Our director sat down with all of the families and we went over what to expect. He told us the questions the judge would be asking us. Thankfully all the questions were simple "yes & no" answers. We had to leave at 8am...No later!
All of us families got dressed all nice and spiffy and then before we left, we all went and played with our kiddos briefly. We didn't know when we'd be back, as the timing of court is unreliable. We are told to plan on being there anywhere from 10 min up to 4 hours waiting for our turn. 8am came and went and we hadn't left yet. Umm?!? Finally about 8:20am we were all loading in the buses. Remember how yesterday mom and I had the stomach virus? Well right at 8:20, it hit Adam. He RAN into the guest house to be sick. Great.....We were loading the vans to leave and Adam was upstairs sick. Awesome. And no, it wasn't nerves...It was that pesky virus we were all sharing. Ugh.....Around 8:30 we pull out of the gates, Adam looking a little green and not feeling good at all. I felt terrible for him!
Our driver was a little stressed getting us there in time. (translate this to mean, all the quick driving and quick stopping, swerving, bumpy roads and quick turns didn't bode well for Adam either!) If we miss the "arrival time" window to get to the court house, we miss our chance....The other fun thing (besides Adam feeling awful!) was that it was an Orthodox Holy Day this day...What does this mean? Well THOUSANDS of believers were on the streets going to church services....Roads are closed all around. It was somewhat of a goose chase. Our driver and the other driver finding all the back streets and ally ways to drive us down. Horns honking, people walking in front of the van and stopping for a random chat, the occasional goat or cow in the middle of the road that would just NOT move! (Seriously these were all the things that were so NOT American that I loved while there...just not on the day when we have to see the judge!)
We finally pull up to the court house. Unload and go through security to enter the building. Climb up 4 flights of stairs, walk down a hallway and into a very plain waiting room. We all sit down and wait. Thankfully we didn't wait very long. A friends Gobstoppers kept me entertained (Thanks Jan!). What I wasn't expecting in the waiting room was to see birth families there waiting to give up their rights to their children. In my naive head I just thought this day would be for adoptive families to declare their wishes to adopt their children...Ugh. That was hard. Such a contrast to us adoptive families...the others had such sadness and hopelessness about them. You could tell that some traveled far. Had no money. No hope. I can't imagine what was going through their heads. My stomach felt like someone had just punched me a hundred times.
The judge called us in. She wanted all 5 families from our agency in there together. That made it even easier. We all crammed into her chambers and sat down. She picked up each file of the kids, read their names and we had to raise our hand when she called our kiddos names. When she said our boys name, Adam and I raised our hands, the most amazing feeling of pride came over me. That was our son! The thought of all the paperwork, applications, training classes and prayerful waiting had lead us to this point to appear before a judge and state that we wanted him to be in our family. She asked a series of questions and all over us families answered yes or no in unison. It took about 5 minutes top. At the end she declared that pending MOWA's recommendation on all our cases, we will pass court.
So we wait for one more piece of paper to give a favorable recommendation to our case, then he is declared by Ethiopia officially our son! We've been waiting for 2 weeks for this letter and we anticipate another week or 2 of waiting.
We all leave the courthouse, breathe a sigh of relief and load back into the vans and get back to the guest house and back to our kiddos...Court was done.
We return, eat lunch and I find my mom with him....she was having time all to herself with him! (She chose to stay behind and not go with us to court since she felt so bad yesterday!)
After lunch we all did our own thing....Some families were leaving the next day so they were packing and getting in as much time as possible with their kiddos. We spent a few more hours with him, then mom and I, and another guy went with our director to go buy coffee. We stopped at a pastry shop and had yummy treats and a nice chat with our director. Then we drove to this coffee place...Can't remember the name of it, but it was packed full of people! I bought about 10 lbs of coffee to bring home. And while we waited we had a macchiato that was fabulous! We get back, load up all the families into the vans and go out to dinner. We went again to the same place we went for the cultural dinner. The 2nd time was just as great.
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