Looking Back: Meeting Truman Bekalu

I am absolutely sure that there is no accurate way to describe how it feels when you first meet your child. Shea and I both felt so many emotions, though elation, relief, and excitement probably topped the list. Elation and excitement for obvious reasons, and relief because after months of dreaming about this little boy, we were finally able to hold him in our arms and we knew that he was safe and healthy and real.

So we arrived at our hotel at around 1:00am on Wednesday June 30th and set our alarm for 8:30am. We knew that the Ethiopian Program Coordinator for WACAP, Megan, was going to be in Ethiopia for the week as she wanted to accompany families to court (we were in the first group of families who were required to attend the court hearing in Ethiopia). We came downstairs full of excitement, hoping to hear that we would get to leave right away to go meet our son. We learned that 3 families were going to court that morning (whereas we had court scheduled for the next day) and that as soon as they came back from court we would go to the WACAP house to meet Truman Bekalu - probably sometime around 1:00pm. We spent the morning enjoying our complimentary breakfast and talking with other WACAP families who were having court as the same time as us. Then, we decided to check out the TDS Guesthouse (we were in the TDS Hotel the first few days) because we heard there were a bunch of other WACAP families over there with their children. Surprisingly, the time started to pass really quickly as we met other families and received a brief tour of the area from another family who had stayed in Ethiopia for a month. You have no idea how much we appreciated that tour! It helped us calm down and realize that we could make our month in Ethiopia work :-)

Soon after we returned to our hotel Megan and the other families arrived, much earlier than expected (around 11:00am). We were so excited! That meant we'd get to go to the WACAP house much sooner than we had been told - yay! At this time we were able to meet Ato Teklu, WACAP's in-country representative. We had heard so much about Ato Teklu and it was great to finally meet him in person. He was much shorter than I had pictured, but very confident and clearly very well respected by every Ethiopian person he encountered! As we got ready to leave, Ato Teklu told us that he wanted to treat us to lunch before going to the WACAP house. (I should mention that one other family was also meeting their child for the first time that day). We all agreed out of respect, though asked if we could go somewhere fast as we were extremely anxious about meeting our children.

Ato Teklu took us to a local Italian restaurant (there is a huge Italian influence in Ethiopia - we'll write more on that later!). Seriously, that was the LONGEST lunch we have ever had to sit through! I could hardly eat anything as my stomach was doing huge flips, so Shea ended up eating his and my food :-) After the main course, Ato Teklu was interested in ordering some desert and coffee, but by then we had to insist that we leave straight away for the WACAP house!

We then got our first real experience of driving in Ethiopia (while we had obviously been driven from the airport to the hotel, it had been so late that no other cars were on the road and so dark that we weren't really able to see much). Well, driving in Ethiopia was quite an experience! WACAP is so lucky to have Mesfin for a driver - he was great! I think we'll devote a separate blogpost to driving in Ethiopia, as it is definitely an intense experience!

So we made our way through town - it was about a 25 minute ride from the hotel to the new WACAP house. On this car ride, we were obviously feeling extremely excited about the fact that we would meet Truman within minutes, but also a bit overwhelmed by culture shock. After about 15 minutes of driving on paved roads, Mesfin turned onto a very small gravel road and from then on it was just small dirt roads with many, many bumps. Thank goodness I was wearing my sea-bands, because it really was a very intense ride! Finally we turned down a back road with a dead end and we knew we were close. Then our emotions really started bubbling up. The anticipation was overwhelming!

The van pulled up to a very large metal door and Mesfin beeped the horn (many homes and establishments have large gates/doors that are closed at all times and hire doormen who sit by the door and open it whenever a visitor comes). Here is a picture of the door at the WACAP house - it was beautiful!:

After we entered the compound (which was made up of 3 separate buildings - one for the infants, one the older children and kitchen, and one the waiting room and offices), they took us and the other family into a small waiting room and told us that they would have the nannies bring out our children! Eek! At this point we were basically jumping up and down with excitement and anticipation! We tried to calm ourselves down as we were told to try to be quiet and calming when first meeting Truman. Within a minute, two nannies walked in holding two infants who were so bundled up that you couldn't see their faces. We looked back and forth, not knowing which was our son, until WACAP's social worker said "This one's Bekalu". Like I said earlier, there is no way to accurately describe how we felt at that second, but I will tell you that I am tearing up and getting chills right now just writing about that afternoon. It is a feeling I will never forget, and we were so lucky that Megan was able to film our first few minutes as a forever family.





The rest of the day was truly a blur. We were able to spend 3 wonderful hours getting to know our son that day. He was, without a doubt, nervous, anxious, and confused. While we knew that even then, looking back I can see how scared he really was. We did our best to be calm and quiet, and were able to feed him and burp him for the first time. For most of the 3 hours we just quietly stared at him in amazement, rubbing and kissing him to try to let him know he was safe and loved. Here are some pictures from that wonderful day:

New Bear Friend

We bought Truman some strap cushions for his new stroller to make sure he is nice and comfy and he immediately took a liking to the little bear faces - he kept a hold on his new friend throughout the entire walk!

Go Tarheels!

Now we just need a Duke onesie so we can have both sides represented :-)

A Boy and His Exersaucer

Hands down, this is still Truman's favorite toy - Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Simmons!

Close-Ups

Play Time!

We bought Truman this toy piano before leaving for Ethiopia, and now that he can sit up on his own he can play with it! He seems really fascinated with the sounds and lights. Here are some pics of Truman enjoying his piano:

Looking Back: Traveling to Ethiopia

So you all have probably noticed that we have yet to blog about our experiences in Ethiopia. Honestly, the trip was very intense and I think that we have just been slowly processing everything we saw and experienced. Now that we've been home for a little over a month, I think we're ready to start chronicling our trip. So keep your eye out for posts about different aspects of our journey!

