Ethiopia Day 10 (Sunday)

Sunday morning we woke up and got ready for church. We planned on going to the International Evangelical Church that Emily attends. We had breakfast of eggs and toast at the New Flower and then headed out. We took the somewhat long drive through construction to church in a cab and surprisingly saw a lot of "locals" doing them same thing. I guess that was the first time I realized how much it takes to actually own a car in Ethiopia, even for the missionaries.

When we got to church we first changed Elias and then waited out front for Emily and the boys. The church is on beautiful grounds. This was the first and only time in Ethiopia that I felt like I was "at home" in the States. There were lots of white people but also lots of Ethiopians. I would say it was about 50/50. There were also quite a few white people who had Ethiopian children. A few were visiting adoptive families like us but most were missionaries who had adopted. It was nice to see other families who looked like our family.

We headed in when the music started only to realize about 15 minutes later that Emily and the boys showed up just after we headed inside and were waiting for us outside. Oops. Everything about IEC seemed Western and "normal." Emily says that's the refreshing part about it when she is confronted daily with the fact that she is a foreigner. Elias did great while we sang but wasn't having the sermon. I ended up hanging out in the outside area where they had speakers so I could hear. I have to admit I didn't hear much though because I talked with some Ethiopian men the whole time who had lots of questions about Elias.
Israel wanted to help with the diaper bag so apparently I was showing him how strong he needed to be...

Elias' 1st time at church

Family photo

After church we headed down the street to Naz Kal for lunch. It was our second time going to Naz Kal and I treated myself to multiple Coca Cola Lights as it was the only place we could find in Addis that had Diet Coke. We were joined by Philipa, Emily's friend from New Zealand and her daughter and niece who are in junior high. The girls were talking to Brian about the fact that he was going to be their math teacher next year (was, being the operative word :( ) and I just remember thinking although it is a hard life there that I could so easily picture myself living in Ethiopia. We were able to treat everyone to a really nice meal and a few rounds of sodas for about $35. Philipa felt terrible that she had ordered a second round of juice and said she wouldn't have if she had known we were picking up the bill. Meanwhile I thought the fact that we fed 8 people huge meals and had all these leftovers for $35 was a great deal!

Afterwards we hired a taxi (harder than it sounds) and headed back to the CCI transition house. Emily had to haggle and walk away from a few different taxis before we found one that wouldn't rip us off.

We stopped "in town" about 1/2 mile from Em's house to buy Brian some sinus drugs at the pharmacy. I was a little nervous heading to the drug store in Ethiopia but Emily knew exactly what she was doing and the woman helping us was extremely nice.

*Brian had the camera so I couldn't get a picture. This is a decent representation although ours was definitely more rickety.

We decided to take a horse and "carriage" back to the house. The men were all standing in a big group trying to get us to hop into their "carriage." Emily was bartering with them and they were trying to way overcharge us when literally we were only going 1/2 a mile. Finally someone agreed but the level of arguing it took to get there was almost not worth it. Honestly with how much they try to rip off white people I would be exhausted if I lived there. You have to be constantly on your toes and aggressive in order to not be taken advantage of.

Brian and Almeu decided to walk. Emily, Elias, me and Israel took the horse and wagon. Israel didn't want to walk but kept saying he didn't want to get in. Emily told him to get in and he did. It was once I sat next to him that I realized he didn't want to get in because he was terrified. The poor guy was shaking. I put my arm around him and the other around the baby. Emily hopped in and the horse started to go. It wasn't until we were moving and Emily was yelling at us to scoot over that I realized the only place for the driver was next to us, he wasn't on and the horse was already moving quickly. I grabbed Israel and we moved over but not without me having a mild heart attack thinking we were going to be leaving the driver in the dust. The horse went way faster than I was comfortable with and never once did I feel like our driver was actually in control. The road has horrible pot holes, the "carriage" was rickety and felt like it was going to fall apart and I honestly thought we might all die...meanwhile Israel is scared out of his mind so I have to pretend like this is fun and plaster the fakest smile ever on my face. Luckily it all ended in a matter of minutes. We paid the guy pennies for his "service" and we headed into the house to tell all the nannies about our traumatizing experience. It was then that I heard ours wasn't the only near death experience.

We got back to the house and decided to pass out the candy we had saved for the kids. Israel and Alemu were really excited to get to share this gift with the other children. I have lots of cute photos of the kids but can't post them.

All the boys loved to walk through Brian's legs, especially one of our favorite little boys, "Mel."

Last photo of the boys together. It was really hard saying good-bye to Emily, Alemu & Israel.

Our last daylight view of Addis Ababa.

After we left Emily's house we decided to stop at Kaldi's since we still had never been. It is the Ethiopian Starbucks knock-off. It was late by this time and we wanted food. We had heard Kaldi's had great food but we only saw coffee on the menu and a couple of pastries. We left and walked a couple blocks to another restaurant. After the fact I learned Kaldi's has a food menu but you have to ask for it :)

We ended up going to La Patisserie for dinner. There were a lot of foreigners in there and the place was packed despite it being late. There was only outdoor seating and it was getting super chilly. We sat and had a hamburger as it was the only food item they were still serving. Brian had some juice and I had a really yummy cappuccino. Halfway through a table opened up inside and Brian had the waiter come and get me so he wouldn't lose it. It took me a second to realize what he was saying. He grabbed the diaper bag for me which ended up being wrapped around the leg of my chair. I almost toppled over along with the large sleeping lump attached to me that was covered with a blanket both out of necessity and cultural sensitivity.

Our food was good and Brian had them wrap up the leftovers so we could give them to the street boys that were bound to be begging from us as we walked back to the guest house. We walked back in the cool night air in a really bustling part of town. There were a lot of Ethiopians around who were eating at the restaurants and you could tell they were of the upper classes as they were all dressed very nicely. I actually felt very unfashionable compared to some of the ladies. We walked through the maze of cars and the countless vendors trying to sell us illegal copies of c.d.'s and cheap sunglasses. As we turned down the alley to get to New Flower we saw some wild dogs across the street. This was the only time we felt nervous about walking around late at night.
As we got to the New Flower we heard from Kaleb that our driver had called him to tell him he dropped us off at Kaldi's. Kaleb felt like this was a bad idea and walked there to find us and escort us back. Only we hadn't stayed at Kaldi's. After searching for us for quite a while he headed back. We felt so bad when he told us this. We told him that we felt perfectly safe except for the dogs. He kind of chuckled and told us maybe it wasn't very safe.

That night we went to bed ready to get up at 3am to head to the airport. Although we knew it would be a long trip home we had no idea just how long it was going to be.