The Countdown Begins

We're leaving in six days - on Saturday, July 4 - and the surreal "are we really going?" feeling is being replaced with a more urgent "we ARE going and we're not packed!" feeling. Helping with the mental shift, we set up Biruk's crib in our room, and now it's starkly obvious that someone is missing from our house.

In the past week, we got a lot of the big pieces in place: we have airline tickets, we know where we're staying, we know where Celie and Joey are staying, and we've determined definitively that small appliances like blow dryers and hair irons will not be part of the travel plan.

Now we're down to the less critical details, plus packing. After much research, we're downgrading our expectations, from being the most electronically wired couple in Addis Ababa, to thinking about taking along a few actual made-of-paper books.

But never fear, friends - we have a plan! The one thing that does work in Ethiopia (at least most of the time) is cell phones. So although we do have Plans A, B, C and D for sending e-mails and posting to the blog, Plan E is to have a ghost writer stateside and to "phone it in!"