Trip to ET Day 16 and 17

Day 16 - So today is the day that I leave Africa, YEA! I’m quite ready to be home. I’m currently sitting in the airport in Addis. I left my hotel in Lalibela at 9am and arrived in Addis at 1:20pm an won’t leave here until 10:00pm L Luckily a little lunch stand here is letting me use their power to use the computer. There aren’t really any outlets here otherwise to sit and watch a movie or what not. So I’m using this one in the pretense that I’m charging my computer. I don’t think they’ll let me get away with it for 8 hours though. I met 2 Frenchmen and one guy from Holland on the shuttle to the airport this am. I didn’t dare try to speak French to them I just listened in on their conversations J Then I introduced myself and they were quite nice so at least I had some friends on the first leg of the flight but now I’m alone and super bored already and my wait hasn’t even yet really begun. They stayed at the Seven Olives Hotel (the oldest in Lalibela) and said though their rooms also have no TV or phone that the food was delicious even by French standards. I wanted to ask them what they thought about the French government trying to ban birkas, and nikabs (spelling?) in public places but I didn’t want to get into a political discussion with people I’d only just met. There was a man on our flight who was quite ill poor thing. He was from the U.K but he did quite well for the flights and I just felt so bad for him and also was quite thankful that I only got really sick for one day. I had a man in the airport offer to pay me cash what I paid for my laptop b/c he said it’s very difficult to get a computer in ET and they are much more expensive. He asked when I was coming back to ET b/c he wanted to give me money to get one for his daughter. It’s so sad how in one of the poorest countries it’s MORE expensive to get needed items like cars and computers. Right now the government is paying ex-pats an incentive to come back to the country. That’s why everywhere you see all this new construction going on, the only bad thing is that the local professionals who have been here are getting nothing. The Dean said he actually considered leaving just to be paid to come back! The ex-pats get $2000.00 per month but he only gets 4000.00 birr/month. That’s around $400! Also the new hospitals and things they are building to attract the ex-pats are pretty much devoid of needed diagnostic equipment. Laura said that she had an experience where they didn’t even have analgesics or anesthesia in the human hospital. So they are all really for show, just empty shells.
Today we flew over Lake Tana which is quite large. I definitely plan to come back and visit there. It was much bigger then I imagined, and there are the Nile Falls that I’d like to see as well. Right now I just keep thinking of seeing Ezra again and I can’t wait! I have over 24 hours until I get that chance though so I keep trying to put that out of my head.

Day 17 -I’m still waiting in Washington D.C to get a flight to Dallas. The flight from Addis was an hour late so I wound up waiting in the airport for TEN hours then had to sit for SIXTEEN hours on the plane home. Customs was a beast this time around for some reason. My fight was supposed to leave at 12:20 to Dallas via Charlotte, but the weather is bad so it was cancelled so I had to rebook. Now we were supposed to leave at 5:00pm but there is a line for deicing and take off so we’re pushed back to 6:45 pm. Nightmare… I just want to go home!!! I did meet a great girl from Cameroon who’s in the same predicament as me but she needs to get to Houston. We’ve been practicing our French and English so it’s nice to have a friend. One of the first things I did when I got to the airport was buy an UsWeekly to catch up on all my celebrity gossip! hahaha
And now we wait some more.