Saturday January 16, 2010

My stomach has been churning for 3 days, wondering if they arrived in one piece with all of their baggage. I realized that on my trips to Ethiopia, I didn't email anyone at home for the first 3, 4 or maybe even 5 days. Things are just too crazy and finding an internet connection is not a priority, and often not easy. However, now that I am the one at home I am not happy about having to wait 4 days for an email!

This morning I was laying in bed and heard fast footsteps running toward my room. Harper (9 years old) arrived at my bedside and yelled "Mom! Mom! Nana and Boppa sent you an email and it has a swear word in it, a REALLY bad one!" I don't know what was more disturbing, that she had just read a swear word ("a really bad one!") or that she was reading my email and surfing the internet while I was sleeping! I ran downstairs to my computer and here is what I found:

"sher,

we are here internet is slow and I am impatient. We are ddoing well trying to get a phone the guest is supposed to get wifi next week. Karen is working today sturday. sheis feeling good about her job. Me - had a meeting yesterday with Jo. Basicall she said observe evaluate and help out as you see fit. So much for job descriptions. We have aroom with bath hot water when we have water. I'm still operating on geezer timne and with the time change I had 7 hours sleep in 3 days. I feel good though. It took me an hour of fucking around to get to mail. Anyway we are ok and will contact you when we get a phone."

Later today, while I was out of town, Rick and the girls spoke to my parents by phone. They reported that all is well. The time difference is 9 hours, so they had just returned from an evening at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant with great food and traditional dancing. They spent some time at the CHSFS care center and saw pictures of Massy (our 6 year old adopted from there in 2005) and Harper displayed on the wall. The staff didn't believe them when they said "Those are our grandchildren!". They have rented a cell phone - I imagine due to the internet frustrations mentioned above. We tried to tell them to type their emails in a word document and then copy them onto an email when they are able to connect, but apparently this was too much to process at this point :) Being technologically challenged is not working in their favor on this adventure.

The Ethiopian Epiphany celebration is on Tuesday and my Dad will begin working at the school after that. I am urging them to send pictures of anything and everything that they have seen so far, but again the internet connection problems may prevent that at this point.