Gotcha Day - Part I

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…

Wednesday night: I am restless. I know that it is unlikely that we will get an appointment with the U.S. Embassy on Monday, January 3, but I cannot talk myself out of being hopeful. Throughout the night, I get up and putter around the house. I research flight options. Again… and again. If we get a call in a few hours telling us that we have a confirmed Embassy appointment for this coming Monday, I want to go NOW. I refuse to wait a single day longer than is absolutely necessary.

Thursday, 12/30: I wait. At 7:45 a.m. the phone rings. It is Grandma, calling to say that she is headed outside to clean snow off of her X-Terra so that she is ready to come down to our house on a moment’s notice. Thank you, Grandma! I continue to wait.

At 8:21 a.m., the phone rings again. This time, it is our Case Manager. I take a deep breath, then answer, pretending to be calm. “Hi Angela, this is Kiersten. How are you doing?” “I’m fine…” (trying desperately to sound nonchalant). “Are you ready to get on a plane?” I don’t remember much after that. I think I lost my façade of calm. There may have been squealing. I hang up as quickly as possible and scramble.

Jon stayed home from work today, on the off chance that we would be leaving. He realizes quickly that we are going NOW – if not from my end of the conversation, then from my chaotic scrambling with a big grin on my face. If we get on the flight out of Portland this afternoon – the flight that I noted in the wee hours of the morning as the best possible option – we need to be out the door and on the road to the airport in four hours.

Jon starts to scramble as well. On top of last-minute packing, he must load all of the donation tubs and rocking chairs into the Jeep. It is going to take some creative juxtaposing to fit it all in, along with our pushing-the-limit carry-on bags and the baby car seat.

I call the travel agent to book tickets. Candy is frustratingly calm, the antithesis to my soccer-mom-on-speed persona. We need tickets now. We need to leave now. N. O. W.

Next, I call Grandma and tell her that we will be leaving around noon. She hangs up quickly so that she can scramble to be here in an hour. We explain to Matthew that we are finally going to Ethiopia to pick up Isabella and bring her home! He is a bit disoriented by this news. I remind him that he gets to begin opening his daily presents after we leave, and suddenly he cannot get us out of the door fast enough. I call our friends to ask for last-minute favors… garbage day on Tuesday, can you drive our cans down? We have the best friends!

Scramble. Hurry. Faster. NOW.

I call Candy again. She has not had time to look at flights yet because she is booking for another family who is leaving tomorrow. No Candy, we want to leave TODAY. Now. Hurry.

Candy finally calls back to tell us that the first flight that she can get us on is tomorrow. No, that does not work. There IS a flight that is open, here are the details, please check again. Okay, we can get on that flight, leaving from Portland at 5:45, but it will cost quite a bit more. That’s fine, call it my birthday present. We will not be able to relax until we have Isabella in our arms forever, so book the flight TODAY. Candy says that she will call us back when it is ticketed.

11:30, still no word from Candy. We call her again: she is working on it. We call again at noon: do we have to print anything out? If not, we will hit the road and you can send our itinerary and e-tickets to Jon’s phone. No need to print, so off we go.

By 12:30 a.m. we are on the road. We agree that duct taping the lids onto the donation tubs, and taping the two rocking chair boxes together as one piece of luggage, is probably the best plan, so we make a quick stop at the hardware store in Stevenson. About this time, Jon says that it feels like we are on the Amazing Race, and we are winning. Indeed.

We settle for Wendy’s drive-thru for lunch. If the plane crashes and this ends up being my last meal, I will feel cheated. 

Although the first leg of our flight is not until 5:45 p.m., we know that our luggage situation is going to take time, so we want to get to the airport as soon as possible.

We arrive at Portland International Airport at 2:00 p.m. and park in short-term parking to begin taping up our luggage. We tape around and around the two chair boxes, until not even the Box Maker could tell that they used to be two separate packages.

