Flying

Last Sunday, Tamirat and Obsi went flying. Obsi's dream has been to be a pilot someday. Our friend, Chris, took them up in a small four seater.


Chris put Obsi in the co-pilot seat so he could explain to Obsi what he is all doing.



Chris took them to Green Bay to fly over Lambeau Field. They were supposed to get pictures but for some reason, there are none. Hmmm, I guess we have to do it again! They also flew over our house, but, again, no pictures.

Obsi's Middle School Open House

Obsi's school had open house so we all (except Seth) went so Obsi could give us a tour. He still struggles with opening the lock on his locker. Totally foreign concept for an Ethiopian to deal with one of those!

It was fun talking to all Obsi's teachers but it was also very important. Obsi is having a hard time with transition to American school. He still gets lost and confused. It makes him close to being late for his classes. He has almost missed lunch because he missed that it was lunch time and was waiting for his next class to start. The room was dark and the teacher was at lunch!

Obsi's teachers are having to make a few adjustments for him. One teacher has helped him and his fellow Ethiopian friend in making schedules they understand. Schedules that have been simplified. Other teachers have had to lessen his homework or give him alternate assignments. They are all wonderful!

Obsi seems to be a perfectionist. He does his math assignments and then when he is done with all his homework, he goes back to math and does it again. He works at homework from after school until bedtime and then gets up early and does more. School doesn't like that he has to do that. A boy shouldn't be spending all his free time doing homework. The school authorities have seen in their testing that it takes Obsi a long time to do his work. He translates back and forth to figure things out. He also doesn't have a grasp of all our english words and meanings. For instance: if a teacher talks about a city block, Obsi pictures a building block and can't understand what she is trying to say.

Hot lunch has been good. We have had to work through what is included in $2.05 and what is extra. Lunch was costing us $4.50 per day for the first weeks. I think Obsi understands now. The extras cost way more than what we would pay for in a grocery store and we all tried to explain that to Obsi. If he really like these extras that he was buying everyday, I told him I would buy packages of the stuff and send it with him everyday at a much cheaper price. I have explained it to the principal so he could keep an eye on Obsi going through the lunch line.

I got a positive email from a teacher yesterday that showed Obsi making progress. He finally looked her in the eye and said hi to her. He's not getting lost so much. He is following doing oral corrections on homework. That had been a huge struggle.

Overall, school is a huge cultural adjustment and he comes home exhausted.

Brewer Game

We took in a Brewer Game last week. They won so it was good!

Labor Day Weekend

This last weekend we went "up nort". My dad's family have a bunch of land on a lake and he has a small lakefront plot on which he has a trailer. My family (as a child) went there quite a bit while I was growing up. Since we (my husband and boys) took up camping, we haven't been up there much. Like, 10 years! Here are some pics of that weekend.

School

Everyone got out the door on time yesterday! There were some slight problems getting home though. I decided to go get Seth and Obsi first thinking Alex could hang out after school with his friends, also thinking Valders and Cabrini both got done at 3:00. Valders doesn't get done until 3:15....oops. Seth came out of school just fine shortly after the bell rang. Obsi, well, we waited and waited until kids coming out of school slowed way down. This is at 3:30. So, I give Seth my cell phone knowing Alex will call, while I go hunt down Obsi. First hurdle was finding the Middle School office from the wrong end of the building. After lots of help, I arrived and asked everyone in the office if they saw Obsi. They had seen him with Nati but he was no where after that. They thought he may have went home with Nati so they called the bus company. Nati doesn't ride the bus. They announced over the loudspeaker for Obsi to please come to the middle school office. 10 minutes later, the district office called that they had him in their office. By this time, it is 3:45. Poor Alex! Someone walked Obsi to the office and Obsi said he was waiting where the middle schoolers get picked up because I didn't tell him where I was picking him up. I dropped him off on the other side of the building but never told him I would pick him up in that same spot. We got to Alex's school at 4:05. Alex was not a happy boy but he handled it well.

