Day 2: The Boys Were Sick

Today did not start out so good. Both boys were sick with a stomach bug. They started throwing up within seconds of each other this morning. At 11:30 Rudy took the girls to continue working on finding a house, and I stayed with the boys who were at that moment sleeping. The goal for today was to work out the house situation. We weren’t sure what was going to happen, but of course our friend Dere made it all work out. By about 5:00pm the boys were feeling much better and were able to hold down some water and cheezits. Praise God.

We Arrived: Our First Day in Addis

We arrived on August 10^th at 9:00 pm. The flight was long, but the kids did great!!! We took an 8 hour flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt, Germany; we had a four hour layover, then a 9 hour flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The toughest part of the trip was all the carry-on luggage that we had. Katie and I could barely manage to get from the gate to the airport, and on & off the planes. We started with four wheeled carry-ons, six back-packs, and two girls on our backs. We thought that the boys would carry their backpacks and they did…from ticketing to about half-way to the security check point in Atlanta. Then it was up to us. At the gate, the airlines asked us to check three of our wheel bags; not sure if that helped us or not. Now we had six backpacks and one rolling bag.

We scheduled our driver Dere to meet us at the airport, but as soon as we got passed passport control, a man from the US embassy met us holding a “Gleason (6)” sign. Our driver arranged for a large van and the embassy arranged for two large vans to take us to the hotel. All our bags made it: eight 50-lb bags, four carry-on suitcases, and six backpacks.

We made it to bed by 11:00 pm on Wednesday; and at 11:00 am Thursday we had to wake the boys from a deep sleep! We drove from the hotel to a restaurant for lunch. All six of us piled in the three seats in the back of Dere’s Toyota; this was the boys first time seeing Addis. They thought it was cool that they didn’t have to wear seat belts (there weren’t any that worked in the back seat). They thought it was really cool that there were sheep and cows walking through the streets. But when we got to the restaurant, it all sank in for Lawson. He was having major culture shock. He told us he was scared. Katie and I held him and comforted him, but he was quiet the entire lunch.

After lunch, it was off to search for a place to live. Lawson was still quiet. In fact, he buried his head in the seat and didn’t really look out the windows much on the ride. Eli was excited to see more sheep, but when we saw donkeys, it was over. Donkey’s trumped sheep and cows and when he shouted “donkeys”, Lawson was up. “Can you believe there are donkeys here”, they said.

Dere had arranged for us to visit some candidate place to live. The first was a two-story home, with three bedrooms, a family room, a kitchen, and living quarters for a nanny, housekeeper, and guard in the back. There was water on the floor on the first story, the carpets and tile were pretty dirty and coming up in many places, and it was pretty dirty. The location was nice, but we thought we should check out a couple more places, so we set out to find another place.

The second place was really nice. The layout was similar. There were three bedrooms, a large family room/dinning room, a kitchen, and separate living quarters for housekeepers. But this place was a lot nicer. The stairs were white marble, the floors were faux hardwood, and the outside play area was interlocking brick. It is located on the edge of the city; from our windows you can see the mountains and countryside. The police station is just down the street. We really like this place. We are hoping that we can arrange to get this place tomorrow.

The girls are doing well. Today was Brooklyn’s birthday. We almost forgot; at about 8:00pm we remembered and sang Happy Birthday to her.  She enjoyed that.