Ethiopia a.k.a. Abyssinia

Yes! We made it to Ethiopia! After a pretty rough airplane ride we are here in Africa. The plane ride was rough because it left at midnight Rome time and the girls were still on Idaho time and let's just say that Lily was not going to cooperate. Our seats were right behind the first class passengers  because they have a special little crib attachment that hooks onto the seperator between the two classes. I soon could tell that the flight attendants were determined to keep us quiet. After an hour or so of a crazy Lily bug they decided to offer to help, one Ethiopian attendant picked Lily right up and told me to sleep and before I knew it I was being awaken by the attendant trying to put a sleeping Lily into the crib. Thank heavens, however, not an hour later did all the lights flip back on and it was time for breakfast and then land. Oh well...

The Ethiopian airport is just what I figured dirty, scary and full of Ethiopians. We got shuffled off of the plane decided to follow the crowd to customs. We made it just in time to see a large line of people forming to check passports. We got in line and knew it was going to be a long wait, we waited and waited and then realized that the line was getting shorter behind us and longer in front of us. ??? Several Muslim girls cutting their way into the line, fortunately after awhile we all realized what was going on and a guy ahead of us started yelling at them to get back where they were supposed to be. Anyway, after at least a 30 minute wait it was our turn, we headed up to talk to the checker and she asked for our passports, visas and the info card we were supposed to fill out. All we had were our passports.... oops! Darn it! So we turned around and tried to figure out where we had missed all that because there were no signs telling us to fill out the cards and all there were for the Visas was a printer piece of paper that had written in blue ink pen "Visa". I wonder how we missed that??? Well we headed to the Visa door and 80 bucks and 10 minutes later we had our visas. We fortunately were able to get back ahead in line and not have to wait again so that was good. By that time our luggage had gone around the baggage claim circle probably about 10 times so that didn't take long. I then turned around and realized that we had to go through a baggage check on our way out for which there was a very long line. We dragged our luggage over and were about to settle in for the wait when an Ethiopian came and grabbed us and told us to just skip it. We asked if he were sure and he said, "For Forinjees, Yes!" Okay whatever! I had seen my mom from there frantically waving her hands behind a large mass of Ethiopians waiting for their loved ones. They had waited since 7:30 and it was now close to 10. Dad was sure that we had somehow not been on the plane we were supposed to be on for some crazy reason. So it was a sweet reunion, full of hugs and lots of kisses on the girls. We jumped in the little Toyota Sudan and drove through the dirtiest and craziest cities I've ever been to and surprisingly I loved every minute of it. Despite the filthe I could see the Ethiopians for who they were, a country run by a corrupt government.

The guest house that we all stayed in was very nice by Ethiopian standards but still had it's quirks, namely one really cold shower. Lily and Leah were just happy to have some room to run around in.

We slept most the rest of the day to recooperate from the flight and then visited the LDS church there in Addis and then went out to eat at a German restaurant that had really good food, grilled chicken and french fries with FRY SAUCE!! Interesting fact, Addis Ababa is the second largest city after Cairo in all of Africa.

The next day we decided to venture out again for lunch. We had very interesting hamburgers and Andrew had a very Ethiopian pizza. They only serve drinks in glass bottles or if you order a water it's bottled.

 This is Leah and Happy. Happy is the gate keeper for the guest house we were staying at. He certainly is a Happy guy, he went Gaga over the girls and would snatch them up whenever they would let him.

 While in Addis mom was determined to get us to one of the little salons to get pedicures and manicures. They do an excellent job! Leah and Lily made themselves right at home and they just let them.

Our time in Addis was short lived, we had to head out to the farm and we knew it was going to be a doozy so we broke it into two days. This was the first, a good drive to Shashamene to be with the Rastafarrians. :)