Obsi said school was good. And that it was a long day with so many teachers. He was tired!

Unfortunately, soccer practice was at 5:00. It was like pulling teeth to get Obsi to get ready for soccer. Then we left without shin guards and had to back-up down the driveway to get those. We were 5 minutes late for soccer.

Tamirat is taking the bus this year. He catches it at the end of our driveway. As I was pushing him out the door, we forgot to pack his lunch. Darn!. I quickly made 2 pb sandwiches and Seth drove him to the end of our driveway. First day and not sure if the bus would be early or late. We are the very first stop.

With the whole mess of things after school, we got home at 4:15 and Tamirat should've been home but wasn't. Weird. Tamirat got home about 10 minutes later. He tried to tell me why he was so late but I just couldn't understand. But he did try to explain it all in English the best he could so that was really amazing. He just doesn't quite know the words for things yet. I had him explain to Obsi and what happened is a boy that was supposed to be on his bus didn't get on after school so they had to find him before they headed out to take all the children home. They found that he got on the wrong bus. We all laughed about it after our situation with finding Obsi.

Tamirat loves going to school. He didn't know his teachers name so I told him I wanted to know it today. We will see if he remembers it. Tamirat loves being around other children which is why he loves school so much. His English has gotten so much better than where he was last May. I hope they treat him like the other students when it comes to homework and tests. Last May, I wanted them to just let him take it all in with no expectations and no grading. Guess I better meet the teacher soon!

Seth needs to drop a class and add a different one. It will be interesting to see what he picks.

Alex started school on Monday already. He likes 7th grade much better than 6th grade. He was a trooper last year. One teacher he had never smiles. Not sure that teacher even likes kids. He got through it! This year is looking much better.

CCI Reunion

Our adoption agency hosted a reunion of families and children at the Brookfield zoo near Chicago. Tamirat's brother and sister were there. Obsi saw three friends from Kamashi, where he came from.

Alex, Mulugeta(Whitelaw, WI), Seth, Tariku(Michigan), Obsi, Nati(Whitelaw, WI), and Tamirat.


Tamirat and his brother, Ben:

Camp Forest Springs

Two/three weeks ago, we spent a week at CFS.

Tamirat and Obsi went on the Snowberry bog hike. Camp has one of the top bogs in the nation!


Tamirat is digging for snowberries. They are hidden.


Bill, Seth, and Tamirat went on the high ropes course. Obsi sat below and took pics for me.


Here they all are:
Here is Seth:

Here they all are at the top:

And Tamirat chickened out and went back.

We played a lot of Mexican Train Dominos with Tamirat! He loves that game.

Air rifles:

Alex and Tamirat on the archery range:


We celebrated Tamirat's 12th birthday:

It was a good week!

Summer Fun

Last week we camped at Point Beach State Park which is located along Lake Michigan. We did a mid-week camping trip and it was wonderful. The weather was perfect, it was quiet, the biking was great, and the boys had a ton of fun without TV and video games! We camped with our good friends, the Martinez's who also have boys, Brandon and Sam. The mosquitos weren't horrible. This was Obsi's first real camping trip. The other camping trip for him was Camp Forest Springs. At Camp, we only sleep in the camper.



When we camped over Memorial Day weekend, the boys had gathered up tree bark and discovered the huge fires it can make, along with a lot of black smoke! Tamirat thought it was pretty cool so here he is with tree bark, followed by the huge fire. These types of fire aren't allowed but they burn fast and we didn't get caught! ;-)



Here we are at the beach. The mom's came looking for the boys....how could we miss with this amount of bikes?

What a beautiful beach! This is Alex and he is supposed to look like the Sphinx.

We had eight boys with us.

Nati and Mulugeta were able to join us on this day.

This was also Obsi's first time with his new Trek bike. We all took a bike ride into town on Wednesday, had lunch at McDonald's, did a little shopping and biked back. About a 15 mile trip. The next day, Nati, Obsi, and Tamirat biked to Neshota Beach (into town) and back.

