One Year Ago - Our Family of Six (cont.)

First of all, sorry for not posting my recaps of one year ago in consecutive days. I was so proud of myself for recalling many memories of the events of Samson joining our family our first days in Ethiopia. But then failed to continue.

I have a good excuse - I have been away from my computer for four days, chaperoning a youth event out of town. I did plan to have the rest of my posts complete and scheduled to post automatically while I was gone, but time got away from me.

This post will be a recap of our time after Samson joined our family on August 11th to our homecoming.

On Wednesday, August 12th, we hung out with our children at the guest house. Then, during the afternoon naps, a few of us parents renting a taxi and went shopping for the second time. Our agency took us shopping one of the first days, but we only had a small window of time and I felt rushed.

Our first shopping trip, I spent more time bargaining with the merchants than actually looking. Thinking back, it would have been a much more productive shopping trip if I would have just paid what ever price they quoted me. Everything was so inexpensive to begin with and what I saved in bargaining amounted to only a couple dollars.

During our second shopping trip, we stopped at the Leper Colony gift shop. I did not mind paying full price for their beautiful items. I bought table linens, bedding, leather and cotton woven purses, t-shirts and other miscellaneous items. Then, the taxi brought us to the same market we shopped a few days earlier. It was here that I purchased more bags of coffee and some other small items.

Random pictures:

The guest house we stayed in served as the care center at one time. During the farewell ceremony, the kids put their hand print on this wall.

His first morning waking up to our family:

Cooking classes with the guest house cooks:

On Thursday, August 13, our family prepared for our flight home to the US. But before we left, our guest house manager walked a couple of us to another orphanage - AHOPE. It was here that I met my friend Bonnie's beautiful son. He joined his forever family several months after our visit:

Back at the guest house, we said our last goodbyes to many new friends, loaded the bus one last time and proceeded on to the airport. We had an interesting experience at the airport and I wrote about it here. Because of this experience, we are now involved in this.

Our time at the airport got even more interesting after we learned that they were repairing a crack in the wing of our plane coming from Khartoum. We spent an extra 6 hours in the Addis airport waiting for the plane with the repaired crack, which made us miss our connecting flight out of Amsterdam.

Despite our unexpected delay, we remained fairly positive throughout the flight home. The kids, including Samson, were amazingly cooperative and never complained.

After over 30 hours of traveling, we landed at the Minneapolis airport and were greeted by family and friends: