We Made It!

We arrived in Addis Ababa on Tuesday morning and went directly to the House of Hope to meet Ashton Wondemu. He is just as gorgeous and adorable and perfect as we had thought and more, if that's even possible. We stayed at the House of Hope the first two nights and are extremely glad that we made this decision. Being first time parents it was really helpful to have others around to answer our many questions, and Wondemu has formed some amazing bonds with the nannies and workers at HOH so spending a few days with all of us together under one roof significantly helped with the adjustment. We went to the Ethiopian National Museum (where Wondemu had a little accident on the carpet...nothing like leaving behind an impression!) and visited the US Embassy today where we were officially approved for Ashton Wondemu's visa! Tomorrow morning at 9AM we will pick up his Visa and original copies of his birth certificate and Ethiopian Passport. We checked in to the Sheraton Addis today where we'll stay until Tuesday when we depart for NY. It's a stunning hotel and has an entire outdoor kiddie area (complete with heated pool and play yard!) so I imagine we'll spend a bit of time there. Tomorrow we visit Wondemu's orphenage with the possibility of meeting his birth mother. We wont know until we arrive if she's going to meet with us or not, but will prepare this evening for both scenarios.

 

On to the interesting part...pictures! And now that we have daily internet access hopefully we'll post more often. Enjoy!

Lots of love,

Mike, Jo, and Ashton Wondemu