Travelling to another country requires a lot of planning and preparation for anyone. Having two week's notice AND being in the Army (and not on orders) requires just a bit more!
Typical planning and prep: purchase plane tickets, purchase new suitcase (if needed), purchase travel size toiletries and what nots, purchase culturally appropriate clothing, purchase, purchase, purchase...noticing a theme here?
We've also been purchasing some clothing for Ephraim. We have a couple pairs of pants and a few short sleeved shirts (he's wearing sweats and crocs in his photo). I hate crocs. Hate. Have you ever been in a crocs store? It gave me a headache. They're great for kids but even then only when going to the beach or pool. They always go flying off when the kids run, how is that safe?! Anyways, I had a hard time figuring out what size to buy him. I did a facebook pole and GEESH! Ok, friends that know your children are giants, don't even bother to tell me their size, seriously. And I got a lot of "just buy him flip flops or crocs" Or "buy them there". Yes, flip flops and crocs are forgiving in size and yes, Africa does have shoes to buy. BUT, I want him to have shoes he can run in without them falling off. AND we see him on our first day for a few hours and don't know if we will see him after that. SO, we need to bring the shoes with us. I decided on one pair each of size 11 and 12. So we are bringing him pants, shirts, shoes, socks and underwear. All of these will be left behind when we bring him home so we'll have to do this again in a few months! We are also bringing him a small photo album of the family, our house, his room not sure if we'll put the dogs in there yet (cultural thing, new blog post). As well as a recordable story book with us reading it.
Other preparations include getting necessary immunizations. In our case yellow fever is required. Other recommended shots...typhoid, hepatitis A and B, tetanus, polio, meningitis and for high risk areas, rabies. Well thankfully, we're not going to a high risk area so rabies is out. Hep A & B we got when we moved to Germany, as well at tetanus. Polio, you get that as a kid...that leaves yellow fever, typhoid and meningitis. Chris was deployed all last year so he only needed yellow fever. Punk. Typhoid is only good for two years and I last had it in early 2002. Ugh. Typhoid hurts, I remembered that even ten years later. I yelled when she stuck me with yellow fever...Chris went next and made fun of me. -They put the yellow fever shot in the fat of your underarm (not armpit, granny arm area). Of course I have more fat there than Chris so it hurt me more...even left a purple bruise the size of a quarter.- Typhoid went in the same arm and meningitis on the right. It hurt to move my arms around that day and most of the next (yesterday). Well during the night I noticed that my right arm was really hurting where the shot went in. And I feel like poo. I looked it up, yeah, I'm feeling all the common side effects of the meningitis shot. Headaches, body aches, low fever, sore throat...even as I type I keep getting cold, then sweating. All that complaining I did about how the yellow fever and typhoid hurt, it's the meningitis that is kicking my butt. It should only last a few days. It had better be gone by Sunday, we have tickets to the Bengals game (Who Dey!).
For those of us with dogs, getting them up to date on their shots is necessary as well. We don't usually kennel them so they all needed the kennel cough vaccine. We are placing them with a dog sitter that keeps them in her home without cages. :) We already had her booked for the week of Thanksgiving so I just moved it to the next week.
So, purchases check, shots check, dogs check...online SERE training, leave packet signed and approved, foreign country brief and who knows what else...check? I know Chris did about 3 hours of the wrong online training...then about 2 of the correct one. Leave packet is done but now he's doing a different one?? He got his brief yesterday but if Ethiopia goes up another threat level he can't travel there....
Oh the Army makes things so much funner!!
We also purchased (there's that word again) some fun party favors for the kids at the orphanage. When Chris asked me yesterday if I needed anything from the PX, I said some party horns/noise makers. You know, the cardboard horn things. Well he came home without those but sooo much more! All of the things in the green packaging, he got. :P Also, you can see some of the travel sized stuff I purchased. Don't forget the sunblock!
There are still several things to get done. We will need the most recent update of our home study (because it's being finished now...). We need to print off a gajillion different things. We need to get crisp $100 bills, dated 2001 and sooner to exchange. Oh and I need to do laundry!
But for now, I'm going to eat some breakfast and sit on my butt because, as I said earlier, I feel like poo.
Wow oh wow!
So we thought we would be traveling sometime in January for our court date...wrong!!
