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Saturday, September 26, 2009

Our Trip To Ethiopia Day 1 - Saturday






Sept 12, 2009 Saturday - We left the house at 8:50am for a 12:55pm flight. Too early! We sat at the airport for 3 hours. But we spent it with Bradley, Pa and NeNe because they wanted to see us off. Bradley was fine until about 30 min before we said good bye. Then he cried & cried & cried already missing us. We tried not to cry but we both teared up. We sure do miss that little fella. Then we made it thru the baggage x-ray & metal detection without a glitch. Patted myself on the back for packing within regulations. WHEW! First hurdle done with no problems. And none of our checked bags were over 50 pounds. 3 checked bags....1 full of food for us to eat (Brad is kinda a picky eater & I know will not eat the Ethiopian food and we did not want to be rude not eating what they cooked), 1 full of Annsleigh's things & 1 full of our clothes. We also had 2 carryons plus our laptop. Once we made it past security checkpoints we found our gate.....it was a very quick & watched the TN VOLS game in the airport restaurant/bar. VOLS lost by the way. We then went back to the gate and now there were a ton of people waiting to board. We were definitely the minority now. Mostly Arabs. There was another caucasion couple....could they be another CHI adoptin couple? THEY WERE!!! Here is where we met David and Rachel (Rubin) When I met her I felt like I knew her because we both had been communicating on the CHI yahoo group for sometime now. They are adopting 11 month old Jacob. Annsleigh's boyfriend!!!! This was when we were informed that we did not get an email announcing that our Visa appt had been moved up a day to Sept 16!!! I hope its true!!! We talked and got acquainted until ready to board. At the boarding gate it said the Temp for Dubai was 106 tomorrow! Wow! Now thats hot! It was a full flight. 14 hours. We flew Emirates and its the only way to go. As comfortable as possible. All seats had their own screen and remote control for 600 different channels......movies (good oldies...latest releases...disney...you name it), TV shows, music etc..I loved watching the cockpit view of takeoff and landings. And the view from the camera beneath the plane of the terrain down below. When we got to Dubai, he had an 8 hour layover & we were supposed to have a room included in our fee. We were told as we were trying to find our seats that we did not qualify for the room.....so...nothing we could do about it now. We were on our way no matter what...may not have a place to stay... but we were on our way. Seats were still very tight and uncomfortable to try to sleep in but we expected that. They sure made sure you didnt go hungry. Offered food about 4 times during the flight. It was VERY long. But the 600 movie/TV channels helped alot. The only way I could sleep was by putting the tray out in front of me & putting the pillow on it slumped over & Brad then leaned all the way over on me sideways, put his pillow on my back and tried to sleep. That worked until the seat in front of me reclined and woke me up hitting me in the head....one day ran into the next during the flight. Thats all for day 1.

1 comments:

elisa said...

Fran, thanks so much for posting this! I love reading about everyone's experiences! We too hope to fly Emerites. Can't wait to hear about day 2,3,4,5,....!