We arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Monday June 20, 2011 a little later than expected, around 9:00am. We went through the (long) line to get our Visas, then we looked for our bags, then I stood in line for Immigration while Mike exchanged some money at the bank. After all of that, we were at Customs, where we ran our bags through an x-ray machine and when we realized that no one was even looking at the x-ray, we grabbed our bags and left! Thankfully, when we walked out of the airport, there was Abel, our guide, holding a sign that said "Bethany". He welcomed us to Addis, and we hopped in the van to go to our guesthouse.
We arrived at the guesthouse around 11:00am, where we met the owner, Burtikan. She welcomed us, let us get settled, and then we had a delicious pasta lunch and were able to get to know her better! After lunch, we took a quick nap, and then Abel's assistant, Senait, came to pick us up to meet Keane for the first time!
We arrived at the orphanage, and they took us to a small room with 2 toddler beds in it, and 4 scared toddlers sitting in them and staring at us. We tried to get them to warm up to us, and finally they came to sit on the floor with us. Then, they brought in Keane and another baby. We were a bit overwhelmed, because we wanted to spend time with our son, but were required to share our time with the other kids. Mike was able to feed him some mango juice, and we did get a lot of pictures, most of which were blurry, because there was so many kids in motion! :) A lot of people have asked me what the moment we met Keane was like, and I'll have to say that it wasn't a magical moment like I would have imagined - it felt like he was just always part of our family. I don't know how else to explain it. We stayed at the orphanage for close to 2 hours, and then we were taken back to the guesthouse, where we fell asleep and didn't wake up until the next morning! We had been awake for 36 hours, and with all of the emotion of the day, we were exhausted!
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