We Made it to Africa! - Posted Monday, March 8th

We are finally here! We had an insane flight, but we survived. Delta had 3 gate changes and the plane was 45 minutes late, which made us late to Dulles. Thankfully we met a wonderful Ethiopian woman in Minnesota named Rahel and she helped us rush through Dulles right to the gate for Ethiopian Air as it was boarding. They boarded everyone and then we sat there for over an hour before taking off. What a crazy long flight that was. Rahel was traveling with her 4-year-old daughter and Ethiopian air said they didn't have their reservation. After arguing with the guy for a half an hour they finally got on but their seats were split up. We offered them our seats so they could be together and Matt and I split up. It was a little traumatizing at first but we were glad to help and each met some really interesting people. Rahel's daughter Tiana is just beautiful and so sweet. She would stop and visit us every hour or two and give us hugs. She even went and asked the flight attendant to bring me extra water because she thought I looked thirsty. A little Ethiopian boy who was also four started to talk to me towards the end of our flight and I had a little buddy on my lap for an hour trying to teach me how to use a DS. He was adorable. Matt ended up sitting next to an Ethiopian pastor's kid and they talked for hours. Getting our visas in Addis, going through customs, and finding our luggage was a little stressful but not too bad. Our guest house is pretty nice- a lot nicer than we were thinking.

It is nearly 1am here so we are going to try and get some sleep. We are heading to the orphanage around 9:00am to meet Annie!! I will try to keep you posted. There is free wireless internet at the hotel but it is slower than dial-up, so we'll see how this goes.