We travel two days after Thanksgiving!!!
This would be a pretty lame blog post if I didn't fill you in on the story right? OK here it is...
We knew when we got matched that the courts were closed for the rainy season. Over the past two years we would get an email telling us when they closed and again when they opened back up...
The scene: K-9 Kennels on Ft Leavenworth
Occasion: Unit Activation Ceremony (Army talk, I know, a whole other blog!)
When: October 24th around 11:00
We're all standing around mingling, waiting for the ceremony to begin. I grab my phone to put it on silent. I notice I have an email. It's from Holt. Our case has been submitted to the courts for a date....
The scene: The PX (Army store, like a Walmart without the groceries and with name brand stuff)
Occasion: Killing time before I meet my friend to take a financial class on Post
When: November 7th, around 1:30
I'm walking through the clothing section at the PX. I look at my phone and see that I have an email. It's from Holt. It says "Congratulations, you've been assigned a court date in Ethiopia of November 27, 2012!". I stop and say (loudly) "OH MY..". An employee is standing nearby and asks if I'm OK. I answered "yeah?" then "yeah.". Then I walk away shaking.
We get to meet him. We get to finally meet him. All these years of wondering what our child will look like and now we get to hold him. Hug him. Kiss him. Make hand gestures to try and communicate with him. Give him some new clothes. A photo book of his new family. A story book with our voices reading it to him.
I walked around the store for about 10 minutes then go out to my car and pull to the back of the parking lot where I'm to meet my friend so we can go to our class. I'm parked facing the entrance to the main stores on Post so there are a lot of people driving by that can see me...I'm bawling by now. Happy, but bawling. I call my sister and apologize for not being able to go to Orlando to visit her for Thanksgiving. Being the awesome person that she is, she's happy for us and says it's no big deal and it's totally worth it. As soon as my friend gets there, I simply hand her my phone with the email pulled up. She looks at me, sees I've been crying and is a little speechless at first (or I was still in shock and simply didn't hear anything she said :P). Chris is back down in Ft Leonard Wood for SRT training (military SWAT). He hardly ever had cell reception so I texted him. He got the text just as they were about to do a drill. I didn't want him to be distraced and not do well so I sent another text assuring him that I would have everything under control.
The next day I woke up quite early for me, 7am. It was too early to get much done but I had a list. 1. Call the travel agent Holt provided. 2. Find out what we need to do for visas. 3. Call preventive medicine on Post and schedule for immunizations.
Well the travel agency is in the Pacific Time Zone and opened at 8am (10am) for me. The Ethiopian Embassy in DC wasn't answering their phone and I was having a hard time finding the phone number fore preventive medicine on Post!!
Thanks to some other ET adoptive friends, I found out we can get our visas in the airport when we land. I finally found the phone number for preventive medicine and now know that we can just walk in for our shots. I took a nap. Shortly after 10am, I called the travel agency and booked our flights!
Then I called the dogsitter and changed our booking from the week of Thanksgiving to the week after, called the Vet on Post and scheduled to get the kennel cough vaccine for the dogs, went onto the United Airlines website and signed up for the frequent flyers program, found our passports, forwarded our intinerary to Holt, talked to the director of Africa programs at Holt and booked our hotel (through her) and got other answers to questions I had AND added the travel dates to our white board calendar! I'm sure there is more I got done but it's a bit of a blurr now.
The trip will be very short and we will only get to spend a few short, precious hours with him.
We leave on Saturday, November 24th (Yeah, in two weeks!), mid morning...arrive in Addis Ababa (where we will be staying) late in the evening on Sunday. We get to meet Ephraim on Monday, have our court date on Tuesday and play tourist on Wednesday the leave late Wednesday night and return home Thursday evening. Ouch. (Some families leave the same day of their court date!)
I don't know if we will get to spend more time with Ephraim on Tuesday or Wednesday but I hope so. I think I may need to bring a half full suitcase so I can fill it up with stuff to bring home! We want to have things in our home to remind us of Ethiopia and the culture.
I think the next two weeks are going to fly by so fast I'm not even going to remember baking pumpkin pies or eating way too much turkey. Even with Chris' deployments, I don't think I've ever wanted time to fly so fast as I do now. I'm pushing back tears as I proof read this even, I'm not sure when they'll stop...April maybe??
