Day #3

Today we traveled around to two orphanages in the morning.  Our agency works with these two orphanages a lot in terms of finding children that are eligible for international adoption.  (A side note, what happens in international adoption is that children are relinquished to a local orphanage, paperwork is processed, and then some children become eligible for international adoption, this is when our agency gets involved moves them to our orphanage and then a family is matched with that child.) So we went to the first orphanage not knowing what to expect.  What we found was a lot of kids that need a lot of love.  The kids seemed to be well taken care of (relatively clean clothes, shoes, and food, we saw them eat lunch at one orphanage).  The kids were all really craving attention, love, and of course the toys/snacks we brought them.  We handed our fruit snacks, granola bars, matchbox cars, and plastic dinosaurs and animals.  The kids loved it but mostly just wanted you to hold them and love on them.  The second orphanage was about the same scenario except the staff performed a traditional coffee ceremony for us.  It involved eating popcorn, heating the tea kettle on coals, and pouring a person a small cup of coffee.  The coffee was good but had a different consistency then ours in the States. 

This afternoon we went to the orphanage again to see Crew.  Today we had the opportunity to give away care packages that other families sent with us for their children living in the orphanage.  We got to meet seven children representing four different adoptive families (mostly older children above the age of 2 and only one baby).  It was wonderful to be able to take pictures and video for the adoptive families and give a little extra attention to these kids.  They were super excited.  We also got the opportunity to see the nurse practitioner to talk about Crew’s medical history at the orphanage.  He has had a lot more illnesses then we knew about but seems relatively healthy to us.  We enjoyed some more bonding time with Crew and learned something new about him.  He likes to fight his naps.  He got fussy and it probably took me about a half an hour or so to give him to fall asleep.  He wasn’t crying terribly but still wasn’t too happy.  Crew also made a babbly noise today which was so fun to hear him talk. 

Today we went to a local restaurant owned by an American.  They served Mexican food, burgers, and pizza.  I ate chicken quesadilla so I get to say that I ate Mexican food in Ethiopia.  Justin had buffalo chicken fingers.  Who knew you could get so much American style food in Ethiopia.  I was definitely not expecting it.