We're home!!

I'm going though my photos/video and will post some. We got home around 4pm yesterday (Friday). It's 1AM now and since it's the middle of the African Afternoon, Melat and I are wide awake so I indulged Destiny and let her get up too (Melat woke her up to play with the doll that giggles that Destiny showed her--she loves it!-Thanks Sherrie!)

Melat thinks Destiny is Abesha so pretty much just spoke Amharic to her, but has rapidly gotten the idea that maybe that isn't working (The two of them just sit aroudn saying "What?" to each other.) Melat is exploring the house. Mundionot? she says, and points. "What's this?"

We're struggling with food, she barely ate on the plane. She recognized a box of Mac and cheese in the cupboard, so I'm making that and we gave her a very old banana but she didn't seem to mind. (Finally, someone here who will eat the heavily freckled bananas!).

I wish everyone could have seen her at the Amsterdam Airport with her friend Musee--they learned about drinking fountians, McDonalds, glass elevators, escaltors and moving sidewalks. It was hilarious. I have a video of the two of them using the elevator (up and down, and up and down and up and down). I'll ask his mom if it's OK to post, and when I hear back from her I'll know if I can.

Tigist was a great help to me, and I think she had a good time. For all the worry and doubts about taking a teenager on a homeland visit while doing an adoption, it wasn't a problem for us (By the way, for those not family, the added wrinkle is that Tigist isn't part of our family, she's a friend's teenage daughter). She's very mature, and very patient and good with kids, so she was truly a wonderful traveling companion and translator and baby-watcher in those times when I'd really needed it.

Ethiopia was a great trip--we had so much fun, and I can't wait to go back. Next time maybe just as a tourist? We'd so wanted to see Lallibella and the wildlife parks outside the city, but didn't because we were able to have Melat with us--and at the time of traveling, we thought we'd have to visit her at a transition home, and during the time waiting on the waiver, we'd do the tourist things farther out.