Next, as if big blue tubs with colored packing straps are not strange enough, I cut generous strips of duct tape and Jon carefully applies to each side of each lid to make sure that they hold. Our Ethiopian princess has a redneck accountant for a dad and a… well, we’ll describe mommy to you another time, dear.

The luggage is now ready to check.

With the help of two luggage carts, we take the five tubs into the airport. I try to act casual, standing next to the obscene pile of duct-taped blue tubs, while other passengers with cute compact designer bags walk by and try not to stare.

About this time, I realize that my almost-new Lands End casual walking shoes are starting to come apart at the seams.  They were meant to be an upgrade from the heels that I wore last trip.  Apparently, choosing good, practical traveling shoes is not my forte. Of course I did not pack a spare pair of shoes -- sidewalk chalk seemed more important -- so I spend idle moments for the rest of the trip wondering if anyone else notices the growing hole in the side of my shoe.  At least the seams on my pants are holding... for now. 

Jon finally returns from the Jeep with the rocking chairs, and with our 300 pounds of oversized and excess luggage, we cautiously approach the ticket counter. Several times, the ticket agent starts to help us, but gets interrupted by people who have either missed their flights, or are checking in for flights that are already boarding. We assure her that we do not mind waiting – we are still very early for our flight – and we know that we have an unusual request that requires us to be particularly patient and humble if we hope to obtain her mercy and grace.

While we wait, we hear all sorts of stories from passengers. My favorites: a guy at the next counter over explains that he missed his flight, but someone at the gate assured him that there was another flight that he could get on, the “Ghost Flight.” The ticket agent tells him that there is no other flight, but he continues to insist that there is: the Ghost Flight! Pssst. Dude. Come over here. I have a Spruce Goose to sell you. You can fly it to London Bridge and make a deal.

Then there is the gal who is trying to check in fewer than 20 minutes before her flight takes off, which is apparently against the rules. Her excuse? She points to the size of her bag and explains, indignantly, that it took her 20 minutes to lug it from the parking lot to the ticket counter. Hey lady, you think your bag is big? Check out our luggage situation. You don’t see us checking in late. Begging for fee waivers, maybe, but late? Never.

The first ticket agent is super nice, but also very distracted by the inane but all-in-a-day’s-work issues that she is dealing with. She hands us off to the second agent on duty. This agent is not nearly as sympathetic: her immediate response to our request to have the excess luggage fee waived is “I physically can’t do that!” I bite my tongue: my first tempted response to that statement would not help our situation. So, teetering on that fine line between persuasive and obnoxious, I timidly whisper “Well…….. the gal a month ago was able to do it. Perhaps there is someone else that we should talk to?” We are unceremoniously passed back to the first agent. We were her problem to begin with, and her problem we will remain, come Ghost Flight Dude or Heavy Luggage Chick.

When the first gal has a chance to catch her breath, we show her the very official looking letter from our agency confirming that the blue tubs accessorized with green luggage straps and gray duct tape do, in fact, contain donations bound for an orphanage in Ethiopia. It doesn’t get more sympathetic than that. We show her photos of Isabella to help make our case.

The agent explains that she is a Christian, really wants to waive the fee for us, and will try her best – that is all that we can ask. We explain that we know that she cannot waive the oversized luggage fee on the rocking chairs, and we have come prepared to pay that, no problem. If she can find a way to waive the excess luggage fee on the two extra tubs, though, we would be forever grateful. Otherwise, we will have to decide whether to leave the two tubs with toys and clothes behind. Our finances are beyond strapped, but January 7 is Christmas in Ethiopia, so leaving tubs behind would be a very tough choice.

First, she calls to check whether the plane to Seattle, a small plane, can even accommodate the amount and size of our luggage. Thankfully, it can. Then she calls her supervisor, who approves waiving the fee on one item. We decide to pay the fee for the second tub. We’ll deal with the credit card bill later. At this point, what’s a few hundred more drops in the bucket? Noah had better have room in that ark…

In the meantime, in the almost two hours that we have interacted off-and-on with the agent, we have started to get to know her. We learn a bit about her and her family: please pray with us that her son finds his way back to the truth.

