Our trip to Ethiopia

We are back from our mandatory trip out of East Africa! We headed to Nairobi last Wednesday, ate lunch (our first time in a restaurant in 6 months!) and headed to the airport to go to Ethiopia.  Instead of going on and on about our trip I thought I’d do a few bullet points to fill you in.

Highlights of our Trip (and yes, some would be considered low-lights)

-Getting to eat at Java House in Nairobi before going to the airport-yum!

-Trying to let the boys watch a video in the airport while we wait for our plane only to have T-25 (work out video)stuck in the DVD drive. Come on boys, 25 sit-ups instead!

- On the airplane- here we go again! Tucker singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” (that’s the only part of the song he knows) at the top of his lungs. I think it’s adorable, but maybe others wouldn’t.

-I may or may not have accidentally opened the airplane bathroom door, only to find someone still in it.

-They served couscous as our dinner meal on the flight. Couscous. People, could you think of ANYTHING that would make more of a mess on an airplane?? I think there is still couscous falling out of my clothes, purse, etc.

-We stayed with some lovely folks, the Weeks, who even picked us up from the airport. Their friends that they were supposed to be dropping off that night had a canceled flight so we all 11 piled into their Landcrusier with our 5 bags tied to the roof.

-Traffic in Addis is as bad as traffic in Nairobi. Boo.

- Our kids think that ET is better than Disney World since we literally did every fun thing there is to do there in the 2 days we were there.  I keep trying to tell them that the rest of the world doesn’t go to ET for vaca.

-Cooper was so generous in sharing his cold with all of us. We appreciated it mostly in the middle of the night when Tucker was coughing up a lung.

-We went to probably the fanciest place in all of Ethiopia for the day, the Sheridan Hotel, to swim. It was a lovely way to spend my birthday, topped off by the fact that they sold ice cream there.

-Since it was so fancy we opted to take our lunch (PB and Nutella sandwhiches and knock off Prinlges- people, we are high class). I tried to take a butter knife in with me to spread the PB, but they took it away from me when I went through the full body scanner at the door.

- To keep things lively Alex tried to drown twice in the pool we went swimming in.

-Our children have to go to the bathroom ALL THE TIME, everywhere we go.I think it is contagious.

-Yod Absinnia is a really cool restaurant. Traditional Ethiopian food, served at a teeny tiny table in the middle of large chairs that our kids only fell off of 2 or 3 times. No silverware! Eat with your hands! Super yummy food. There was even a wedding party that came in to dine with us!

-We got to go bowling on our adventure day 2. It was pretty funny, there were always only 9 pins and half-way through we had to switch lanes because ours just quit working. Tucker absolutely loved it and would do a happy dance after every turn.

-Friday night is homemade pizza night at Tenwek and we got to continue the tradition by going OUT for pizza with the Weeks and Semme (our driver) on Friday night. The 9 of us polished off 5 pizzas. Our kids are vacuum cleaners. Skin and bones Cooper ate 5 pieces.

-Ethiopians are beautiful people. We wish we had more time to get to know them and hear more of their stories.

Fun Facts about ET

They consider a year to have 13 months, so to them it is still 2006. Hey, I’m 28 there! I like it!

They start time at dawn, calling it 12:00. So 7 a.m. to them is 1 p.m. Who knew they were so independent from the rest of the world?

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. They have “coffee ceremonies” in which they boil the water in a coffee pot of sorts over charcoal and then they burn incense on the charcoal.

Their money is called a birr and it is 20 birr to 1 US dollar

Natives call it “Etiopia”, no “th”

Quoteable Quotes from the trip

-(Squeal!!) It’s blast-offing!! – Alex as he watches a plane take off

-“In case of emergency please remove your high heels and store them under the seat in front of you” – ET in-flight message

- Eric: We are going to this really nice ice cream restaurant so you better behave. Cooper: Oh! Like Spoonlickers?”

-Alex at the pool: We should have something over our mouths to keep water out. Eric: We do, they are called lips.

Trying to fit all our stuff on the top!

Day at the pool

Our yummy ET dinner

Semme, Emily and Travis

There’s more we could tell, but that covers the important stuff. Thanks so much for your prayers that got us there and back! Praise the Lord that Kenya allowed us back in. Please, please pray that Eric’s work permit comes SOON so we don’t have to do this again!