Court Trip for baby- Post #5 Culture Day

After taking in a beautiful Ethiopian sunrise this morning, we got ready and headed down to breakfast. We had not received an itinerary so we had no idea when to be ready and what to be ready for. Breakfast was very similar to what we enjoyed in Colombia. Amazing coffee, juice, and varieties of eggs and toast. After that we had the owner contact Holt to find out what we were supposed to be doing. We found out that we won’t be going for orientation or to visit Ben until tomorrow afternoon because we had arrived earlier than anticipated. So we had a whole day and no idea what to do.

We were able to tag along with some of the other families who were seeing the city for their last day.

There was some culture shock when we actually drove out into the city. I expected it to be bad, but I thought it would be better than what I saw in Haiti. It really wasn’t. If you were to drive me through both Addis and Port au Prince I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Lots of diesel fuel smell and dust and “other”.

We drove out of the city and all the way up a mountain to visit the old Emporer’s palace from the 1800’s and also the first Orthodox church that was built. All the way up and down the mountain were women and children gathering sticks and carrying them down. Lots of donkeys as well. We toured the area and took plenty of pictures. On the way down, we stopped at the market. This was a little uncomfortable because people begging would come up and touch your hand and ask for food. As much as I wish I could feed everyone, there is always a danger of being swarmed and things becoming unsafe quickly. It’s so hard to watch.



This is the Emporers palace and a museum dedicated to it. Ethiopia has a rich culture rooted in history. The Orthodox church takes great pride in being mentioned 42 times in the Bible. They take great pride in that their kings have been part of the Solomonic dynasty started between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba from Ethiopia.







People come to the church and the palace to worship, pray, and mourn.





Random Sweetie





This was the bedroom house for the Emporer and his wife









More random sweeties (before the guard chased them away)





One of my favorite toilets



Yet more random sweeties





We purchased an Ethiopian outfit for Ben and a wall hanging. We also stopped at a coffee store and picked up some goodies. It smelled amazing :-) Our driver took us to a very nice restaurant right next to the Ethiopian National Museum that houses “Lucy” the first human skeleton found that is considered to be the oldest. We have had Ethiopian food before, but had no idea what things were actually called. I ordered “Assa Wot”. No idea what it was. Ted had Doro Wat. We think that had something to do with chicken. Everything served with injera.

I wasn’t feeling too good by the time all that was done, just due to my body thinking it was like 2am and only sleeping a few hours the night before on our bed of stone :-)

We came back and crashed pretty hard for a few hours. Most of our Holt friends were flying back tonight so we said goodbye to them and went with a couple from another agency to a traditional restaurant that had live music and dancing. We decided to order the National Buffet which is just a big table of a whole bunch of stuff. We also tried Honey Wine. We got some great video of the dancing but it doesn’t do it justice.










We are going to try to sleep tonight. We are so excited to finally meet our son tomorrow!!!