We had originally chose Korea and have been saving money. Ready to get paperwork and homestudy started and we just found out the Korean program is on hold and may be stopped.
So, we have begun checking into Ethiopia. Just wondering if there is anyone I can talk to about it!
Thanks!
Sharon
__________________ Sharon - 33 Issac - 35
Sofia Rose 7/20/04 conceived after 2nd IUI
11/20 and 11/21 last chance (5th) IUI
12/5/07 - BFP EDD: 8/11/08
1/18/08 - we lost our baby - feeling lost, sad and confused
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Could you tell me how long the whole process took?
How was the traveling to and in Ethiopia?
actually, I feel all at once full of questions but not sure what to ask! :-)
Sharon
__________________ Sharon - 33 Issac - 35
Sofia Rose 7/20/04 conceived after 2nd IUI
11/20 and 11/21 last chance (5th) IUI
12/5/07 - BFP EDD: 8/11/08
1/18/08 - we lost our baby - feeling lost, sad and confused
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Could you tell me how long the whole process took?
How was the traveling to and in Ethiopia?
actually, I feel all at once full of questions but not sure what to ask! :-)
Sharon
__________________ Sharon - 33 Issac - 35
Sofia Rose 7/20/04 conceived after 2nd IUI
11/20 and 11/21 last chance (5th) IUI
12/5/07 - BFP EDD: 8/11/08
1/18/08 - we lost our baby - feeling lost, sad and confused
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 0 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
Could you tell me how long the whole process took?
How was the traveling to and in Ethiopia?
actually, I feel all at once full of questions but not sure what to ask! :-)
Sharon
you can ask anything, i will most likely answer lol
The process took about a year and a half. Fortunately and unfortunately the process has taken longer since Angelina Jolie adopted from there. Before it was about 6 months start to finish, now its about a year and a half. I traveled last February (2008) so I don't know if it's changed since then.
Traveling to and in Ethiopia was amazing, tiring, and shocking... all at once. it took a total of 23 hrs to travel there. We started in Atlanta, flew to DC on Delta, then switched airlines to Ethiopia Air. It was 17 hrs to Rome, where there was about a 45 min fuel up, then another 4 hrs or so to Addis Ababa. Plane food, not so good lol but it wasnt horrible either... it looked horrible though, I have pics haha. I'm a picture whore, i took LOADS of pictures. Addis is 8 hrs ahead so be ready for some jet lag, although it wasn't that bad. They try to help you along on the flight by adjusting your eating and sleeping schedule.
Because we'd never been to Ethiopia and it was going to be an experience all on its own, we decided to stay at the Hilton. My suggestion, the day after you get there you have to reconfirm your flight back, do it as soon as they open and request a bulkhead seat. (They have an Ethiopia Air in the hotel) I was down there as they opened and got the bulkhead, they can put a cradle on the wall in front of you for the baby... oh it was a godsend! and the extra leg room was awesome! You can also change your money at the Hilton, theres a pool, shops, food and a small grocery store! which will come in VERY handy as you cannot drink the water and need to get bottled water... more than you ever thought you would need.
When you think of Africa you think of the heat but Ethiopia is nothing like that. its about 70-75 YEAR ROUND! beautiful weather with the exception of the rainy season which I've heard is so sudden and torrential umbrellas do little if anything to help. Anyway, in February it was beautiful.
your agency should recommend taxi drivers, and if your agency has a message board, (a lot of them either have a board like this or a yahoo group) there will defintely be suggestions for drivers. Ours was phenomenal and CHEAP! about $24 for the entire DAY!! You will likely have a group of families traveling around your same time not only from your agency but others. the embassy dates are made for the same times each month. We were lucky to become friends (sorta) with another family staying at the Sheraton so we carpooled. One thing that was a shocker, there are no seatbelts or car seats in any vehicles! I had Maddy in a baby bjorn the entire time. They drive NUTS! pedestrian definitely does NOT have the right of way! they tailgate worse than anyone I've ever seen and they're constantly on the horn. It was a bit frightning at first but when I never saw or heard of an accident and when I asked him about it I was little more at ease. The side roads arent paved. be ready to see donkeys and goats carrying stuff on the sides of the roads, bring dramamine if you get car sick.
The nights take some getting used to. They have LOADS of wild dogs all over so the barking and howling can be overwhelming at times. I got used to it after a night. The Call To Prayer is around 4:30am, most beautiful thing i've ever heard, I woke up every morning just to hear it. It's over the entire city not very loud, wont wake you up or anything but its this man just this singing calling everyone to prayer, it's hard to explain, of course it's in Amharic.
hmmm well that got a little long, sorry! Just ask anything that comes to your mind, i'm really happy to help. Oh, thats my little girl Madeline in my avatar. When she was referred to us she was about 1 month old. When we travelled she was 7 months old. In that picture she is 21 months old... I cannot believe its been over a year since we travelled to Ethiopia. I cannot WAIT to go back, i miss it.
