Ethiopia Day 4, Part 1

Today was the day.  We traveled half way around the world for today.  This morning we appeared before an Ethiopian judge during our court appointment for the finalization of Kabaina’s adoption.

 

Court was not what I expected.  We knew it would be short and we knew the room would not look like a typical American courtroom but it was still a very new experience.  We left the hotel around 8:30 and when we got to the courthouse we had to wait for the doors to open.  The building itself was several stories tall but very nondescript.

 

Tesfa, our agency representative led us to an elevator and we went up a few floors.  We were then led to a waiting room.  By about 9:00 the room began to fill up.  There were about 25 chairs around the edges of the room and about 40 people all waiting for their appointment.  There were several adoptive parents, agency representatives, a few birth mom, and several children (not sure why they were all there).  There were silence signs on the wall but few people seemed to be paying attention to them.

 

When we arrived at the court-house I told Nick I thought we would be called back at 10:20.  Wini, our friend from home has been waking up at 1:20 AM to pray for us.  1:20 AM at home is 10:20 AM in ET.  Nick just laughed.   A lady began calling appointments around 9:30.  Guess who was called back at 10:20?  Yes we were. Seriously.

 

We walked into a connecting room and sat in chairs in front of the judge. She is a beautiful, young Ethiopian women who has a huge job.  She oversees all adoptions in the country.  She asked us about 10  yes or no questions and ended our appointment with the words, “Your paperwork is finalized.  She is yours.”  Wow!  She is our daughter.

 

I was wanting to try to soak in every detail of our time with the judge but it all happened so fast.  The appointment lasted last than two minutes.  We left the office and were getting in the van at 10:27.

 

We left court and went to the Care Center to see Kabaina.  Care Center staff went to get Kabaina from school so we had a little bit more of one on one time with her.  The first thing I did was give her a picture book of our family and house.  We had looked at the pictures throughout the week but today I gave it to her to keep.  She grabbed the book, flipped to the last page and pointed to the picture of her bed.  With a huge grin she pointed back and forth from the bed to herself.

 

Today, she was much more affectionate than she has been.  I am pretty sure someone explained to her what had happened.  She gave me two hugs and a kiss on the cheek.  She also grabbed my hand and held it several times.  She did not seem as scared as she had the first day.  We saw more of her personality today. She still did not talk above a whisper but she did talk.  She asked for masstika (gum) and said hi to Bailey, Noah, Luke, and Roman on video.  She also practiced saying Bailey’s name several times.

 

Before we left we showed Kabaina video of her new brothers and sister.  She also drew us a picture of a mud hut and wrote her name in Amharic to give to Bailey.  We left her with construction paper and a pen and she said she would draw us more pictures and give them to us tomorrow.

I still can’t believe that this beautiful girl is now our daughter. Embassy clearance cannot come soon enough.

 

 

 

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