We're back!

Wow - what a trip! Still can't believe we spent a week in Africa and are back home already. We are trying to process everything, but let me just say that it was one of the most emotional and amazing weeks we've ever experienced. We absolutely fell in love with the country, the people and OUR GIRL! We are soooooooo glad to be home with Cole, but we miss it there. Ethiopia is an amazing country, and the people are some of the most kind, gentle and humble people we've ever met. We miss them. We miss hearing them say "okee" and how they pronounce "Etopia" and the way they raise their eyebrows when they talk to you. I don't think we've ever been in a culture so different from ours but so wonderful at the same time.

We are going to write a post for each day of our trip, and tonight we'll start out with some pics from the day we spent traveling to get there. 

March 14 was the official first day of our journey, and we started out by having breakfast out with Cole. It was nice, but I could barely eat because I was so nervous. Cole did great that morning overall. He cried a few times (as did I), but he was very excited for us to leave so he could open his first present from us. :)

After saying our goodbyes, we headed to the airport and got there almost 4.5 hours before our flight left. Yes we were a little over-eager, but you never know what you're going to get with Philly traffic.

Here we are on our first flight to Toronto. We ended up getting into Toronto a little behind schedule and almost missed our next flight.

Next stop: Frankfurt Germany. We arrived there on Monday, March 15 and had a five-hour layover. We had a really yummy breakfast and waited some more...

Finally it was time to board for our final destination: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!

 On that flight we were able to see Egypt from the plane pretty clearly. Very cool! (P.S. On the way back we didn't fly over the same African countries since they had to avoid Libya because of everything going on there.)

We arrived in Addis around 9 pm. Here's our first glimpse of Ethiopia: rainy!

One of the first things we noticed when we got off the plane in Addis was the incredible smell of spices and incense. It pretty much smelled like that all over the city too (and sometimes diesel fuel, and I liked that.).

I was half expecting all of our luggage not to make it, especially because of the connection issues we had in Toronto. But praise God it was all there, and we got everything off the belt very quickly! The Bole airport in Addis is small and simple, so we whisked out of the baggage claim area and into the lobby in no time at all. So fast that our guide wasn't there holding up the "America World" sign like we were expecting. Josh recognized our driver David and then our AWAA guide Yonas (who were both a little caught off guard that we knew who they were already -- thank you facebook!). Those were the two we spent the most time driving around the city with all week long: awesome guys. Can't say enough good about the AWAA staff; we are so incredibly thankful for our agency.

Anyway, we got to the guest house around 10 pm, settled in and slept really well that night. We were all ready to meet our girl the very next morning...