November 10 (Day 27)

Awassa day 2! boat ride, visiting Initiative Ethiopia

November 10, (Day 27)

So we had a bad night. Solomon was up most of the night and so was I. A heads up, the Lewi did not have cribs. He had a horrible runny nose and his eyes were watering the next morning. We went to breakfast and waited for our driver Solomon to come get us as we were going to visit Solomon and John's first orphanage Initiative Ethiopia.

While waiting for Solomon to arrive one of the managers of the resort offered us a complimentary boat ride so we took them up on their offer. It was a 15 minute ride around part of the lake. We were hoping to go on a boat ride to see the hippos and asked about that but it was rather pricey for just us and no one else staying at the resort was interested in splitting the fare with us so we didn't get to see the hippos.

 We had to cross over this crate in order to get on the dock to board the boat.

After the boat ride we headed over to Initiative Ethiopia, Solomon's first orphanage. He was there for about a month before being taken to the Gladney foster homes on February 15, 2010. The staff was so welcoming and claim that they remembered Solomon and loved all over him. They showed such amazing hospitality towards us by performing a coffee ceremony and offering us the best chairs that they had so we could sit in the shade as Awassa was very very hot.  The orphanage has 3 buildings in a U shape that have different rooms for the kids. The children were so sweet and the staff really loved on them.

This is a guard and he wanted his picture taken in front of Solomon's van.

One of the baby rooms where Solomon could have been

We stayed at Initiative for several hours playing with kids, drinking coffee, eating popcorn. But it was so hot and we were hungry, so we decided to head out and come back the next day. While we were driving we saw these wild monkeys...so our driver pulled over and started feeding them and then gave us some food for the monkeys. I was pretty nervous..after all they were wild but they were really cute. Luckily they were nice :)

 A view of the city streets. Awassa was very pretty and didn't appear as busy as the big city of Addis. It seemed to have more of a laid back feel.

We stopped to get some pictures of the sunset over the lake and hundreds of people began to surround us to watch...I don't think they see many Americans.