Ethiopia: Day 4

Today was an exhausting day of a whole lot of nothing. We went back to the baby house/Hope office to finish preparing our paperwork for embassy. We were told to be there at 10:00 to meet with Rahel and we waited until 12:30 before she got there. TIE: This is Ethiopia. That's what Melke tells us when things don't work exactly as planned. Or when Ari has a dirty diaper and Melke tells us to just throw it on the side of the road. TIE. As far s dealing with Hope, our adoption agency, I thought one mom put it very nicely by saying, "It's a lot of backy/forthy." People work on a different timeline here and you just learn to roll with it. The good news is it's sunny and 73 degrees every day, so you can't complain too much when you're sitting outside enjoying the sun, even if you are waiting on someone.

We came back to the hotel afterwards and made mac-n-cheese that we brought along with us on our makeshift stove. It tasted amazing, but the aftereffects were not so good. The only time we've gotten sick so far was after eating mac-n-cheese. That we brought with us. Go figure. That and the fact we slept about three hours the night before. I'm sure that didn't help. Our hotel is pretty nice, but because the hallways are marble and the doors and walls are thin, you hear everything. Like when someone shuts their room door at 1:30 in the morning, it sounds like a bomb going off. It's amazing what happens to your imagination when you're sleep deprived. At one point Roger even got out of bed and went downstairs to make sure we weren't under attack. So we have learned our lesson and now take Tylenol PM/NyQuil before bed every night. Needless to say, the novelty of living in a hotel room with a baby is starting to wear off and we are looking forward to coming home. Ari, on the other hand, is sleeping like a champ. Down at around 8:30, wakes at 2:00 a.m. for a diaper change, up between 6:00 and 7:00. Not too bad.