Written by Lonny (Jan 11, 2010)
At the Paris airport, we went through security, where I was stopped because my water bottle was full and I had some forceps in my bag. The forceps had gone through U.S. customs fine. German customs had asked me to pull them out but said that they were ok. Unfortunately, the French customs said "no way!" and threw them away. If we had made our original flight, we would not have had to go through customs again and I still would have them. On the bright side, when we were finally loaded, we found out that it was a full flight and we had the last four seats. Also, the ticket agent had booked us business class since the flight was so full. We were glad to have the extra leg room and first class treatment.
The flight from Paris to Addis went pretty well. My TV didn’t work, so I continued reading “The Real George Washington” and I was once again amazed with the caliber of man that Washington was. Even though he had retired for the third time, and was 66 years old when he was asked to lead the American army, he accepted, and then waged a valiant and courageous effort, despite lack of support at times from the Continental Congress.
They fed us a turkey dinner at midnight, then breakfast at about 5:30 in the morning. I wasn’t really hungry, but ate anyways to pass the time. When we got to the Addis airport, we stood in line to find out when our luggage would arrive, and then went to meet Shemelis. Without our suitcases, we were all able to fit into the one car for the drive to the office. {Erika: "This is saying a lot, because those little Ethipoian cars are tiny!"}We arrived at the office around mid-morning, tired and disoriented. So much for having less jet-lag! Lloyd and I worked for a couple of hours, then we all went down to the dorm room for a long nap.
This evening to celebrate Alyssa’s birthday, we all went to an Italian restaurant with amazingly good food. {Erika: "What did YOU eat, Lon?? We know that Joseph had 'the best Lasagna' he had ever eaten!"} After eating, Lloyd and I went with Danny and Worknesh to pick up our luggage. We were very relieved when we found all seven suitcases. The zipper on my small suitcase had split open on one side, but the other bags looked fine. When I looked through everything, I found out that I had lost three of the pocket knives, and my multi tool pliers. I guess three out of 18 isn’t too bad. I’m just glad that they all arrived.