Thursday the 1st of July here...uhhhhh...3:20 p.m.. Thought I would try and get a few pics online from yesterday. Today we picked up Emebet and hit the Merkato again in search of a sewing machine, which is proving to be more difficult that we originally thought. Well, at least to get a good one that should last. As with yesterday, Tina and I didn't venture out into the market. We don't want to pay the "Face Tax"...so Mia and Berhanu (one of our drivers) did the shopping. The rest of us went to a little place that I can only describe as a Starbucks knock off. Good stuff though and Tina finally got her Sambusas. Still no sewing machine though...the search continues.After the Merkato we went to the Kidane Meheret orphanage and talked with Sister Lutgarda quite a bit. She's a great lady and a funny sense of humor to boot. She's very short and when we left she said "You have to come way down here to hug me". Apparently we'd been wrong all these years about where her and Sister Camilla were from. They're not from Austria, but Malta. Sister Lutgarda is leaving back to Malta for 6 weeks the same day we are heading for Italy. It's her annual "vacation"...6 weeks of rest and prayer she says. Much deserved we're thinking. So at Kidane Meheret, the boys and I stayed outside playing basketball and soccer (there are 2 high school aged boys volunteering there for a few months from New Jersey and Washington D.C.). Tina and the girls helped gather all the older girls at the orphanage, gave them their feminine hygiene kits and discussed how to use everything. Sister Lutgarda had told us our timing was perfect. She said just a week ago a group of the older girls approached her about using something besides cut up t-shirts as pads, but she sadly had to tell them it wasn't in the budget. Needless to say the girls were over joyed to get their hygiene kits. Mia said they thanked her over and over. We left Kidane Meheret after being there a few hours and went to the Brothers of Charity home, where Rafe's brother Musay lives. It was a really good visit. We were able to sit down and watch some of his football DVDs...a little from the Seahawks and a little from the Wolfpack. Lots of cheering from everyone when Rafe was on screen. We went up to a more private area after that and gave Musay the gifts we had brought him, then switched on the video camera and basically interviewed him about Rafe's family history and past. With the help of our amazing translator (Mia), we got a lot of great information, including names of all his family members (mom, dad, sister and 4 other brothers). It was a little hard for Musay to talk about some of it, but he did a great job. I think he knew it was really important to Rafe.So now we're at the Hilton business center again using the internet. I'll try and up load a few pictures from yesterday. They'll probably be from when we were at the Lem Lem School taking pictures of the COEEF students and helping them fill out postcards to their sponsors. Hope all is well back home!Love,The Hale Clan

As for more recent than a few days ago... We've been able to spend quite a bit of time with our sponsor girl Emebet and also have my parent's sponsor girl Erusalem with us today. This was all after being at the Lem Lem school, where Mia attended private school through COEEF, taking pictures of the sponsor girls and helping them write postcards to... See More their sponsors. Some soccer playing, picture taking and getting to know more people and kids thrown in the mix while there too. Yesterday we spent quite a bit of time with Mia's cousin Yeshi and her little 4 year old son. Yeshi is who Mia had been living with when we adopted her. Trying to remember what else has been going on...a lot, that's for sure. Right now Mia is with one of our drivers, Berhanu at the Merkato (largest open air market on the continent). We're not with them because we'll get charged the local "Face Tax"...that us westerns get charged all too often. They are there looking for a few things for Emebet and Erusalem. We've done some shopping for Emebet, but didn't get it all done and none yet for Erusalem, since we just barely got hooked up with her today. Oh and they're going to check into sewing machines, which we'll probably be getting for the orphanage in the morning.

Update from a few days ago...Traffic, traffic, traffic...who knew there could be so much congested traffic in downtown Addis Ababa. Add to that the construction everywhere and basically no traffic laws at all. Lanes, lanes...we don't need no stinking lanes!!! I've never been so close to so many cars, while in motion, in my life. Luckily the driver is an ace at it, so I just mostly laugh about it all. Tina not so much... With all the insanity, I do believe we drove to the four corners of Addis Ababa (a very large city) about 3 or 4 times today. But that aside, we had a good and productive day. We made it out to the Kidane Miheret orphanage and were able to catch up with the sister that helped us so much back in 2003, Sister Camilla. She's a sweet little nun (about 65 years old), originally from Austria, who remembered the kids and all the chaos that went on when we were adopting and trying to reunite Tigist with her brothers. We brought up an idea we had talked about with Tina's dad about purchasing a sewing machine for the orphanage and you would have thought she was a little kid on Christmas morning the way she lit up! She was so excited and had been needing one for years. So purchasing a sewing machine is now at the top of our list of things to do. We were told to buy one at the Merkado (largest open air market on the continent...and somewhere the embassy usually isn't all that excited about us shopping), but we know that the price would probably double the minute they see the color of our skin, so we talked to our drivers about purchasing it for us and they agreed. We're pretty happy about that! I think Mia will head into the big purchase with them. We also talked to the sisters about handing out donations and the femine hygiene kits, along with going over the use of the items in the kits to the older girls. It looks like we're on for Thursday with all that. Hopefully we'll have the sewing machine by then too. Throw a little more sovenier shopping in here at some point...was sick of that by the time we were done LOL.On our way to find Emebet (one of the girls we sponsor to go to private school through COEEF), we stopped by a place in Tina's quest to find Sambosa's (little triangular shaped, deep fried pastries, filled with veggies or meat...and just spicy enough)...but were denied once again. We decided that food was still in order and had a few pizzas and big plates of fries. Much to me and Mia's disappointment, the ketchup wasn't the amazing "Ethiopian ketchup" we were hoping for. Not sure what the deal was with that!!!Let's see, we found Emebet...all by ourselves...in the pouring rain (again)...thanks to Mia's excellent memory. We were all excited to see each other. This was the third time we'd been able to meet her, but she was still her shy little self. Well, maybe a little less shy than before, but not much. We talked to her aunt that she lives with and she agreed that Emebet can hang out with us as much as she'd like to. With that said, she jumped in the van with us and off we went. Unfortunately for her, it was a lot of driving around...probably more than she'd done in her entire life. I'm sure she was in parts of the city she'd never even heard of before. Right after picking up Emebet and in our so far unsuccessful attempts to locate the in country director of COEEF, we headed to the Lem Lem School to see if they might be able to help us get a hold of him. They did at least verify that we have the right phone numbers for him, but still no luck getting in touch with him (even now that it's 10:45 p.m.). Hopefully we'll find something out tomorrow.So we trekked from the northeast corner of Addis Ababa, to the southwest corner, to pickup our friend Henock's girlfriend, Andanant for dinner. She's absolutely stunning and tiny. Now with 12 of us in the van, we headed for headed for a restaurant that should have the game on between Netherlands and Slovakia (or was it Slovenia?)...on several flat screens as well as a projector & 10 foot screen. We convinced both the driver and his shotgun buddy to come in and eat with us, so had 12 at dinner. It was good food, even if the conversation was a little difficult at times, since Andanant doesn't speak a ton of English. It seemed to go well over all though and she is really nice.It wasn't too far back southwest to drop her off, but then way up northeast to drop Emebet off at home...then the long haul back to the guest house. I'm really hoping for less taxi time tomorrow.Right now we're watching a fuzzy broadcast of Brazil vs. Chile (Brazil is up), muted...Tina is on the floor playing some crazy card game with the kids and Sierra passed out on the couch. G'night all...!!!!
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The Hales with Rafe's brother Musay

