Gotcha, Girl!

We arrived in Addis on Thursday, August 8th, around 1:30 pm local time (to be exact, it was 12/3/2005 at 7:30 am local time, as Ethiopia follows a calendar roughly seven years and 8 months behind the Gregorian calendar, as well has having decided to have the day roll over at what for the rest of the world is 6 am). The head of Gladney adoption here, Dereje, picked us up and took us to our guest house (Yeka Guest House, $55/night), where we quickly dumped our bags before heading to Gladney's foster care center to get our hands on our little princess-in-waiting.

Allyson had seen her three times already in June, but this was the first time for Reece and I to meet her. Reece was a bit shy at first and she a bit subdued suffering a cold. Still, we all got on splendidly as we loved on her and the other, older kids in the foster care center. Reece soon warmed up and was gleefully running around with them language barriers notwithstanding. There were two sibling groups (two sisters and then two sisters and a brother), which was encouraging as we know sibling adoptions have gone very slowly. They were fun-loving and sweet and we enjoyed being with Saryn and all of them. After a brief meeting with Dereje to discuss the details of our court date the next day, we headed to the guest house and were in bed by 8 or so, pretty exhausted.

Jet lag has been quite a hiccup to Reece's normally stellar sleeping. He's woken up at 1 am and 2 am on our first two nights overseas, so that's made for some tired mornings. Allyson was completely drained this morning after staying up with him from about 2 am onwards, all while fighting a cold. Suffice it to say that Christian gets tonight's shift!

In the early afternoon, we headed to court, stopping at a pretty unassuming high-rise except for the machine-gunned-armed soldiers standing outside. Dereje met us there and accompanied us up a few floors to a waiting room packed with ferengi (foreigners). All of the men were carbon copies of each other: white, wearing business casual with a fleece or Gortex jacket and backpack. We had barely sat down when our name was called. We marched into the judge's office, answered a series of checkbox-style questions and literally three minutes later were declared Saryn's parents and marched right back out. WHHHHAAAT? Four years of waiting, yearning, striving conluded like that? It was a bit surreal and quite bewildering, enough to make Allyson upset with Christian for his apparent non-reaction to the whole affair during lunch.

Slowly, though, things sank in and we picked up some spring in our step as we headed back to the foster center to love on her some more. She is now officially ours and we could have taken her home tonight. For several reasons, we will keep her with the foster care for a few more days, but we finally, finally have got her. So thankful, so amazed. WOOHOO!