Day Two, Tuesday July 14, 2009

I really didn't feel well at all on Tuesday. It was from jet lag and the high altitude in Addis. I know I wasn't drinking enough water. I didn't think they were going to have any soda and I was prepared for that. But guess what? They don't have Diet Coke (what I usually drink) but they do have regular Coke. I found so much comfort in those Coke bottles. When you are over 7,000 miles from home, I guess it doesn't take much. I think Monte and I both drank 4 bottles a day. The wait staff would see us coming and they knew exactly what we wanted. It truly was comfort for both of us.

The girls sleeping that morning.

Getting ready to head back to the orphanage. Tuesday was our day to go shopping and go out to eat at an Italian restaurant.

We dropped the girls off at 9am. Once again we were nervous about leaving them and how they would react when we returned.

We went shopping at a touristy market. It was basically a row of shops with different souvenirs in them. I am not a shopper, but I learned something about my husband. HE IS! I couldn't believe all the things he wanted to buy. We went in with a very short list and ended up getting more than I had planned. I am glad I had the experience, but seeing all the people in need was hard for me. There was a man who had polio that just followed us around. I would say he was in his 30s. It was just so sad. Monte had told this man that he would give him some money when we were leaving, but when it was time for us to leave he was no where in sight. Monte literally walked up and down the street looking for him. He did end up finding him and gave him some burr (the currency there).

We then went to a very nice Italian restaurant for lunch. Each family had pizza. We all were craving something American and it was pretty good, but not anything like what you would get here. They had amazing paintings for purchase, but we had no desire to spend hundreds of dollars on a painting. There was one that I really liked, but I am glad I didn't get it.

We got back to the orphanage around 2ish. Another little boy spotted us and ran up to the girls and told them that their daddy and mommy were there. How cute! They both came running. We were so thankful! We didn't stay at the orphanage long. The girls tended to do things that they knew they weren't suppose and so we made our visits short.

There was nothing planned for Tuesday night. We fed the girls dinner and they played in the room. I brought a lot of things to keep them busy because we were told (over and over) that adopting toddlers is not easy and that we needed to have a lot prepared to entertain them.

I brought balloons, bubbles, beach balls, babies, Aqua Magnadoodle, and Play Doh for our hotel room. Here the girls are playing with Play Doh. They loved it and spend an hour squishing and molding.




Here they are getting ready for bed. We tried hard to keep them on the same schedule that they had at the orphanage, but on this night they were not as willing to go to sleep. It took us over two hours to get them to fall asleep. This is the night that I felt like our "honeymoon period" ended. Once we were home I was able to talk to our case manager about our experience in Ethiopia. She told me that she hears the same story a lot from families adopting toddlers. That made me feel so much better!