Yikes! The Travel Guide Arrived

So, today the "Prepare for Your Trip to Ethiopia" guide arrived. It was only a week or so after our dossier was sent to Ethiopia, so it totally caught us by surprise. It seemed a little surreal that a trip to Ethiopia could be in our future. We spent all afternoon and evening reading it! There's some crazy stuff in there that we totally weren't prepared for - like the fact that I can't wear shorts there! That's the biggest crock of sexist shit I've ever heard! I yelling for like an hour about that. And then there's the 8500 ft. in the air altitude of the capital city we'll be going to. It's like two Denvers stacked on top of each other..and they recommend altitude sickness medicine b/c it's hard to breath there. So, compound 1000 degrees + no air + pants and long sleeves b/c I'm a woman, and I'm already having a virtual panic attack. Radames also made me read and re-read the line about "things happen on Ethiopian time and you have to be extremely patient". I've got a lot of prep work to do. Then there's the taking anything and everything you will need to take care of your child permanently, b/c they give you your child as soon as you get to the House of Hope. Technically, our son will already be ours when we get there, b/c we have signed over power of attorney to the agency to go to court for us and adopt him. (We just wait for a week or so for him to get his travel visa to get home with us.) So, we've gotta take diapers, formula (which we've never even used!), clothes, blankets, snacks, bottled water, lice medicine, scabies medicine, diaper rash med, etc. It's so friggin' overwhelming that Radames got a migraine and had to go to bed, and I just sat in the bathroom floor in some sort of drug addict coma trying to process it all. I mean the list of stuff we have to take is out of control! And then there's all the papers and what to sign and not sign and not to give to such and such a person but to only give to this person or what hours we can go back to the orphanage so we can hang out with our son's caregivers and friends, etc....and how we can't eat anything we don't boil, cook or peel...and how the Muslim morning prayers start at 5am on the citywide loud speakers (as the roosters crow)..and how not to give the millions of people who will ask us for money any money even though you'll want to...and on and on and on. We are totally unprepared for this. The trip itself just seems so overwhelming. And since there's not really a son to get excited about, all we are focused on is the travel detail that i'm sure will be forgotten once it's all over. Right now it just seems so insurmountable. And how about the fact that the plane ride home is sometimes the time your child decides to freak out and realize they've been...well, for all intents and purposes, kidnapped from everything they know...and you don't even know how to sing them a lullaby in their native tongue. Oh, lord, when are we learning Amharic. We can't even pronounce the name of the language! Can we do this!?