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.