Travel Post 10 pt 1

I have put this off as long as I can. I'm starting this tonight is two weeks short of a year though it will be finished slowly over the course of many days. I've been meaning to write it for so long. Thinking about writing it triggers panic, actually sitting here and preparing to write it has tears already started. It seems like with a year to prepare for this I could have thought to have some tissues nearby. I just posted the following on my FB page: "The house is quiet and everyone else is asleep, I'm already feeling a little emotional, and it's almost been a year. I'm going to go write the last post about our trip home from Ethiopia. This day will officially go down as one of the worst days of my life. I'll cry myself to sleep again tonight and wake up to celebrate the One who gives me hope for the morning (tomorrow is Easter)." I'm hoping to get some bolstering comments I can read during my cry-breaks to encourage me along in my fragility. 


May 6-7, 2009.

I think our flight was supposed to leave around 3. We were leaving in the first group of people to leave. We'd had our tickets "approved" by the agency for time already but then that morning we found out that they said that no one should really leave before 5. I remember not being hungry for breakfast. I was already on stress overload. Andrew was starting to feel sick. Boohoo hated us. Our van back over to the office was coming around 9 (I think) but we were never anywhere on time and this was no exception. I just wanted to go home. I was dreading the flight in a way that wasn't expressible in human terms. When we got to the office all we should have needed to do was pick up our paperwork and we should have been able to go. We decided that we were just going to send the "menfolk" in to get it and we'd all wait in the van with the kids to try and hurry it up. Well, the person that needed to be there wasn't there and then they made someone come out and tell us that we all had to come in and they wanted us to fill out surveys and they wanted us to have drinks or something. 


I remember when I had to get out of the van. I was in total furious spoiled American mode. I was so thoroughly pissed off. I couldn't take anymore. I couldn't take it. I'm sure I was rude to someone and I'm really sorry...now. We were already running late I was terrified about missing my flight. Oh, and my child hated me. I refused to fill out the survey that they wanted us to. I really really really regret that. I'd give just about anything now to be able to fill out that survey about what I thought about our time in country. Don't get me wrong, I loved Ethiopia. It was my daughter and the agency and the care center and the trip that I had issues with. I remember Andrew could tell that I was about 1/10th of a second away from exploding and he was patient with me and encouraging. I don't remember if I was mean to him in response. His face in this moment when he sticks his head back into the van is one of the few memories that I can conjure up and remember the exact moment. I remember how weary he looked and how he was trying to be calm and nice, for me. He tells me that we won't be late, that it will be fine, that I can do it. One more time he was strong for me when I was crumbling.


We finally got out of there and through the traffic and to the airport where we were unceremoniously let out in the parking lot at the mercies of the baggage-helpers. They piled all our luggage together while we were trying to protest because at the end of the trip we didn't have the right denominations of money. Andrew and I had WAY too much. We just had huge bills which we ended up giving them and just paying the tip for everyone. 


Then we got inside. We were on the same flight to Dubai with one other couple. I think another two couples were going somewhere else. I was holding Boohoo because she wouldn't let Andrew even touch her by now. I had a sling nad I put her into it because once we were inside we had to wheel all our luggage ourselves, we needed to exchange money, get our tickets, get to the gate, etc. It was lots of lines and I needed to keep her close to me. I put her against her will into the sling. She was pushing against me and fussing and trying to put as much distance between us as possible. We were both pretending that our hearts weren't breaking. 


We went to the first money exchange place and there was a guy in there but they were apparently closed and he couldn't help us. He said that he wasn't even sure what the exchange rate was, but he promised that it was better than the rate that we could get from the banks inside, but we'd have to wait for them to open back up and he wasn't sure when that was going to be. He was also the first one to tell us that we had more money than we'd be able to take home with us and we had to exchange it or it could be confiscated. We don't have the time to just wait indefinitely for it to open back up and he tells that we can always come back after we get our tickets and then we can exchange the money. We decide to go through and then come back. 


