Ethiopia Day 7 (Thursday)

Day 7 in Ethiopia is the day most families from AGCI leave. Due to our tickets none of the families in our travel group were leaving until Friday and we stayed until Monday. We took this day to go shopping. Emily came over to babysit while we headed out for what ended up being something close to 5 hours. At breakfast we asked about checkout time. We were told anytime was okay. We planned on checking out after shopping and staying the night at Emily's place. Turns out check-out was at noon so we ended up staying at the Union one more night since we were going to be charged anyway.

Our three groggy boys after a sleepover

Playing computer games in the lobbyWe took off and headed to the Halie Selassie store that Traci knew of. It had awesome jewelry. I was so glad Scott and Traci had been to Ethiopia before and knew of some great places to go. The Federal High Courts where Elias became our son!!

Donkeys walking down the roads were a standard sight

Street children walk along busy roads trying to get food

This was the biggest intersection we saw. There were at least 10 lanes. Brian took a photo of the Federal policeman on his cell phone. The guy got mad and quickly stood up and brandished his weapon at us. It wasn't until we pulled into some shops 2 driveways down that Brian realized that might have been a really dumb thing to do.

The Ethiopian calendar is 8 years behind ours. Their millennium celebration plaza was still up since it just became 2001.

Brian thought it was great that the local brewery was called St. George's.

Brian loved all the English Premier League fans.

After shopping for nearly 5 hours we headed back to HH so the others could pick up their children.

Then we went back to the Union where Scott had arranged a coffee ceremony for us. I was so thrilled that he made such an effort to do this because it is such a huge part of Ethiopian culture and something most AGCI families do not get to experience.Elias had a piece of popcorn during the coffee ceremony. He wasn't a big fan of his first "real" food.The coffee ceremony was beautiful. They burn frankincense during the ceremony and I really enjoyed that smell. Everything was great until I saw the cockroach scurrying in between the cups. Eeewww. Oh well. I also learned quickly how to say "little sugar" which is "tinish suquar" because oh my word! they put like 5 teaspoons of sugar in those little cups. These diet coke taste buds can't handle all that sweetness. It is customary to have 3 cups. I was able to drink 2. The funniest part of the whole thing was they usually grind the beans with a mortar and pestle. Most of us there knew this. When the waitress who was doing this for us put the roasted beans in a bowl we were all wondering what was going on. Then we heard the high pitched whine of a blender in the kitchen. The waitresses at the Union don't speak the best English and so Scott just started mimicking the sound of the blender and we all busted up laughing when they realized we knew they were taking a short cut. They were embarrassed but laughed it off and kept using the blender.Our travel group

After the coffee ceremony we headed to the CCI transition home where Emily lives and works.

Israel and Alemu's bunk bedsThis was the calendar Emily made them to count down the days until our arrival and Mom and Dad's arrival. We thought this was so sweet.

These are the views from Emily's bedroom

In this area of town each house had a fence which was topped with either shards of glass or barbed wire.The shint-a-bitIsrael showing off his Spiderman jammies that Mom and Dad sent him.

A beautiful end to a wonderful day