Travel Day #2

Travel Day:

Today we left Ethiopia for our next adventure Tanzania.  We arrived to find out our airline moved our flight back a half an hour.  We learned that Ethiopian airlines just do whatever they went.  When we arrived in Washington DC they moved our flight up half an hour and we over heard people behind us say that they can decide during the flight to make unexpected layovers or to not make layovers that were scheduled.  It makes things very interesting.  We arrived in plenty of time and waited at our gate.  There were no loud speaks so they had an individual called out our flight number and every on the flight got up to board (no need for sections or areas of the plane to board first).  We walked down to the runway and got on a bus that took us to our plane.  We had a smooth ride with a lot of fun views of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.  We had a brief layover in Kenya before we came to Tanzania.  We did have a rough landing in Tanzania.  We think our pilot likes thrill rides. 

Our tour company had someone meet us at the gate right after we bought our Visas.  We helped us at baggage claim and through customs.  They were no scanners at customs so they were really looking through everyone’s bags.  However the man that was helping us seemed to know the workers so he just asked us “first time in Tanzania” which we relied yes and he let us go without looking at a single bag.  It is nice to know certain people I guess.  Our guide for the week greeted us and drove us to our hotel that we are staying at tonight.  On the 45 minute drive, we got to see a lot of the landscape and people including coffee plants, mountains, school children walking long distances home from school, and many people hanging out in the shade (did we mention it is hot here).  We are spending our first night in Arusha, Tanzania before starting our Safari tomorrow.  Our hotel is amazing with hut like rooms, beautiful plants, flowers, and fruit trees everywhere.  We also got to see a monkey eating from a fig tree right by the hotel lobby and a toucan looking bird in a tree by the hotel’s restaurant.  Tomorrow we go to Lake Mamyara National Park to see elephants, giraffes, buffalo, lions, and zebras.  Can’t wait.  Stay tuned to more pictures on facebook. 

Thanks for all the responses on our blog and facebook about court.  We have no new information about when it will be rescheduled or what document was missing.  We emailed our travel coordinator at our adoption agency and hope to hear something back by tomorrow.  We will let you know and please continue to pray for little Crew.  We want him home with us in Illinois.  We will not be staying longer on our trip because of this delay.  They will reschedule court without us and an agency representative will attend on our behalf.