Tuesday August 22

I woke up feeling exhausted and worried about Minow. We had machiattos and crossiants at the pastry shop in the Hilton complex. Today is the day of waiting. We were waiting to hear from Gail about Minow's status and what needed to happen next in the process for us to be able to get him home ASAP. Again let me just say how hard the staff in Addis works, they are amazing and after having seen the "behind the scenes" work I am amazed that our adoptions can happen as fast as they do.

We called Gail after breakfast and found out what time one of us needed to go to immigration. I decided that I would go--I really needed to be doing something that would seemingly help us get Minow home. Hubby, his mom, and my brother went out and explored the city, as hubby really needed to get him mind off of what was going on. Minow was still in the hospital and would be staying another night. We did not talk to the doctor, maybe in hindsight we should have. Immigration was a bust, the passport was not ready yet. But it was really interesting. I was ushered into a room by Yared that had on long bench on the back wall and 8 shorter benches. These are what we would consider regular size benches. There must have been 150 people sitting on these benches. This is so not something you would see here in America where we are all concerned about our personal space and about what I want/need. No one said no to someone else who wanted to squeeze on their bench. They all moved down and it was completely uncomfortable. But I had myself wedged on the end of a bench after being offered the 2 inches of space.

The people in Ethiopia are so amazing. That evening hubby and I debated about going to the hospital to see Minow. I couldn't bear to go see him and not bring him home. Maybe that makes me a bad mom, but I couldn't do it. I didn't want my early memories of him to be filled with the image of that hospital. I couldn't do it. So, we had dinner and watched the hours tick by until the next day. We were certain we would be bringing him with us then.