And at the end of a long day, the boys relaxed with a movie in our camper.

Doctor/Dentist

Obsi had his doctor and dentist appointments this week. All is good. On Monday he had 4 vials of blood drawn. All is good. The only concerns: Acne and TB. He will be on antibiotics shortly...hopefully today. So many guidelines...one hour before meals, not with vitamins, twice a day...ugh...I will delegate to him because I can't remember to give them to him.

For TB: We have to wait until our County Health Department appointment next week. The chest xrays showed his TB exposure to be just that, an exposure. So the doctor wants to start him on INH for 9 months! Ugh, another pill. None of us, except Bill, are on any meds so I don't have to deal with keep track of that. I know Obsi will remember. The doctor said the Health Dept. will give us what we need. INH and vitamin B.

The dentist appointment was good but long! He has no cavities but had lots of tartar at his gumline. It took an hour and a half to scrape it off. This was Obsi's first dentist appoint ever! Not bad. He gums were very sore when he was done.

Life with 4 Boys

Obsi has been home for 9 days already. Tamirat, three months. As of right now, this is my take on it:

Two boys were easy. When Tamirat came, it was still easy. He fit in really well and the change to our culture was easy for him. It may be that the orphanage he was at did an excellent job of training him for the change. The only hard thing for him was our food. He still continues to eat mostly Ethiopian. We love Ethiopian cuisine so it is no big deal for me to make it.

Bringing Obsi home was completely different. Obsi was in a large orphanage with 150 boys! As he told me about life there, it sounded like a military boarding school. They were in a very remote area. Showers were taken in the river. Food was not abundant and Obsi said he was very often hungry. He did eat well while at the Transition House. The cook there is very good at what she does. I am trying to feed Obsi often. He is at that age, 13 going on 14, that I know he needs fuel in his body because it is changing and growing.

Obsi doesn't know how anything works. Doors, appliances, toys, pitchers, .... everything is new to him. We love explaining what things are and how they work. He is always amazed.

Obsi is also an introvert. He loves to sit back and observe everything. Tamirat is very sociable, Obsi is very unsociable. He gets very fidgity around large groups of people. He loves to sit on his bed and do math. He loves the computer and all the friends he has reconnected with on Facebook. He loves Ethiopian Christian music.

Obsi eats just about anything we ask him to. He loves tacos, kiwi, mangos, pork steaks, french fries, pizza, scrambled eggs, pancakes. He doesn't like green beans so far. He learned the hard way not to drink more than one can of Mountain Dew after 6pm. He was up until 4am and the next night in bed at 6:30. I asked if he knew Mountain Dew was loaded with caffeine and he did not know that! I explained to him that I don't allow MD after dinner. He was at a youth group event and I missed the MD.

Four boys makes life very busy and hectic. It could be I had catching up to do when we got home. I had Obsi to settle in. He lived out of his duffle bag for 2 days and lived and slept in the same clothes for 5 days. Once we took him shopping, got him his own drawers to keep his clothes in, and showed him my huge front loading washer/dryer, he seems to be doing better wearing clean clothes and sleeping in clean clothes.

Once I got all the laundry caught up, it isn't so bad. My kitchen is in order. I did a major grocery shopping trip. Things are good but still hectic. I can see I am going to have to start planning meals better. The boys need to help me more often. Obsi has a long way to go before he is comfortable here. I can see it is all so different and really hard for him.

We have a doctor appointment in 1.5 weeks. We have the hurdle of him being exposed to TB to get over. We didn't come back with a chest xray, like the CDC expected us to. We are required to report it to the Center of Disease Control so I am going to count on the clinic to take care of all that for us and provide us with the "expected" chest xray. Obsi was exposed but the xray he had in Ethiopia showed him to be clear and inactive. If it was active, he wouldn't have been able to come home. As part of the adoption process, we are all required to be tested for communicable diseases.

