Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 4 Friday

Friday morning we and Brian and Eva (the other couple with us) got all dressed up and ready to go to court.  We were going to be picked up at Oziopia so we all decided to wait outside the gate until our driver came.  We didn't want to be late for this appointment!  Our driver did turn out to be late in picking us up and we did make it to the court building a little bit late, but luckily that didn't seem to matter.  (As a side note, the drive took about 30 minutes and the most interesting thing to me was seeing all the different embassies from around the world.  We passed over 20 I think.)  The judge wasn't there yet so we all waiting in a room that was clearly designed for a lot of people to wait in.  It was relatively large with chairs lining the walls, floor to ceiling windows on one side, and a semi-broken flat screen TV in the corner showing something I couldn't quite make out.  We , Brian and Eva, Eleni, Temesgen (AAI's Attorney) and another lady (I forget her name) were the only ones in there for a while.  A little while later a  few more people came in.  Zack and I spent a lot of the wait time trying to remember how to say "Thank you" in Amharic.  Believe me, this was no "Gracias" or "Merci".  This word had about 7 syllables with no clear way to link them all (at least in my mind).  We have an Amharic Language App on my phone and so we listened to "Thank you" being said over and over.  I still can't say it.  Here's how it's spelled:  Ameseginalehu.  And you pronounce it something like "Ah-meh-segi-na-lew".  It's a lot easier to read how to pronounce it than to hear it being said and repeat it, in my mind.
After maybe a half hour (not sure now) Zack and I were called in to see the judge.  Everyone always talked about how the judge speaks really softly and so you have to be really quiet and listen closely to hear what she says.  There are signs in the waiting room that warn you to be quiet.  I guess once she cleared the room and cancelled the appointments for the day because everyone was being so noisy.  At least that's the rumor.  We weren't about to test it.  We walked into a little office with a desk where the judge was sitting and some chairs in front and off to the side.  Zack and I sat in front of the desk.  The judge was pretty soft-spoken.  She said our file needed another police letter (which we gave her right then) and then she asked us a few questions.  She said something like "You have no other children, correct?"  And we responded with "Oh no, we have two boys."  She checked her files and said it wasn't listed.  That's when we found out that she didn't have our updated homestudy (which we completed a year ago...).  We were worried this was going to hold things up, but instead she just asked their ages and wrote it down in our file.  She asked us questions like "Have we seen Yematawork?"  "Did we want to adopt her?"  "Did we realize that this was non-reversible, that she was our daughter forever if we adopted her?"  (Um, yes, kind of counting on that!)  She asked if we had contact with other families who had adopted from Ethiopia.  It was nice to be able to answer that one with a big yes.  She said a few other things that were really hard to hear, but I believe somewhere in there she said "She is yours."   And that was it.  We passed!  Yema was officially ours!  That technically meant that, if we wanted to, we could go get Yema from the orphanage right then.  Buuuut we couldn't leave the country.  For that we needed permission from the US Embassy.  That was the next hurdle.
But we passed and she was officially adopted!  Yay yay yay!
I have to say that being a parent of three kids at that moment was not as hard as people always say it is.  It was kind of a piece of cake.  But that may have had something to do with the fact that one was in an orphanage and the other two were back in the states with Grandma and Grandpa.  Heh heh...

After court we all went to Layla.  Zack spent some time with the resident dog, Ishi.  This dog looked for love from everyone willing to give it.

Zack was just sitting on the step when Ishi just came up next to him and stuck her head under his arm.  How can you resist that?

We got a ride to Hilawe to see Yema and take some official Evans family photos.

She looks ecstatic, right?  You should be, Yema.  You're stuck with us forever!

We only spent about 10 minutes at Hilawe since it was almost Yema's nap time.  We went back to Oziopia and went with Brian and Eva and Abebe up to Entoto Mountain.  This is one of the highest mountains in Addis.  (Addis Ababa is actually about 7,000 feet above sea level and is a pretty mountainous city.)  Entoto mountain is about 10,000 feet above sea level. There are a lot of eucalyptus trees on the mountain and a lot of women make a living by carrying giant (and I mean giant, like 3 times their size) piles of eucalyptus down the mountain on their backs.

