ADOPTION BABY STEPS - WHERE WILL THEY LEAD US?

So..... After gathering all kind of information needed in order to prepare our adoption folder, we begun our sessions with our Social Worker. The sessions are aimed to discover if in fact Andreas and I are suitable parents to adopt an orphan from Africa or from anywhere really... In the beginning, both of us sat in these sessions, hence, it was OK. Once we had to move to 1-2-1 with the social worker, Andreas freaked out. He really is not the toye of person who likes to confide in anyone let alone a stranger. I on the other hand was OK, more than OK really, never had a problem with talking. Our social worker did a lot of talking herself so no problem there. Once the sessions were almost over, we started (rather I started) gathering the documents. Some of which were just a visit to the local KEP, others were a complete nightmare especially the medical exams from a PUBLIC hospital! OMG, how many times did we go to a public hospital, waiting in vain and how many times did we try to work our way through the system in order not to wait! In any case the ordeal was horrid. The problem is that neiter Andreas nor I could understand the process of doing these exams and so each time, we had missed out on bringing some valuable paper or other and so we had to start over. We were pathetic really. One day, alas, we managed to succeed! Which was such a relief... On the other hand, the psych eval of which we had heard horror stories was much smoother than anticipated. The psych hospital branch was very very close to our house, we went there during one morning and half an hour later we had our paper. That's it! (not sure however how effective the "eval" was, but there you go. Since Andreas and I know we are psych free people no problem here, is there?). Once we gathered all the necessary docs, had them translated (at a cost) and then the Ethiopean Consulate stamped them in order to autneticate them, and each stamp cost 81 euros... (so at a cost here too) and then we sent our sacred folder to our Ethiopean lawyer via courier (yep.. at a cost) we then booked our tickets (needless to say at a cost!) and arranged our trip during Easter time 2012. It was a bit scary to plan a trip to a place, where everyone said we should have had a lot of vaccinations like yellow fever or take malaria pills etc but once we went to the vaccination lady in the prefecture and she described all the downsides of the vaccines, Andreas and I turned around and left. If we are to get these symptoms, better to get them from the actual mosquitos and not the self imposed needles. Suddenly, my mum decided to spend Easter In Dubai! Which meant that my kids had to go to Dubai too, since she had promised to take care of them whilst we were away in East Africa. Since we had already booked Emirates for ourselves we added to the booking our kids and we were all off to Dubai to meet with my sister. We were then scheduled to leave the next day to Addis Ababa. Luck had it, that our DXB - ADD flight was delayed by one day and so we got to spend one day in Dubai and wish Max, my nephew happy birthday!One less day in Ethiopia of course which I hoped would not be detrimental. The flight in Addis was bumpy as hell, once we landed the pilot said: well i can't say a lot about the weather, since you felt it all!. Great, thank God for Jameson ... or was it Johnny? Who cares, the job was done. Once safely landed in Addis, I was also safely drunk and all I want is a good night's sleep. Goodnight for now, next time I will share the experience of this first trip to a wonderful country which we have come to love and from which comes our beautiful daughter Hanna.