Mark eating Qudoba at the Indianapolis Airport. Next stop...JFK Airport, New York.
We were enjoying our time before our first flight until we saw that our flight was DELAYED and this meant that we would not make our connecting flight in NY. First panic of the trip... PRAY! Called my family & friends to pray & my sister blasted it on Facebook and we immediately had our pray warriors! Mark talked to the airlines and we ended up getting a different flight...Amen!
We made it to JFK Airport at night very tired. From there we were on our longest flight to Istanbul, Turkey. It was about 9 hours. Turkish Airlines were very nice! Landing in the Turkish Airport was another story than the flight. Once we got there, it was very confusing. There were people EVERYWHERE! We had to hurry, we got a little lost and help was very hard to find. We finally stood in line to ask for directions, while in line I met a girl about my age from France and she was going to Ethiopia as well. So when we figured out that we were losing time to make it to our flight to Ethiopia, and we finally had a direction where to go, Mark, me, and a nice girl from France RAN (just like in the movie HOME ALONE LOL...no really we did)! I am not exaggerating when I say that we literally made it to the security line to get through to minutes later board our flight to Ethiopia. While in the security line, we were looking for another lady from our agency that was adopting and flying with us. We would be with her throughout the entire trip. I was just asking Mark, "How are we going to find, Judy, if we don't know what she looks like." Like a couple minutes later a lady ahead of us in line, asked us if we were the Trump's. She had just said a prayer to find us and we were right behind her. So we quickly got acquainted before boarding our flight.
Just met our friend, Judy, just 10 minutes prior to this pic! Her daughter was in the same orphanage as our girls. We are celebrating getting through security on time...BARELY!
Turkish Cargo Plane
Istanbul, Turkey
Finally in Ethiopia!
Praise God we actually made it to Ethiopia! It was LATE...we were TIRED, but we couldn't find some of our suitcases...
Fun times at baggage claim!
Yep...we were missing a couple major pieces of luggage, well mainly me, which explains why I wore the same outfit A LOT! It could be worse... : )
Just a few hours to sleep (literally) until our big court date!
We arrived to see Ethiopia in the dark. Our guest house owner picked us up and took us to our destination. We finally got to bed at about 3 A.M. and we had to get up at about 6 A.M. to get ready for our most important day of our adoption. This court date will make it, or break it. Thoughts of this night: Jet-lag, no sleep, excited, nervous, belly ache, loud- howling dogs...
The next morning we met the other three families that we would spend the rest of our week with, spend the next 6 months fighting for our children with, spend time on phone calls and sending emails with and will forever have a special place in our hearts. What an intimate situation to meet total strangers in. We all had this common bond and is was so easy to get to know one another. We were all tired, happy to be there, but anxious. We were all in the same situation: same agency, same orphanage, same fate. We ate our breakfast together at one table and crammed in an old, beat-up mini-van together heading to the court house in Addis Ababa...together...
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