Today, we'll start with traveling to Ethiopia. Boy, was that an experience! We started off bright and early, waking up at 3:30am on June 28th in order to make our 6:30am flight out of NC. Well, everything seemed to be going really smoothly. The taxi came 30 minutes early, we finished packing in time (that was tough! You don't realize how hard it is to pack for a month long stay in a country you've never visited where you are about to take custody of your first child until you start!), and we got to the airport exactly as planned. Immediately we were told that our flight was delayed to Dulles which meant we would miss our scheduled flight to Addis Ababa. We were devastated! We then tried to call our travel agency who'd helped book our flights to figure out what to do, but even their "emergency" number went to voicemail (which, honestly, doesn't make sense to me - what's the point of an emergency number if no one answers it??). After much calling of airlines, we learend that Ethiopian Air only has one flight out of Dulles a day and that the flight for the next day was already booked - argh! United ended up flying us to Dulles anyway, where we then waited for 4-1/2 hours (that's right, 4-1/2 hours!!!) in line to speak to someone about the mess that they had put us in (I kid you not, at some points EVERY person working the United counter went on lunch break, leaving dozens of us in line with no one helping). After speaking with 3 managers, they ended up putting us on a United flight to Frankfurt, Germany, where we would then hook up with a plane to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Let me tell you, our talks with the managers were filled with many a nervous tear and a bit of yelling - we knew we had to make it to Ethiopia on Wednesday so we could meet Truman before court on Thursday because otherwise there was a possibility our court date would have to be rescheduled and we were NOT about to let that happen). We were a bit nervous because it started to rain in Dulles and we were worried our flight to Germany would be delayed, causing us to miss our flight to Ethiopia - but we had no other options, so we then sprinted to catch the flight to Germany which was leaving in less than 2 hours. (I want to note that before leaving the counter, we were assured that our bags would travel with us - Alison was very wary, but the man repeatedly promised they would make it there with us).

Well, we ended up making our flight to Germany with no issues and then had a few hour layover until leaving for Ethiopia. It is so hard to accurately describe the wide range of emotions we felt throughout the flights. Shea and I repeatedly would just stop and smile at each other. We were both filled with an intense nervous excitement - we just couldn't wait to finally meet our son! We kept his picture out throughout all our flights and just kept staring at his beautiful face, not fully believing that within hours we would get to see this boy whose picture we had been staring at for months!

Our "stay" in Germany went fine. We ate at McCafe - that's right, McDonald's serves bagels and chocolate croissants in Germany! I wish our McDonald's served those here - then we might actually eat there! As we prepared to board our flight to Addis we were overcome with happiness! Only 7 more hours of air flight left! Here's us being really excited:

And here's Shea happily holding our tickets to Ethiopia:


Then our Lufthansa flight began. It started off pretty smoothly. Do you all know those monitors where you can watch the map of your plane flying? Well, I was watching mine when I noticed that our plane started turning around. Shea had briefly fallen asleep so I began tapping him on the shoulder and said "Umm...what's going on?" We stared in confusion at the screen for a few minutes before the captain began making an announcement in German. From his pauses, tone, and the length of the message, we figured something was not right. Soon, he repeated the message in English, and we learned that one of the computers used for landing had broken. Because Addis is at such a high altitude, they determined that it would be safer to land in Germany without the equipment. Therefore, already 2 hours into our journey, we were turning around and going back to Germany, where we would have to switch planes. We were, once again, devastated. One more obstacle between us and our son. The switch ended up adding about 5 hours onto our trip. And believe me, if you are already about 24 hours in, you don't want to add on any more time.

After the switching of planes (including baggage, food, and people!), no other problems occurred. We landed in Ethiopia at about midnight their time (which meant a total travel time of 36 hours for us). At this point, we were very, very, VERY exhausted and dehydrated, and suffering from changes in altitude, but also very, very, VERY excited! We got our entry visa, exchanged currency, went through customs, and then went to wait for our bags and look for a representative from our agency (who was supposed to be waiting for us). Surprise, surprise, our bags did not make it with us. Then, to top it off, no one from our agency was there. We filed a claim for our bags and then went to search for a pay phone to call someone with. We discovered that all of the pay phones had been shut off for the night. We wandered about aimlessly and distraught among huge crowds of people. We both felt dizzy and overwhelmed. Luckily, a nice man could see the sad state we were in and offered to let us use his cell phone. We ended up calling our representative, who quickly sent WACAP's driver to pick us up (thank you, Mesfin!). At about 1:00am we arrived at our hotel and immediately passed out on our bed.

So yeah, overall, not a great start to our trip! But the whole time we just kept thinking, "We are about to meet our son!" and that helped us get through it!

Cribtastic!

One of Truman's new favorite things is to stand up while holding onto something. The other day we helped him stand up with his crib for very cute results! (And yes, we're pretty sure that soon we will be waking up to our big strong boy standing like this!)

The New Stroller Has Arrived!

Our new jogging stroller came in the mail on Saturday and it is awesome! As soon as it was delivered, we went to a local park to try it out. Truman seemed very comfortable in it and within 15 minutes he fell asleep. He then stayed asleep for the rest of our hour long walk. The stroller worked really well on the dirt paths and was much smoother than our previous stroller. Here are some pics:




After our walk, we spent some time playing in the grass. Truman loved exploring and feeling the different textures. Fun day!

Truman Tries to Crawl