Ethiopia Day 7: Our Last Day

November 5, 2011

Our last day in Ethiopia was hard. It was hard waking up knowing that this would be the day that we would leave our little boy on another continent without knowing when we would be back to get him. It was hard to have our last breakfast together. It was hard to give him his last bath. It was hard not to tear up off and on all day. But we tried to soak everything up and enjoy our last moments with our sweet boy.

CT hates baths....HATES

so handsome in his traditional ET clothing

already working the ipod

paytime

Most of the day was spent on a long and i mean LOOOOOONG trip back to his orphanage. A couple of days before a Muslim holiday in Ethiopia everyone from the city takes buses out to the country to stay with family to celebrate for the weekend....and apparently Monday was a Muslim holiday. Which means we picked the wrong day to drive the already dangerous road to Walissoo (I know I spell it differently every time, but it's spelled differently everywhere I've seen it...so surely one of my tries will be right?? We spent about seven hours on a very crowded and very dangerous road and this was the only day that I had to take anything for motion sickness.  We typically love the ride out to the country, but this one was quite miserable. As much as we didn't' want to take our little boy back to his orphanage, we did actually want to live through it!

bumper to bumper

CT was so funny on the ride there...I got the best video of him being a total stinker! He is a mess! If it looks like he started to prefer daddy it's because he did! He liked me fine, but if daddy was in the room it was all about daddy...we are going to have to work on that because little does CT know he is going to be having a  whole lot of mommy time in his life!

yeah...your baby not in a carseat on a dangerous road is nerve racking!!

a city on the way...people are so NOT afraid to get hit by cars...I'm pretty sure we grazed a few pedestrians.

two lane roads are for sissies

driving to the country is one big game of chicken

beautiful, right?

we saw kids ava's age using an ax, herding cattle, all kinds of things. I promise ava could not heard a turtle.

finally out

look close...that's a goat among luggage on top of a taxi bus

arriving to walisoo

arriving to the village of Chetu outside of wolisso

when you see this outside of a home it means they make and sell something that is like ET moonshine....it's outside a lot of homes in the country.

Leaving CT at his orphanage was one of the hardest things we've ever done and one of the most unnatural things I've ever done. It is just not in a mommy to leave her child and not know when you will be back. It's one of those moments that feels like you should be kicking and screaming, yet you walk away with a few silent tears in hopes to not upset your child. It was so hard to hand him off to his Nannies, but somehow we did it and pray that we will be back for him very soon...

trying to smile as we said our goodbyes

driving away...we will be back for you soon, sweet boy!