Travel day!

We finally made it!!!! I'm going to try to update each day - so here goes.....

As a first time world traveler (ha!), never knew how a day can seemingly last forever, currently ours isn’t even over yet.

Starting at 12:45pm on Tuesday……..it began. Between Rhonda and I, we had four 50lb. bags of luggage to check, two rolling carry-ons and two backpacks. Most likely appearing very high maintenance to the other travelers. After getting all checked in, our initial flight to Toronto was delayed almost 2 hours - which is a problem when you only have a little over an hour layover at the next destination. You guessed it, we missed our connection. We were told that someone would meet us BEFORE immigration after we landed at our gate to let us know what was going to happen since we were now flightless. What we were not told is that we would unload on the tarmac and then have to speed walk seemingly a MARATHON distance before arriving at the said location. I can’t lie. If we weren’t a bit freaked out about messing up the whole journey right as it started, it would have felt like we were on the Amazing Race. Rhonda and I rocked it - I was SO thankful for long legs and a sense of urgency in a travel partner! Thankfully the airline was able to put us on a flight to London that left 2 hours later, which was perfect because we originally had a 12 hour layover, so we had the time to spare. After each of us slept less than 2 hours on the plane that evening on the way to London (who on earth gets good sleep on a plane? ugh!), we arrived to try to navigate the massive airport that is Heathrow. Honestly, the biggest mass of people and nationalities I have ever experienced. Wow. Since we had a long layover we stored our bags and hit the city. In a mere 4 hours we were able to take an express train to the underground Waterloo station then walk to see the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abby and even have lunch outdoors at a cafe. Cool. Even with 2 hours sleep we were refreshed from the movement. Headed back to the airport to check in with Ethiopian Airlines and finally boarded the plane at 9:30pm London time (3:30pm Wednesday Missouri). We finally arrived in Addis at 7am - spent a half hour getting our visa, going through cutsoms, getting our baggage. At 8am we finally met up with our driver to head to the guest house.

Whew. 36ish hours from beginning to end. Freshly showered and about to head off in the next 15 min. to meet our babies for the first time. EEEKKKK!!!!! 

More to come………