We hand her our credit card, and she rings up the fee… for the single oversized piece of luggage, the two rocking chairs duct-taped as one. She does not offer an explanation for the omission of the other excess fee; we are still uncertain whether she found a way to waive it or whether she paid it herself, but she shushes our question, smiles and wishes us a good trip. We give her our blog address to thank her; her kindness set the tone for the rest of our trip.

By the time we shift some items between tubs so that each one comes in at or under 50 pounds exactly (weighing on the bathroom scale at home, not so accurate), get everything tagged to be checked on through to Addis Ababa, take everything over to the luggage security area to be scanned and searched (and, carefully re-taped by Homeland Security), move the Jeep to long-term parking, and finally make our way through security and to the gate for our flight, it is almost 5:00 p.m. Our flight to Portland boards at 5:15, so we did not allow too much time at the airport after all.

As we are boarding our flight, we see the luggage cart pull up to the plane. Our luggage amounts to half of the checked luggage for the entire flight. Awesome.

The flight to Seattle is fun. The smaller the plane, the more it feels like you really are flying, rather than just sitting in a really uncomfortable seat in a tube balanced on top of a bunch of noisy, vibrating washing machines.

We sit in the front of the plane, and the flight attendant starts talking to us out of desperate boredom. By the time we land, the front half of the plane has heard our adoption story. We are just a little excited.

In Seattle, we meet Auntie Jill for dinner to help pass the time before our redeye flight to Washington DC. Jill drives us to Red Robin, where I down the obligatory four (or was it six?) diet cokes. Jill drops us back off at the airport, and almost immediately Jon realizes that he has left his phone in the car. The car that is now heading north on I-5.

We desperately try to reach Jill on my cell phone: Jon without his phone for over a week is an unthinkable tragedy. I am watching the clock tick away the minutes as Jon dials and redials Jill. She finally answers her phone a half hour later, as she is getting home. Jill turns around and drives back to the airport, on treacherously icy roads, to deliver Jon’s phone. She is a saint.  We make it through security just in time to board our next flight.

Friday, 12/31. Happy Birthday to me! Being on a flight to pick up my baby girl is the best birthday present ever.

The Seattle - DC flight is uneventful. We doddle around the Dulles satellite terminal, trying to figure out if there is a way to check in for our flight to Addis without leaving the terminal and coming back. Finally, we accept the inevitable and get on a shuttle. As we are sitting there, we look up to see the M family from Indiana get on the same shuttle. Until now, we did not know that they are not only traveling a day early too, but on the same flight from DC to Addis. We are all smiles, excited to travel together to pick up our daughters.

We check in at the Ethiopian Airlines counter, get our boarding passes, and go back through security to the terminal to board our flight. We have time to grab breakfast, and take turns with the M's watching each others’ luggage.  Joe M. regales us with stories from various missions trips to places far more undeveloped and remote than Ethiopia; we listen wide-eyed and in awe. 

In line to board the last leg of our itinerary, the flight from DC to Addis, we meet a couple who are traveling with their toddler to visit missionary friends in Uganda. Their three children, including the daughter traveling with them on this trip, are African-American, adopted domestically from foster care. They are very excited for us, and I realize, again, that everyone has an interesting story to share. This will be a recurring theme (subplot? sideshow?) of our trip.

The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 777 is on par with any other first-tier flight.  All of our concerns about flying this airline evaporate somewhere over the Atlantic. 

Our flight departs late: a long fifteen hours after we board, we disembark in Addis Ababa.

Saturday, January 1:  Happy New Year! Because we are seated towards the front of the plane, we are happily among the first off. We race to the visa line, and make it through after a short wait.

