The Trip Over - by Randy

Here are some clips from the 'story' Randy is writing to help him remember his trip.

I remember when preparing for the trip to pick up our new son in Ethiopia my feelings were a mixture of excitement and a bit of worry about how he would react to me.

On the leg from Atlanta to Frankfurt, Germany I sat beside a very nice gentleman on his way back to Israel after visiting his son in who lives in Atlanta. Although his English was limited it was infinitely better than my Hebrew and we chatted for hours on just about anything you can think of. He was very nice and had led quite an interesting life. From Frankfurt we flew to Khartoum, Sudan for a short stop and then on to Addis Ababa. On this leg I sat beside another very nice man from Italy who was living in Switzerland. He was on his way to work on a water project at Lake Tana in Ethiopia.

Finally, after the 21+ hour flight I was greeted happily by Hanuk and Ryan from Gladney at the Addis Ababa airport. When Hanuk asked me were I lived and I told him Atlanta, I literally burst out laughing when he said, “So how are things goin’ in the ATL!” It turns out that Hanuk lived in the US several years while he attended college in Texas, so his English and knowledge of American culture was extremely good. After driving me the short distance to the Bejoe guest house, I remember Ryan telling me that he and Travis would bring Mesfin over the next morning around 9:30. Now keep in mind its around 10pm local time, however, I was wide awake at this point and my biggest worry was over sleeping since I didn’t bring an alarm clock with me.

to be continued...