Lichty's Adventure to the Land of a Thousand Hills... and Beyond: Filling in the Blanks

Hi Everyone! We are so happy to be home and feeling about back to normal now after a week and a half at home. While we were in Rwanda and Ethiopia we had a much more difficult time using the internet and getting onto Blogger was impossible in Ethiopia. Now that I have complete use of my brain again I wanted to fill in the areas we didn't get to share during our trip and especially pictures since they were so hard to upload from Africa. If you do not want all the wordy parts, I know I will probably lose most everyone with my details, please feel free to jump down to the pictures :)

First a summary of our trip:
Apr 30-May 2 Flights to Denver, DC, Ethiopia, Uganda and finally Kigali Rwanda

May 2 Straight to the Ministry to speak with our case worker

May 3 Back to the Ministry for our appointment with our case worker

May 4 To the US Embassy for the notary on the document our case worker requested (something no one has ever needed, but us and one other family had to have it in order to receive our referrals, the fun really starts)

May 5 Document submitted to our case worker, our referral sent to the Minister for signature, she slips in and out while we are in her secretary's office :)

May 6 Back to the Ministry to await the Minister's signature, we meet her and she says it is signed and waiting, we await the secretary processing our receiving it, then we finally get the packet we have long anticipated and see Isaac's face!!
Next we head to The Sector to sign our Act of Adoption, we meet a couple of the nuns from the orphange and go to Home of Hope with them. First time to meet Isaac, so exciting that many of the families in our group are there visiting their children, we felt a little like zoo animals during the meeting, but love the 100+ pictures our friend Anna took for us! and video by Dillon!
After visiting hours ended we went to the court house to put in our request for a court date, the Judge went home early not feeling well so we will have to wait

May 7 & 8 The Weekend, again a long waiting time even in Africa :) We did get to visit Isaac at the orphanage, we went shopping and to a wonderful church service. The music was awesome! We arrived at the service and hour and a half after it started and enjoyed the next 2 hours of service. We were able to enjoy Mother's Day with our newest son and speak with the big kids by Skype.

May 9 First thing was our court appointment, we spoke with the Judge in his chambers, requesting adoption of Isaac, he loved seeing Isaac's picture, then we visited Isaac in the morning visitation hours. We returned at 3pm for our court ruling, we were able to sit in the court reading of all his rulings, for 5 cases, all in French, but still interesting. We stood in front while he read ours then when he paused he looked at us and said quietly (even more quiet than the usual Rwandan whisper) "it is done" and smiled at us, we signed and waited for the rest of the reading to be finished. Then we celebrated! Isaac is legally ours.

May 10 We are able to take Isaac for the day, and we submitted our application for Isaac's passport

May 11 & 12 We didn't accomplish anything on the adoption, the Minister had been let go and we were awaiting the swearing in of the new Minister since our court ruling was after the precious Minister's last day (by 1 day).

May 13 We arrived at the Ministry at 6:45am and watched everyone arrive for the day. We spoke with the Minister's secretary and our case worker. We then met the new Minister and spoke with her in her new office. She signed our To Whom letter, the official document to travel with Isaac. We then had to wait for a new document she requested we sign be drafted. After 4 hours we were done and left the Ministry for the last time.
Jeff went to the Emigration office to show our To Whom so we could obtain Isaac's passport, they finished it in an hour and a half!
Sheri is at the US Embassy, most of our group has been in for appointments all morning, and submitted our documents begin the visa process. When Jeff brought the passport we were able to sign everything. The consular, awesome women Jean, was there for her last day. She usually processes 2, at most 5, adoption visas in a day, and with our group, 1 family with another agency and 2 independent families she had 14 visas requests. She was absolutely great! We finished up at 3pm, she had our group in since 9am and usually closes at 1pm. She worked so hard and by 6pm all the dads had received all the packets. Praise God! All 9 of our families got to travel on time.
10:30pm we head to the airport.

May 14 We have been at the airport since yesterday! But after two and a half hours we have made it through security and check in. Then we submitted our exit visas, second security and boarded the plane. Many thanks to our travel buddies who kept the plane from leaving without us!!
Flight to Uganda then Addis Ababa Ethiopia, wonderful guide Y met us at the airport and we were taken to our hotel to drop our luggage. The awesome, buff housekeeping women hauled our 50 pound bags up to our room on the 5th floor (yep, no elevator :) ) Then we went for the kid's medical appointments, Isaac got a clean bill of health, but we are missing his vaccination records. The wonderful Y and T get right on it. We skipped lunch today for a much needed nap.

May 15 We went to a great church service at the International Evangelical Church, the pastor is from North Carolina and members are from all over the world. The worship music was handpicked by God for sure! We had a wonderful lunch after. Then we received awesome news, God was taking care of us again. Our awesome POA P in Rwanda had gotten our vaccination records and met up with the family adopting through another agency who we had befriended at HOH and they hand delivered Isaac's records to Ethiopia for us! We were stuck trying to find out how to get these or getting Isaac re-vaccinated or we wouldn't be able to bring him to the US.

May 16 Took Isaac's vaccination records to the clinic and completed our request for the Embassy for the visa, yes again.

May 17 Our guides submitted all our families' documents to the embassy to request visa interviews. We found out we needed 3 documents from Rwanda translated to English for the Embassy. Y took me and one of the fathers to a translation office to try to get these done. Amazing, between the 2 of us we needed 4 documents translated from French to English in 2 hours, it cost us about $43 to get this done, crazy! We had the needed documents in had in time.

May 18 We all went to the US Embassy for our interview appointments at 9am. It went so well, we just waited our turn and each spoke with the man for a few minutes and he told us to have our representative return at 3pm. We then had a good lunch and visited the Lion Zoo. The zoo was definitely not my favorite time, very depressing, but good to be out and about instead of worrying about what could go wrong. We also went to Ethiopian Air office to change plane tickets. Y brought our Travel Packets a little after 3 and we had our kids' passports back with the IR-3 visas (the good ones!) We celebrated and began packing.

May 19 A small group of us went to a coffee factory and had a tour. It was very interesting and so funny how we could walk through a factory with all these machines with babies in our arms, so not happening in the US :) It was fun and we enjoyed the tour. Then we had a great lunch, finished packing and visited with our fellow travelers a bit.
At 5pm we left for the airport. Our best friends were leaving too and we got to travel home together! We got through security and check in much more quickly this time. Then we had some dinner and hung out until it was closer to our boarding time. In Ethiopia you have to go through a second security to get to the gate. We felt a bit like we were in a cell, there are plenty of chairs but we are surrounded by glass walls and there are no restrooms and anything like water to purchase at this point. We had 1 remaining hour to board, then our long flight began. We had a fuel stop in Rome and then touched down in DC 16 hours later.

May 20 Which brought us to Friday. We got through customs very quickly and rechecked our bags, got boarding passes and through security again. We enjoyed the restrooms right away! Then we had some wonderful Chipotle and visited with our friends at the gate. We had seperate flights to Denver but got to say goodbye at DIA. Our final flight to Boise got us in at 9pm, 48 hours after we had last slept.

You can see why we were out of it for the first week home :) Now, for anyone still hanging in with my endless post, here are the pictures:

View of Kigali from the plane when we first spotted it