The luggage reunion!

Hello from Amsterdam! We arrived here safe and sound this morning with all our luggage.  It arrived at the Addis Ababa airport about 30 minutes before we boarded our plane to depart from Addis. It wasn't easy to find and only after I stuck my desparate head through the hole where the conveyor had spit out everyone else's baggage from the recently arrived flight from Amsterdam, did I see our lonely bag sitting on the floor about 10 feet away from me.  I didn't immediately celebrate.  In Detroit, where we first parted ways with our bag, I saw it too, but was not permitted to take it due to its lack of a proper baggage "tag".  Now, our lonely bag did have a tag, but for some reason the flight attendant neglected to give me the baggage reciept back in Detroit...so I was not celebrating.  luckily, the airport personnel couldn't come up with a reason not to give it to me when they saw the receipt still attached to the baggage tag. 

But, who really cares about our baggage trouble. No long term harm done.  Not washing, brushing nor drying one's hair for 3 days, or wearing deodorant, and wearing the most awkward looking get up to our court date will all be forgotton.  The lack of pictures is the biggest regret but we'll be back there again soon.  We met some Americans who adopted through another agency and they traveled back to Ethiopia only 3 weeks after their first trip.  Yikes!  We should probably assemble the crib when we get home.

Now for the more interesting news.  We went to court early yesterday morning and although it didn't go quite as planned (common theme this trip) and we didn't get to hear..".then he is yours", we eventually received word from our lawyer that we did indeed pass court.  Apparently some paperwork got misfiled and the judge kept referring to another child throughout the 2 minute proceeding.  We tried to correct her once and the lawyer did too but she looked at us like we didn't know what we were talking about.  Finally, the judge, lawyer and clerk started speaking a bit excitedly in Amharic as they shuffled through files (which sort of does a number on your nerves), and asked us to leave.  Although the lawyer said, "Its happened before, and its no problem. Don't worry," I was worried.  Luckily we had the distraction of having our last visit with A* and didn't have time to dwell on it much before Ato called with news that the problem had been rectified and we passed court. So, long story short...Yay, we passed court!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!