I noticed you are in NH, so am I! We adopted from Kyrgyzstan but we have a friend here in NH that adopted from Ethiopia. The last 2 years there has been an Ethiopian culture camp held in Rindge in the Monadnock Region. Over 200 families went each year from what I heard! Alot of the folks here have gone through Wide Horizons who have an office in Bedford. We were going to go through them for Ethiopia but found our daughter's photo online and it was all over the minute we saw her picture so we went that direction! We went through Adoptive Families For Children for our homestudy agency.
Maddysima- Thank you so much for sharing your story. Wow, sounds like an amazing experience! She is so beautiful. I am sure we will have questions as we go. Do you mind if I let my husband read your story as well?
Kallista - Yes! I am on the Seacoast! We have been planning to use Wide Horizons and were going to sign up for the Korean Program but they put it on hold. Now we are looking into Ethiopia. How was your friends experience with WH and Ethiopia? Wow, the culture camp sounds terrific. Great to know because my husband was a bit concerned. He is Mexican, from Cali, and even though NH has become so much more progressive and diverse over the years, sometimes he still feels a little discrimination from time to time. It is definitely better though. He is just a little worried.
Thank you both so much for your responses and congrats to you both on your adoptions!!
Sharon
__________________ Sharon - 33 Issac - 35
Sofia Rose 7/20/04 conceived after 2nd IUI
11/20 and 11/21 last chance (5th) IUI
12/5/07 - BFP EDD: 8/11/08
1/18/08 - we lost our baby - feeling lost, sad and confused
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Kallista - Yes! I am on the Seacoast! We have been planning to use Wide Horizons and were going to sign up for the Korean Program but they put it on hold. Now we are looking into Ethiopia. How was your friends experience with WH and Ethiopia? Wow, the culture camp sounds terrific. Great to know because my husband was a bit concerned. He is Mexican, from Cali, and even though NH has become so much more progressive and diverse over the years, sometimes he still feels a little discrimination from time to time. It is definitely better though. He is just a little worried.
Thank you both so much for your responses and congrats to you both on your adoptions!!
Sharon
Hi Sharon,
Have you connected with the Greater Seacoast Adoptive Parents group? If you google I bet you can find it. They were on Yahoo but they switched to another host. They have a really active group. The person we know who adopted from Ethiopia is a single mom who adopted 3.5 years ago. She had a great experience with WHFC. I've actually never heard anything bad about them except that they are expensive. If we adopted again I would probably go through them or WACAP. I really like WACAP's grant programs for older and special needs kids. However, WHFC is in our backyard!
We went to an info session and met a woman and her Ethiopian-American toddler. It was a great experience.
For some reason we didn't feel pulled to Ethiopia, not sure why. We looked at Liberia and then Liberia shut down, luckily before we put a bunch of money in. The agency was also having some issues so we decided to look around before we sent our first big payment in. I found a picture of siblings from Russia on an agency site and emailed about them. I got a response that the kids weren't available but there were waiting girls from Kyrgyzstan and that we qualified for hat country. They sent photos and our daughter's photo was one of them. It was all Kyrgyzstan from then on!
Everyone we know was fine with us adopting transracially. I was nervous about learning to handle Black hair! I was also concerned about racism. I work for the miltiary and there are some naive people (about all races) but overall I have found people to be very welcoming. We lived over in the Keene area when we started and that area is very open it seems. Now we live in Hillsboro, not sure how it would go over here. To me it is obvious my daughter is adopted but people don't always realize it at first even though, hello, she is Asian and we aren't! If she was from ethiopia it would be a lot more obvious but I think we would be okay. Most of the time I like the attention because we can educate people about adoption, specifically of older and "special needs" kids (I put that in quotes because what we consider special needs and what other countries consider special needs is very different). We have people stop and talk to us all the time who ask questions and say God Bless and she's so lucky. We make sure to tell them that we are the blessed/lucky ones to have her.
Our blog is www.elizabethandbill.blogspot.com, it chronicles our adoption journey. I'm sure there are tons of Ethiopian adoption blogs out there too.
Great Blog and your daughter is adorable! Yes we joined the Greater Seacoast Adoptive group. We went to a great information night a few months ago some of the members put together for new members. They seem like a terrific support group. At the meeting they had a woman who had just adopted from Kyrgyzstan and she just fell in love with it. I think the travel requirements are what made us shy away from that program, but I will go take another look.
My mom is a real estate agent and her new client is a young couple in process of adopting from Ethiopia, so I am hoping to be able to speak with her.
What is WACAP?
Sharon
__________________ Sharon - 33 Issac - 35
Sofia Rose 7/20/04 conceived after 2nd IUI
11/20 and 11/21 last chance (5th) IUI
12/5/07 - BFP EDD: 8/11/08
1/18/08 - we lost our baby - feeling lost, sad and confused
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svaldez - i dont mind at all and feel free to ask me anything really, i'm happy to answer anything. Adoption is a confusing and sometimes scary process, I'd be happy to help you with anything
Ethiopia? 