Here's a picture of Addis from the mountain.  

We thought we had an inversion in Utah...you should see the pollution here!

At the top of the mountain is actually a village, the first church in Addis, the palace of Menelik the II and Queen Taitu, the royal couple that first conceived the city of Addis Ababa, and a museum.

 Here's our group at the top.

This was the king's dining room...I think.  I forget.  But look at the ceiling!

Here's a shot of the church.  Apparently once a year they bring the Arc of the Covenant out for the priests to see.  We asked one of the guides at the museum about that and he finally admitted that it's a replica, but that the real one was somewhere in Ethiopia and no one is permitted to see it.  I really liked the museum and learning more about Ethiopia's history.  I wasn't so jet-lagged for this one, I guess. :)

Here's a random shot of me sitting at the computer in Oziopia.  This is where we'd send emails and stuff.  We would take the computer up to our room at 5:00 AM to skype from there because sometimes Abebe would be sleeping in the living room and we didn't want to disturb him.

That night the family that runs Oziopia put on a big party.  They put out a big spread outside for dinner.

They had a fire in a fire pit and even had some dancers from the local community center come and put on a show for us.

It was really fun.  The girls who danced were really good.  Here's some video of them doing some traditional dancing that involves crazy amounts of shoulder bobbing.  I'm not sure why, but this type of dancing is hugely popular over there.


After they danced for a while they would come over to all us spectators and make us dance with them.  It was hard to say no to them so we all ended up looking like fools...er, dancing...with them for a while.  For everyone's sake I am not posting any video of us dancing.  But I will post another video of the girls and also of the front of Oziopia.  We stayed in the room at the top.

Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 3 Thursday

By the third day we have kind of a routine going in the morning.  Get up around 4:30 or 5:00, Skype with my parents and the boys, get ready for the day, eat breakfast, and then visit Yema.  Today we just played with Yema and her roommates for a couple of hours.

Here we are practicing our puckering.  The pictures really don't do her lips justice.  They are adorable little heart-shaped things and are seriously adorable.

Here she is showing Dad how to play with her rattle.

This is one of Yema's nannies.  We think she is Yema's favorite because her face always lights up when she sees her.  This nanny was hiding in the hall and then popping through the doorway to get Yema to smile.  She's our favorite nanny, too.

How cute are these two together?

While at the orphanage we were able to ask the director some questions about Yema's history.  One really important place in her history is the Lideta Orthodox Church which we knew was located somewhere in Addis.  One of our goals while in country was to visit that church.  Not only did the director know where the church was, but she gave us directions on how to get there!  She even drew us a map containing all the major intersections or roundabouts between the orphanage and the church which was helpful just in an overall orientation sense of this part of the city.  

After saying goodbye to Yema we set out to find the church.  It was actually really really easy, but for two foreigners who didn't speak the language, we thought we were pretty cool to go somewhere in the city on our own.  (At least I did.  I'm sure it was a piece of cake for Zack. :)  )

We took a bus from Lebu Mebrat square up to Mexico Square.  We knew which buses were going to Mexico square because a boy would lean out of the bus and yell "MESCO!  MESCO!"  Meaning, Mexico Square.  I think it cost us 20 cents to get there.  Once we got to Mexico Square we headed down one of the streets toward the church.  It was a little bit off the main road and though we could see it eventually, we didn't know how to get to it.  We got directions from a shop owner and found it.  

Here's Zack at what we now know was the back entrance to the church.

Here's the view behind him.  The pathway up to the church.

Here is the street we walked down to get to the church.  Note the scaffolding on the building.  Lots and lots of logs tied together.