Then, on to immigration/entry. While I wait in line, Jon walks over to the currency exchange counter. The rate is favorable – 16.5 birr to 1 USD – and it is much more convenient to exchange now, rather than later. The line for entry is so short at this point that I keep waiving people by me as I wait. Jon later recounts, in admiration, the checks, controls, and cross checks at the exchange counter, where everything is done manually, just as it is in the visa room and customs. I am suitably impressed. Yes, we are geeks.

We pick up our luggage (which all made it intact, thanks to the miracle of duct tape and a few pleading prayers) and make our way through customs. They ask to search one tub, and we graciously oblige, as if we have a choice. This time, they ask whether we have any cold medicine. We do not. I wisely stop myself from saying “last time we did, but you didn’t ask!” Somehow I suspect that Ethiopian customs agents will have about as much sense of humor about these things as American customs agents… I am still confused as to what is and is not okay to bring into the country as donations, but I decide that now is not the time to ask.

With three luggage carts and the help of a porter, we slowly make our way into the outer reaches of the airport. The Riviera van driver immediately spots us, and begins to lead us to the van. I explain that the M’s are coming, they will just be awhile longer because they were seated at the back of the plane. The driver continues waiting for them, and directs us outside to another Riviera bus that has other hotel guests in transit.

We check into the hotel at 11 a.m. What a relief to be here! No more worries about flight delays or missed Embassy appointments. The end is in sight, with few potential obstacles left.

The front desk gives us our schedule: Hannah’s Hope staff will pick us up at 3:00 p.m. to get Isabella. Deep breaths. Gotcha Day is finally here! We have just enough time to unpack, shower, and relax.

Jon is feeling a bit overwhelmed. Stepping off of the plane into the reality of Ethiopia is a lot to process. Poverty in the U.S., while every bit as real, is still very different than poverty in a developing country.

We go down to the lobby a few minutes before 3:00 p.m. The M’s are there, as excited as we are. When we arrive at Hannah’s Hope, Jon holds our baby girl for the first time. I snap this photo…

…just before she puckers up and begins to sob. She cries... and cries… and cries. She cries so much that the special mothers insist on taking her from us and feeding her themselves, because she refuses to eat for us. Even crying, Jon holds her every minute that he can, while I run around trying to do everything on The List.

First, love on Daniel, the son of a couple who passed court a week before us but are still waiting for confirmation of an embassy appointment. Our hearts break for them. Daniel is a sweetie; his smile melts my heart. We pray his parents get to bring him home soon.

Next, pass out photos that I took last trip. I expected the kids to like printed photos of themselves, but I was not prepared to be mobbed. Within seconds, I cannot hand the photos out fast enough. The kids are clamoring, and the special mothers all come running to see what the commotion is all about. I am convinced that a couple of them shake their heads in disapproval of the chaos that I am causing. One of the staff comes over to help, to split up the crowd of kids before someone gets trampled.  One little three year old girl starts crying when she thinks that she isn’t going to get a photo of herself; I find her photo and hand it to her as fast as I can, stopping the tears. The special mothers see their photos in the mix and come to get them too – they enjoy their photos almost as much as the kids!

Finally, give the special mothers the photos that other adoptive families have sent with me, of their kids thriving in their new families. As the special mothers look through the photos, I realize again how bittersweet their jobs are.

Isabella is forever our daughter, so cry as she may, they finally send us back to the hotel with her. She stops crying in the van. It is the first time, in her memory, that she has been in a vehicle, and she finds it very interesting.

She cries a bit more in the hotel room, but then seems to resign herself to the fact that she is stuck with us. We discover that she enjoys reading books...

 ...and talking to Daddy.

Isabella is the most beautiful girl in the world, ever.  We love her so much it hurts.  Jon admits that, already, he is so bonded with her that if something goes wrong and we do not get to bring her home this time, one of us will have to stay with her, we cannot bear to leave her again. 

We feed her and she falls asleep. We cuddle and snuggle her all night long, cherishing every moment.