Wow, what a day!

Wow, what a day! Let's see, we visited Mia's old neighborhood yesterday and were able to get in contact with a few of her relatives. We'll be meeting up with them Tuesday. We also visited the Lem Lem School, where Mia attended school while living in Ethiopia. There was an end of year carnival just wrapping up, but there were still quite a few people and kids around. Got to have buna (coffee) with some of the administrators, play with kids and get a tour of the new facilities they're building. Pretty amazing...a new library even! They invited back to a big parent's day program on the 4th of July too. Probably no fireworks, but lot of celebrating, dance & song and our sponsor girl will be there. We also visited the Layla House children's home, where Mia spent 5 months before we adopted her and hung out with lots of kids. Steve (the guy from Utah) was with us and we got to meet his little 10 month old daughter...what a cutie!

So, back to today. We went on a quest for Sambosas...the main thing Tina wanted to track down at a specific bakery. Of course the bakery had moved a year after we'd been here and they didn't know where they'd moved to...so no such luck. After that we dropped off Mia and Tigist to get their hair braided while the rest of us went souvenir shopping. It wasn't too bad...Sierra wasn't too out of her element with not being able to say no. Rafe and Tina even managed to barter for some low down prices..."Habasha price, I promise!"

We went back, got the girls and headed to our friend Henock's house for lunch with his family. He lives in VA now, but we hung out and had amazing Ethiopian home cooking. We talked to him on the phone later and he said his mom was very happy that we were able to come by and visit with them.

Off to find Rafe's brother, Musay at the Brother's of Charity home for the handicapped. Musay is paraplegic, but there are physically and mentally handicapped boys and young men there. I'll have to admit it can be quite draining being there. I think it takes it's toll on him at times too. He was so surprised to see Rafe. I don't think any of the people who were there when Rafe was could believe it was really him. It was great to see them together!

All piled in to the taxi next and off to find Tigist's grandpa...but no one knew exactly where he lived. I have no idea how, in the pouring rain no less, but our drivers managed to track him down. What an emotional time with so many relatives, neighbors and old friends suddenly flooding through the doorway. It was hard for the kids with the language barrier, which caused Mia to be pulled 50 ways at once trying to translate for everyone that wanted to say something. She did an amazing job of it though. I think the memories came back for Tigist, Mikias & Yohannes (Tigist's two younger brothers) though as the old faces kept coming through the door. One way to describe it all was an emotional tornado of chaos.

After that we decided to just come back to the guest house (where the internet is working...whoohoo!) and relax...it's definitely needed at this point.

Tomorrow it's meeting up with some other people, hitting the Kidane Mihret orphanage, probably Layla House again and meeting up with the in country directory of COEEF, Fitsum. So we'll sign off for now...see ya!!!

Update from the Hale bunch

Well hello there... Coming to you live and direct from the business center at the Addis Ababa Hilton. Things have been going good so far. Hopefully we'll straighten out the internet connection issue so that we can get on more often. We honestly haven't done much yet. Slept til about noon yesterday, got up and kickin' around, hit a bank and a little grocery store...got a few haircuts out of the way.We've also met some great people along the way. One guy at the guest house that is here picking up his adoptive 10 month old daughter is from Utah. He's been hanging with us some as we go out and about. We also met a really cool guy that works for the State Dept. Talked to him a bit and got his business card. Oh, and can't forget the lady we met on the plane from Rome to Istanbul. She's originally from South Africa and is now a fashion journalist in Milan...and asked us if we'd like to come to her beach house one of the days we're back in Milan...only a little over an hour on the train. I do believe we'll have to take her up on that. So we're off now to visit Tigist's grandpa and lots of other little things on our list of things to do. We'll check in later when we can!