Day Three

Saturday

Didn't sleep so great last night. Wanted to go to bed early – but it was so noisy!!! It was a national holiday yesterday and so i am not sure if that had something to do with the noise level or if it is just normal. We are very close to a busy street and also close to a highway and so there is street noise all the time. Also fairly close to the airport with lots of planes overhead. Throw in barking dogs, the calls to prayer at the local mosque, roosters and there you have it. I think i was up by 4:00. We did watch the sun come up over the mountains.

We had a nice breakfast and met Chris and Christine who arrived late last night. They live in Ayton. They also have court on Monday. At 10:00 we were to have a driver pick us up to take us to the Orphanage. As the time came closer i got more and more nervous!! Finally Germachew came and we were off. Remember how yesterday i thought that because it was a holiday that there were lots of people out and about.. well i guess that is just everyday. There are people everywhere - all the time. Its a bit intimidating for me – Mike is ready to get out and explore and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything!!!

Anyway, back to the story. In about 10 minutes we were sitting in front of the KVI Addis Orphanage honking our horn and waiting to be let in. Just like that the gate opened. It is a pleasant compound. It has palm trees and flowering bushes and some grassy areas. Being Saturday there is no school so there were kids around. Mainly older ones hanging around. The younger ones must have been busy doing something but we didn't really see them. We waited a few minutes and then were taken to the back of the house – the last room. There were 8 babies/toddlers on a grass mat playing with toys. I spotted Bedi right away. He was in his red striped t-shirt. He took one look at us and burst into tears. It took a while for the nannies to make him happy again and soon he was smiling. We sat down and started to play with the kids. Some were walking and most including Bedi were crawling. We started playing with the other kids and slowly with Bedi. He will need to take some time getting used to us! The other kids though were quite happy to play with us. I held one little girl and all of a sudden she was sleeping... Older kids and some of the other workers would come from time to time to the open window to find out who we were there for. Bedi liked to play with a car and some blocks and was playing peek-a-boo with both of us. At one point all the nannies left the room and there we were with 8 babies!!! Bedi came crawling towards me. I was already holding a little girl and he wanted me to pick him up.... i did and then soon the nannies came back and that was that. He is so small! I would say he looks about 9 months. And he has had a hair cut. His curls are much shorter than in the photos! He has good eye/hand coordination – was putting the rings on a tupperware ring stacker thing. He also was building block towers with me and knocking them down. He sits well on his own and can move pretty quickly – we will have to watch him for sure! I have a feeling that after a few visits he will be good to come with us. He has four teeth that we could see – the front two on the top and 2 on the bottom. Mike reminded me that we saw him stick his whole hand in his mouth. At one point the nannies had him laughing so much he would do a head dive straight forward.

The nannies have a strict schedule and we could see that play time was over. The toys went away and a stack of potties came out of the cupboard. Each kid had their diaper taken off and then was plunked on a potty. It was pretty funny cause some of them would use their legs to scoot around the room in their potty. One little girl managed to back herself under a crib and then escape. Not sure that the potties were getting any action though. It would have been a cute picture though to see them all lined up! Looked like it was soon going to be lunch time and then nap time. There were 6 cribs in the room and we saw Bedi's name tag and photo taped to the wall over top of his crib. Not sure who was sharing as there were 6 cribs and 8 babies. I think over all we were there for 1 hour. It seems like a longer time to me. It was fun and yet to hard to not want to just scoop him up!!! It was hard to play with the other kids and not just him... So, that was the end of the visit, Germachew brought us back to the guesthouse.

We had a bit of a rest and then it was lunch time. Since then we have been taking it easy, reading on our balcony and having a nap. Hopefully we will start sleeping better at night. Across the street from our guesthouse is some shanty houses. Some kids there saw us on the balcony and it seems that they know white people means money or candy. They were shouting up to us 'give us some chocolate'. They got braver and braver and came to the door at the gate which was open a bit and were still trying to get some chocolate... sorry kids we don't have any... They are obviously used to having people that stay here bring them treats.

After our rest, the girls at the guesthouse had prepared a coffee ceremony for the couple who are leaving tomorrow. It was beautiful with flowers and burning incense. The coffee – roasted and brewed right in front of us was AMAZING!!!!! So good!!! I think the caffeine helped to pick me up as i was dragging abit by then.

Chris and Christine invited us to go for dinner tonight. This included a walk - you know – out on the street... which has been freaking me out abit. Mike would love nothing more than to be out exploring and i am hesitating quite a bit. But when they asked i figured why not... they knew where we were going and it really was a short walk. It was a nice little restaurant (The Roadrunner) and we ate outside under tents they had set up in the courtyard. We had pizza that was very nice. We are soon going to watch a movie on our laptop and hope to get good and tired before we go to bed tonight. Already its much quieter than last night – hopefully we sleep a full night tonight!!