Ok so there won’t really be any trains…but we’ve been making (tentative) travel plans!!! Yay!!!

We started looking at the calendar and thinking about travel. With Belane’s embassy appointment next week on Sept. 13, if her waiver is processed in eight weeks as the last two have been, that means it would be done around Nov. 8. Thanksgiving is early this year…it is on Nov. 23. Ideally, I want to go to Ethiopia and get Belane and be home all together for Thanksgiving. I do not want to miss Thanksgiving with our other kids and I really don’t want to have to wait until after the holiday.

I started thinking that it might be easier to book some plane tickets that would get us to Ethiopia and back right before Thanksgiving, instead of waiting until the last second to hear that the waiver is done and then try to make plans in a mad dash during the holidays.

Most people adopting from Ethiopia get told two to six weeks in advance that they can travel, which gives them time to make plans. But with adoptions of HIV+ kids, you get told that the waiver is done and you can travel immediately.

I am a planner, and I did not like the idea of trying to get to Ethiopia within a few days of finding out good news.

I spoke with our adoption agency director and with Susan Parr, my favorite travel agent on the planet (she is really, really good) and they both agreed that since Susan could book us tickets for a good fare now, and if we did have to change them the charge was only $50 a ticket, that it was a good idea. They both felt that we were making a very educated “guess” on when we would travel, and that the tickets would get more expensive and definitely harder to book, especially on the domestic end, as we get closer to Thanksgiving.

So we have tickets to leave our home on the evening of Nov. 14, leaving Washington DC the morning of Nov. 15 and arriving in Addis on the morning of Nov. 16, and then after four days in Ethiopia, leaving Addis late on the evening of Nov. 19 and arriving home on Nov. 20…with three days to spare before Thanksgiving. We will once again be traveling on Ethiopian Air and I cannot wait to be back, squished in a seat next to Josh, full of excitement as I smell the smells and hear the sounds and see the people of Ethiopia on that plane with us.

We chose this week because it gives nine full weeks for the waiver to get done, and still gets us there and back before Turkey Day. Of course, the best laid plans don’t always hold, and we definitely are prepared that we may have to change our plans, but it sure does feel good to have something to count down to.

67 days and counting…