We continue on and get our tickets. Boohoo gets madder and madder about the sling. Andrew and I have small spat about whether or not I should take her out of the sling that she is more vigorously protesting about. She is so heavy and awkward to carry and I'm the only one who can carry her, but I do take her out of the sling because she's being so difficult. We go through security. Of course, once you go through security you can't go back through which means that the guy at the money exchange place was wrong. We can't get back to him to exchange any money. 


Once we arrive onto the terminal we're surprised to see that basically everything is closed. I don't remember why, maybe we never knew. There are a ton of stores and restaurants and banks and they're closed. There was one bar open and one store. There was no where for us to exchange any money. Did I mention that we had WAY TOO MUCH? And so now we're worried about having the money confiscated at customs because it's enough money to make us nervous. We sit down in a row of chairs in this hallway. There's nowhere to go. Nothing to do. I try to give Boohoo something to eat from the stuff I brought. She refuses to touch any it, but begs cookies from the other couple we're with and gives flirty smiles to a stranger with a water bottle. When I give her the cup I brought for her she wants the lid taken off. I take the lid off for her and she dumps the water all over the floor. 


Andrew goes off to find out what we're going to do about this (one and only time) that we have too much money. I'm so angry that he gets to go by himself. It's not like he can do anything about it but it just makes me furious. He finds out that each person is allowed so much money. We give each person that we're traveling with some of our money to carry for us. Andrew and some of the others go off to the bar that's open and Andrew buys lunch for everyone to spend some more money. Again, I'm so angry, not at him, just at everything. He comes back from his lunch and I can see that it did him good though and I remember feeling relieved about that. I took Boohoo to the bathroom where she refused to use the potty and screamed when I changed her diaper. 

Andrew went into a very tiny gift shop, the only one that was open, to buy stuff. He comes back with some nice things and tells me that I need to go and look around. I'm feeling stressed out and difficult and I just want to sit in the uncomfortable chair. I'm afraid to take Boohoo into a store. I'm afraid to interact with her. He's insistent and so we go in. I find some really nice jewelery and we buy it. We buy an awesome pillow (currently on our couch) and a few other little things. By then it's time to go through another security screen and to the spot where we wait for our flight. I could have bought more stuff. I wish the other stores had been open. I wish we could have done more shopping IN Ethiopia. Heck, there's a lot of things that I wish. All in all though, I was glad that we did do some more shopping in the airport.

It wa finally time to go to the boarding area of the airport. It was just a little separated area with more chairs to sit in. Boohoo was really getting agitated. We were all getting agitated. This is one of the memories that I will never forget. Every white person in that boarding area was holding an Ethiopian child. It made me so angry on behalf of Ethiopia. I don't see how an Ethiopian sitting there could have been anything less than disgusted with the entire situation. I think what made it worse was that there was only one or two children that were older than Boohoo. The rest were babies, little babies.

I don't remember a lot from this first flight to Dubai. I remember Boohoo getting a little more scared, which in this case made her a little easier to handle. We bought her her own seat even though with her (incorrect) age that we had she could have flown as a lap-child. I am SOOOO glad that she had her own seat. I totally recommend that. She didn't want to be buckled up but they made us put her in her seat and buckle her. The Emirates staff brought out this strange little pack of baby-care items, which we handed over to her and let her mess around with until we took off. 

The most random thing that we had happen to us was that a man from South Africa who was in the middle section, a row behind us, struck up a conversation with Andrew. He talked about Boohoo and how beautiful she was and kept tellling Andrew how much he liked children and that he would like to visit us in the United States and trying to get Andrew to tell him our address. Andrew declined and tried to cut off the conversation. We're pretty sure that he was drunk, but it was very weird.

We thought that we were landing in Dubai, but that only some of the passengers were getting off the plane and that we were staying on and then they'd reload/refuel and we'd be off again. We were excited about that because who wants to traipse through an airport with a child? Well, that was wrong. Boohoo eventually slept (thanks to a little antihistamine helper) but she fell asleep shortly before we ended up having to get off the plane. I remember trying to stand up with her so carefully to keep her asleep, but seriously, did I think that I was going to get that lucky? I'm leaving out a lot of tense moments of traveling with a toddler who hates you, but those  have just all blended together. We were simply thankful that she wasn't screaming.