Life is good and I feel very blessed to have these boys here. They have enriched our lives so much! We finally have communication lines open with Tamirat. Obsi does a great job translating. What a joy it is to always hear Ethiopian music and the Amharic language flying. We are so blessed!!!

Embassy

We were on pins and needles heading to embassy. Obsi had been deemed 18 by a wrist and elbow xray. We weren't sure what was going to happen.

As we arrived and sat on the benches, Sue told Deanne Gillock and Bill & I that embassy didn't accept our paperwork or our payment for a visa. She indicated it didn't look good. Our CCI embassy group put our heads together and prayed. If anything was going to be done, only the God of our Universe was going to do it.

We went in and waited. The Niedermeyer family got called up first. Ms. Rupp, the embassy agent in window #4, told us she had just gotten the embassy doctor's medical report that morning and Obsi was deemed 18. Sue was with us and argued with her. Sue told her that Obsi was not 18! We were asked to wait. Gillocks got called up later. Embassy decided to interview the 2 boys. Sisay felt good about the interview. Then Obsi went in and came out clearly upset. He told us the man said he was 17. Obsi knew what year he was born. He know the Ethiopian Calendar year and the American Calendar year, 1996. The man spoke angrily to him. He was asked all about his brothers and sisters. Obsi told him everything he knew.

Ms Rupp told Sisay's family that he would get his visa the next day. She then went on to explain that Obsi was 17 because Obsi said his 18yr old brother was married and had 4 kids and that can't be. His brother must be about 22 so therefore, Obsi must be 17. Sisay's mom had suggested they bring up Pastor Tedessa from Debrezeit. Pr. T had been there when they started Kamashi. They had only taken in boys between the ages of 7 & 10. They wanted Ms Rupp to talk to Pastor.

Ms Rupp told us embassy was open 8-11:30 and we should come back with Pastor. Dereje, CCI's in-country lawyer, called Pastor and left for Debrezeit to spend the night and travel early morning to be at embassy at 8am.

We met Dereje, Pastor, Gillocks and Sue at embassy bright and early. It was a beautiful warm sunny morning! Ms. Rupp spent quite a while talking to Pastor. When Kamashi Orphanage was started, they went out and gathered up boys who were orphans and had no one to care for them. They had an American dentist with them that could guess at the ages. The boys over 10 got sent back. Pastor remembered Obsi. Obsi was 7 or 8 and was taken in. His mom had just died. His dad had died when he was very young. This was 5 years ago that they gathered these boys.

Ms. Rupp believed that Obsi was 13. Because they created a birthdate of August 26th, the day he would turn 14, she was satisfied. She claimed that as birthparents, we deserved to know the truth about the case. Not sure is she meant our agency wasn't telling us the truth but Sue knew the truth and was willing to stand by it. Sue was given the go ahead to pay for Obsi's visa. Ms Rupp said there was never a doubt! (that she would issue a visa). grrrrr........ I wish I would've known that from the start! We were all emotionally drained.

Friday evening, Dereje walked into the guest house with our visa. There was a lot of whooping!!!! Huge hugs for Dereje!

Our homestudy was approved for boys ages 10-14. If Obsi was deemed 15, we would have had to do an update. Through the fax machine, we would have been able to pull it off while we were in-country. Angela, at CCI, had figured out a way to get it all done, by-passing all the states the homestudy needs to go through in a normal process. The homestudy gets sent to TX, and then to Maryland, and then to Addis. Our wonderful agency was prepared! We had also had our Congressman's office on stand-by in case they needed to step in and get us that visa.

It all fell together and we praise the Lord for that! Satan shot every dart he could. The Lord provided the shield.

Ephesions 6:13-18
Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.

We are standing firm!

