March 15 - New York City

We landed in New York at 7:30 in the morning, really tired but glad to be on the ground. Customs wasn't bad at all, honestly. We had to show our passports and the paperwork from the US Embassy in Addis to get into the country and it went pretty smooth. The customs agent was in a good mood because he thought my joke about not having anything but a child to declare was pretty funny.

We walked somewhere else to turn in our paperwork and then claimed our bags before going out to the airtrain for a ride to where we could get our shuttle to the hotel. It wasn't that bad, really. Sintayehu loved the train and watched out the window with great interest. The only sad thing was the hat I made him was a bit too small...he's got a big head!

We went first to the Fairfield Inn which is where we had a reservation. See, we thought customs would take longer so we booked a flight out the next day, seeing as Kennedy Airport has no flights that would connect us with a flight to Sioux Falls after 10 AM. So customs in two hours might be pushing it. We probably would have made it, but the hotel was really a better idea.

So...Fairfield Inn. We get there and discover they have no cribs. None! So what are we supposed to do then? They call the Marriott reservation line and we get a room at the Courtyard by Marriott which is across the highway. Everything gets fixed, the crib is guaranteed, and we get a shuttle to the other hotel. It only slows us down by half an hour or so. No big deal, and everyone was really nice. Considering how tired I am, I don't care, as long we've got a crib.

At the Fairfield before we leave, a woman starts talking to us about how cute our son is and that she's left her daughter for the first time and is a mess. I tell her I understand, that we've been away from ours for ten days now and it's really hard. We talk about adoption for awhile and as she leaves, she presses a $20 into Marc's hand for Sintayehu's college fund and blesses us for saving a life. We never thought about it that way at all, but she's probably right. And we deposit that money as soon as we get home.

So we get to the Courtyard and get checked in and the crib gets delivered. The bed is sooooo soft that I almost can't get out of it to order lunch, but we manage. We get lunch from a place called Sofia and it's fabulous. Marc got wings, I got a salad and tortellini soup and I got spaghetti for Sintayehu. The room is pretty small, so we just eat on the floor, watching HBO (yes, we're addicted to TV!). Lunch is tasty and we're tired, so we lay down for naps. All of us sleep about 3 hours and then we realize we've got to get up and do something to try and stay on schedule.

So we get a cab ...well, the hotel calls us a cab and its a mercedes (whoot!) ...and we go to Target to buy the little man some pants and maybe a toy. We get a few pairs of pants, a new pair of shoes, and a cool truck that plays music. I'm betting people on the plane would rather listen to the toy than to screaming, right?

When we got back to the hotel, we ordered Chinese for dinner and Sintayehu loves fried rice and noodles. Again, we ate on the floor and we managed to stay up until 9:30, which was good. We even ordered a piece of cheesecake from the restaurant, but Sintayehu didn't like it. That's okay, that meant there was more for me!