Not only did we have to get off the plane in Dubai, but we had a very short time before our next flight. We had to go through the far from friendly Dubai airport again and because we were just that lucky we had to go through security again! This should have been totally unnecessary since we were simply changing planes, but while we were in Ethiopia there was that bombing in New York and the man responsible for that had been on the exact same flight that we were taking so security had been stepped up. We had to walk through the scanner thing, our bags were scanned and they confiscated the majority of our coffee (which I have not forgiven them for yet) and then we all got a pat-down.

Andrew had his groping out in public, but in order to preserve my honor I was taken into this little changing-room like pod with Boohoo and a beefy Arabic woman in a security burqua to be felt down and up. It was rather intimidating. She asked me "yours?" and indicated to Boohoo. I was a little afraid that she'd be confisicated with my coffee beans and that these were actually security agents with an Ethiopian fetish. I said yes she was mine (in a broad manner of speaking), but I didn't feel like it was a good time for jokes. She tried to smile at Boohoo while she was feeling her up and down, but Boohoo wasn't buying it either. She was probably pretty tired of being manhandled by strangers at this point and even I seemed like a good bet compared to Ms. Quarterback. We hustled out of there as quickly as possible and commenced more waiting.

I'm going to have to try and get Andrew to write down his recollections of this stuff because his memory is much better than mine.

The flight from Dubai to JFK is really long. Let me just put that out there. It didn't seem quite as long when we weren't traveling with a toddler, but holy moly. It was a long flight back. Really, besides the constant level of heightened stress so that you feel like any minute you might puke, have your heart explode, and then your entire body burst into flames it wasn't a bad trip.

The first part of this flight was probably our best traveling time. We (again) had all three seats on the side of the plane. Andrew was on the aisle, Boohoo was in the middle, and I was at the window. When we got to our seats she was pretty excited, as in overstimulated, overtired, slightly manic kind of way, but she was handling it fairly well. The flight attendents brought us all warm washclothes and she thought this was the. best. thing. ever. It was so funny. She washed her face and her hands about a million times and then she started washing our hands for us (she even touched Andrew and allowed him to talk to her) Please keep in mind however that I am the only one who has held her, carried her, fed her, changed her, helped her for over 48 hours already though. After she decided that we were clean enough she started wiping up the seats and the armrests. She was very enthusiastic and animated about the whole thing. When they came back by to collect the washclothes we refused to give them back because she was still entertained.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I felt underprepared as far as the amount of toys and food and such that I had brought with me. She did like one of the foods I had brought...I can't currently remember what it was...but she was eating all of it and I was afraid we were going to run out. She didn't like any of the toys that I had brought (or more likely she just didn't like me and wouldn't have liked anything that I had) and Andrew had an ipod, but he didn't really know how to use it yet and it was vastly underutalized. lol.

She slept just a little little bit on this long long flight. She needed her foul foul diaper changed several times in the teeny tiny bathroom and everytime I had to go to the bathroom she had to come with me. Those bathroom trips were stressful. We let her play with everything in the seats, touch everything in the seats, etc. We tried to get her interested in a movie, but that was short lived. She went through several very restless phases and there was just nothing that we could do to entertain her. She ate off all of our plates when we were served food, but I basically wasn't able to eat anything. She was so bouncy and in my personal space (not in a good way) that I couldn't eat. Andrew was continuting to feel sick and so he wasn't eating that much either. Getting her to drink was almost impossible. She hated the "sippy" part of sippy cups, but no exaggerating if we took the lid off she would spill it EVERYWHERE, and a lot of the time it was on purpose. When it was the appropriate time again we tried to get her to sleep with a little more help, but it didn't work that time and she just carried on as she was. But if she wasn't sleeping than no one was sleeping. So, I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't eating.

And then we landed in JFK and our world officially imploded.