Trip #2 to get Obsi

This time around we flew Turkish Air. Chicago to Istanbul to Ethiopia. Much less traveling time than the first trip. We arrived in Addis early morning, around 2am. When we got to New Flower Guest House, our dear friend Yonaton said he had a surprise for us up in our room. Hmmmmm, I couldn't even begin to imagine. It turns out that Obsi had spent the day with Laurie and Tariku at the Lion Zoo. They all decided that because we paid for the room anyway, Obsi should just spend the night. Obsi was sleeping up in our room and he woke up and got up to greet us. How wonderful is that! I don't have any pictures because by camera was packed away and it being such a surprise, I just wasn't prepared.

This is Bill, Yonaton, Nicky, Obsi, and Tariku. Tariku also came from Kamashi. Kamashi is in western Ethiopia, along the Sudan border.
Obsi and Tariku.


We just hung out all day (Wednesday). Tomorrow, embassy.

Soddo

When we were in Ethiopia, we took a trip down south. Down to Soddo. 7 hours away. This is a post from Sophie who we went to visit and she did a good job so I won't need to take the time to tell you what we did, she did a great job!

MaryKay and I have been corresponding for a few months now. We read each others’ blogs and facebook status updates. We email every now and then. It’s been a fun way for me to keep in touch with life in America. This week, MaryKay, her daughter, and her husband are in Ethiopia picking up the newest addition to their family. And they came all the way down to Soddo to visit me! How cool is that? We had a fun 20 or so hours together. They arrived yesterday afternoon at the hospital. I met them there, and was very pleased with their wonderful midwestern accents At the hospital, Ruth gave them a tour and gratefully accepted the huge quantities of baby blankets and stuffed animals that they brought as donations. From there, we headed into town to eat at the rooftop restaurant that has the most forenge-like food. They got to experience the meatloaf-like cheeseburgers, and were interested in the surroundings. I was happy that they got out of the polluted air of the city (Addis) and could experience the beauty of the countryside. After the very long dinner (that involved lots of clarification of orders and requests for the bill), MaryKay jumped on the back of my bike and everyone else piled into their rented van for the trip up to my house. They brought out the wonderful things that they had brought for me and for clinic–chocolate chips, cheese, prenatal vitamins, and clothes! They brought 6 bags full of donations, and carried their personal things in their carry-on bags. Amazing. They managed to stay awake and chat for awhile before succumbing to sleep. My bed, the guest bed, the couch, and some couch cushions in the other bedroom were all full! It’s so fun to have company!

This morning, we rolled out of bed and trekked through the rain to the church just across the road from my compound. Unfortunately for the 2 Ethiopians in our midst (Obsi, their son; and Alazar, their driver), the service was pretty much all in Wolaitta. I understood more than they did! I didn’t understand a whole lot, but it was still kinda fun to have a very basic idea of what was going on, when some Ethiopians were clueless. After church, we had soup and garlic bread before they went on their way back to Addis.

Have I told you lately that I love company? So when are you coming?

ps–and now I think I’ll go make some chocolate chip cookies with one of the 3 HUGE bags of chocolate chips that they so sweetly brought for me!

Thank you Sophie!

Door County

This week we have been in Door County. We are here from Monday to Monday. It is a tradition...for all except Tamirat. For Tamirat, it is all new. He is having fun! Everywhere we go, he says, "Bike?!" He loves biking.

Earlier this week we biked into Fish Creek. Because it is a total tourist town, to the wealthy Chicagoans, there are many, many shops. Our faves are the Door County Confectionary and The Fudge House. Tamirat has no interest in fudge. At the candy store, he picked out Starburst. At another store, that sells imports from around the world, he got a slingshot. We were all amazed at his slingshot capabilities! He can hit a target, no problem. He hit a lamp post with a stone.

A few pics of our adventures:

There are miles and miles of biking here and it is all so beautiful!!

A favorite is our nightly run to "Not Licked Yet". Tamirat does not like their vanilla custard so he gets his nightly french fries.

We climbed to the top of Eagle Tower. Tamirat was a little apprehensive at first, being to high up.

We had lunch at Wilson's in Ephraim.

We've been to Julie's Park Cafe twice for breakfast already.

Then there was the "MOO" place that serves shaved ice. Tamirat said it was Okay, nothing great.