During the night it rained heavily-- so LOUD-- but in the morning it was sunny and gorgeous, albeit with many mud puddles everywhere. The road in front of the guesthouse is currently under construction, and is full of mud. We hung around at the guesthouse in the morning playing soccer and getting showers.

Around noon our driver, Dawit, picked us up. We began our errands with lunch at Metro Pizza, not far from AHOPE in the Mekanissa area of town. Here they cook the pizza in a really cool-looking brick oven. When I took the girls over to get a closer look at it, our elder daughter had her first embarrassed-by-mom moment, and opted to sit at the table with an embarrassed smile and one hand over her face. (Mothers!)

The pizza was thin-crust and (by American standards) light on cheese, but very good. We discovered that neither of our new girls was fond of olives, but that worked out fine since both of our younger girls adore them.

Our next stop was Kidane Mehret, the orphanage where both our little girls had lived before coming to us. We arrived during Sister Camilla’s rest time, so while we waited for her to awaken, a nice young man named Yared gave us a tour of the whole orphanage. This was a first for me, though this was my 5th visit to Kidane. The cleanliness has improved since I was there last, and I was relieved to discover that the odor is much less overwhelming. There were also two brand-new climbing/playground structures that had been donated by (I think) the United Arab Emirates Airlines.

In the baby and toddler rooms (overcrowded as always), workers all over both rooms remembered both our little girls, hugging and kissing them excitedly. The two year old was asleep in the Ergo on my back at that point, but our 5 year old returned their hugs happily. It was very, very gratifying to see the worker’s excitement and to realize how meaningful it was to see ‘their’ babies grown and thriving.

As I thanked the workers for caring for our girls, I found myself suddenly in tears. I knew babies who had not survived the wait to come to a family. And yet my girls had, thanks largely to the loving care they had received at the hands of these women. The heap of plastic pants I had brought to restock the baby room seemed a meager thank you.

After our tour, during which we were able to deliver letters to the children of an AAI family, we were able to visit with Sister Veronica, an Ethiopian nun who had taken care of our 5 year old. She still remembered that Tsion had been the fattest baby in the room.

Then to my delight out from the nun’s house came Sister Camilla. Sister Camilla has a special place in my heart. She is the second in command at Kidane, and not only did she care for both our little girls, she also was able to stay at our house for a few days in 2004 when she came to America to escort some children. “My first- and last - trip to America!” she said with a laugh.

She also was thrilled to see our girls doing so well, and greeted our new daughters very kindly as well. I was so glad we had been able to find time to come to Kidane.