I'm Ready

I had to get my last Hep A shot today. While I was there, I had the nurse give me a flu shot as well. Might as well take care of EVERYTHING before I go.

Last week, before I actually passed court, I took a gamble and bought our airline tickets at a FANTASTIC rate. Thank you Brady at Golden Rule Travel. You RULE!!! He saved us over $400 per ticket. The only problem was, it was a special and we had to buy them before I actually passed court. If I had failed court, I would have had to pay a hefty fee to change the tickets. But, God is good and I passed court the first time through.

We (my mom, sister and I) are flying Lufthansa. We fly direct from PDX to Frankfurt Germany, where we have ONE HOUR to get off the plane, and run to the next. I sure hope our luggage makes the quick layover. We then fly from Frankfurt to Addis with a quick stop in Sudan. Total travel time is something like 19 hours.

Unfortunately, because we come back soooooo close to Christmas, our travel time on the way back is considerably longer. We leave Addis on Saturday night, December 20th. We fly to Frankfurt with a quick stop in Sudan. We then have a SEVEN HOUR layover. UGH! Then we fly from Frankfurt to Washington D.C. where we have a two hour layover, and then fly D.C. to Portland, were we will arrive Sunday night (Dec 21st) and 9pm. The total trip is something like 30 hours.

I didn't want to fly through Germany, since Ethiopian citizens need to get a transit visa to walk through the airport. So, now I have to spend a day while in Addis at the German Embassy trying to get Sabah her transit visa. I've heard it's a pretty easy process, but it was something I wanted to try to avoid.

So, I'm ready to go. Tickets have been purchased, shots have been given, bags are pretty much packed (I'm a total packing nerd....I will pack and repack about 100 times from now until we leave), and donations have been collected. We are taking 5 18-gallon totes filled with donations to the orphanage. We have one filled with shoes, one with school supplies, one with playground toys, one with sweaters/jackets, and one with underwear. Actually, we still need to fill the underwear tote, so if anyone would like to donate some NEW children's underwear, it would be greatly appreciated.

Now, what to do for the next 5 weeks (and one day) until we leave? Daydream I guess!