirits up.

The rest of Friday is sort of a blur. I'm pretty sure we hung out at the guest house with the other families, everyone buzzing about the meetings with thier kids.

Saturday, Aug. 30th:

We get to spend more time that morning at the care center. Again, we play a lot with the lightning bolt we met the day before--Sidota. It was great to see as we played with him that he was in fact a 3 yr-old boy. Whether in Idaho or Adis, some things are funny, interesting, annoying and frustrating to all boys that age. When he laughs hard, the sounds come out so fast that we don't even think he can breath. And from a completely objective p.o.v., his smile, if somehow harnessed, could light a midsized metropolotin area. On the other hand, or face, is his "long face". I won't even bother to try and characterize this one with an exaggeration--just know it is really long. We saw it truly for the first time today when we went to leave. He clung to Korri's legs, then seemed to get angry at us for toying with him. Yeah, that didn't hurt. Again, after we leave, I don't remember much about the rest of the day, except all of us being sad because we knew we wouldn't get to see them again until Monday.

Sunday, Aug. 31st:

Today is a big one. We are going to travel about 3 and a half to 4 hours south to the city of Hosanna. We hope to meet with a member of the kids' family, espcially their father, Mathewos. We leave at about 6 a.m., after frantically making and packing many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and downing coffee. The coffe part proves to be a misguided venture, as we don't stop to go to the bathroom the entire trip. Glad they didn't offer us bran muffins:) The scenery is amazing. Drive through the mountain/foothills region, sinking into various valleys as we go. Every time we pass through a town, we are met by the people who live in the area surrounding it, who all tend to gather at the roadside. Picture the Boise Farmers' Market downtown on a busy day--then imagine a Highway 55 going through that--and throw in multiple herds of goats, sheep and oxen. The roads in Ethiopia are built for and shared by everyone at the same time. It seems people crosssing the street take it for granted the vehicles won't hit them, while the drivers just honk and take it for granted pedestrians will move.