Well our internet ran out at the Hilton and we didn’t get a chance to make one last entry before we left so I am writing this on the plane and will post it once we get home. Good news is that we are only an hour outside of Washington DC so we’re almost there. I will write more about our trip home in the next post.

Our last day in Ethiopia…

All week we wanted to take Noah to the pool at the Hilton.  So our plan for Friday morning was to meet up with Girmachew at noon and take the morning to go swimming, give Noah a bath and pack.  As we’re learning with a new baby everything takes longer then we expect so we got the bath, some packing done and no pool.  Noah will have to wait until he gets home to go for his first swim in a pool.  We think he will like it though because he loves taking baths.

Once we met up with Girmachew we ate at New York New York which had really good food.  Almost all the restaurants in Ethiopia have burgers, other sandwiches, pizza, pasta and traditional Ethiopian food.  We really enjoyed the food and this restaurant was no different.  The funny thing is many of the restaurants have American names and are owned by Ethiopians that spent time in America and then returned back to their home country. 

After lunch we went to change some of our extra birr back to dollars, buy some more coffee and went to the Ethnological Museum at the Addis Ababa University.  Unfortunately we only had about an hour and after the 30 minutes it took us to look for the museum (Girmachew had never been there before) we didn’t have a lot of time to spend.  However, it was still a great experience as it was very well done and gave a great overview of Ethiopian culture and history.  We would highly recommend the museum to future families that go to Addis, but we would recommend you go early in the week.  This will allow you to have sufficient time and get you familiar with many of the terms and customs that you will be exposed to.

Finally, we returned to finish packing and leave for the airport.  We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Elephant Walk (which we ate at earlier in the week) and they also had great food.  We arrived to the airport around 7:00PM for our 10:15PM flight which ended up being delayed.

Leaving Addis was hard for me and an emotional event.  Even thought I really didn’t get to spend much time in the country I have fallen in love with the people and culture.  I guess this is God’s way of confirming my call to reach African people in some way.  I never thought when I first went to Uganda in 2002 and first felt this call that it would mean building my family with people from this land but I wouldn’t change it for the world.  As always God new well in advance what His plans held for my future.  

I guess the other reason it was hard to leave is I realize that this is Noah’s birth home and people.  Even though he will now make his home with us in America having him as our son means that Ethiopia is now part of our culture and heritage as well.  Any time you must leave family behind it is a difficult thing.  The Ethiopian people are now part of our family.