We called Abebe and had him pick us up near the church.  I think he took us back to Oziopia.  We were supposed to go see the Silk Factory and then do some shopping, but Elena, our liaison of sorts from AAI, couldn't make it.  So we didn't get to go.  We were also supposed to go to a Jazz show/dinner thing.  We didn't get to go to that either (but I was okay with that one).  We were kind of bummed that we didn't get to see the silk factory.  I don't remember what we did the rest of the night. I think we played cards, had dinner at Oziopia and then went to bed.  The good news that night was that we learned we got an appointment with the judge for the next morning!  Woot!  

Ethiopia Court Trip: Day 2 Wednesday

After crashing early the night before we woke up around 4:30 the next morning. This was actually good because we were able to Skype with my parents and the boys. It was 6:30 PM their time so we had a nice chat before the boys went to bed. After a breakfast of either corn flakes infused with chocolate balls with gross tasting warm milk or a big roll with peanut butter or scrambled eggs with onion (I forget what we had each day, but it was pretty much that every day) we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Here is a video of part of our walk.

Here is a picture of some of the apartments in the area. I thought it was really interesting that amid all the dirt and animals and such there are always satellite dishes for all the TVs.

After our morning walk we went over to HIlawe to see Yema. When we got there we found that all the babies were out on the porch on blankets enjoying the sunshine. We found Yema right away and had some fun playing out in the sun. She was wearing a fleece outfit that seemed pretty warm to me, but whatever.

How cute is this face?

We discovered that tickling her collar bone made her laugh or smile so, as you can imagine, we did that a lot. Seeing her smile was just too much fun.

She warmed up more to us today and it was a lot of fun playing with her.

After a while the babies were brought inside and one of the nannies changed her into this cute red dress....with orange shorts underneath.

Yema liked playing with the contents of Dad's pockets and the camera lens cap.

Then it was time to change her clothes again. I guess. A nanny came in and changed her diaper and then her clothes. We're not quite sure why, but we weren't about to ask. This gave Dad more time to tickle her tummy.

She's a fan. You can tell. :)

Yema and Dad exchanging crusties.

Here's a video where I get her to smile using the old reliable tickle method.

I got to feed her some formula out of a little tin cup and then she fell asleep. How cute is this picture?
Well, I don't know if the nannies were jealous or if they just didn't want her to sleep, but about 5 minutes later they came in, woke her up, and put her in a walker. She and Zack are exchanging "I don't know what just happened" looks.
We left a little before noon and went with our group to lunch. Then we went to Layla to take care of some documentation. We still didn't have word on when our court date was. I forgot to mention that when we arrived in Ethiopia we found out that there was a mix up with the court dates. We and another couple (who, interestingly enough were also staying at Oziopia) were told our court date was Friday the 24th when they were actually Monday the 27th. There was some mix up with the Ethiopian date verses our date. (Ethiopia has a different calendar than we do.) The problem we had now was that court wasn't actually in session the week we were there. Temesgen, the lawyer at Layla, was going to try to get us an audience with the judge on Friday even though she wasn't in session. So, as of Wednesday, we hadn't heard anything yet.

After going to Layla we went to Churchill Street to do some tourist shopping. It's a street full of little shops that all sell pretty much the same tourist trinkets and items that everyone buys. We got a few things, but weren't really impressed with the shops.

Later that night we went to a restaurant called Yob Abisinia, a traditional Ethiopian Restaurant. It, in my opinion, was mostly for tourists to go and see what real Ethiopian food and dinner is like. They had someone in the corner roasting coffee beans for their traditional coffee ceremony and they had traditional live music and Ethiopian dancing. It was really neat to see all the dances from different areas of Ethiopia.

Here is Brian washing his hands. They do this before every meal (at least they did it at Oziopia).

You wash your hands with soap and water and then they give you a towel to dry your hands with.

The dancing was good. The food was good (as long as I avoided the spicy dishes which can be hard to do). But I was so tired. I had a hard time staying awake. Luckily the music was really loud so that helped. Ha ha.

I was trying desperately not to fall asleep on the ride home, but I think I dozed off a few times. We got home and crashed. Zack tried to use the pillow he bought at Churchill Street, but it wasn't as comfortable as he thought, especially if he was sleeping on his stomach.