The Blue Nile

Over the weekend our good friends, Allie and Ethan, came to visit and were kind enough to join us in our adventure to try Ethiopian food for the first time. I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I like a lot of ethnic foods so I was hopeful I would enjoy it. The Blue Nile has been around Columbus a long time and I wanted an authentic experience.

Here is a shot of the four of us gathered around the tray.

The owners were incredibly nice and I think their website does a great job explaining the experience and the significance of sharing the same plate. Here is what they say:

“Gather around the tray (Mosseb) made for a group to eat from the same platter. Experiencing the community dish by eating from the same plate and sharing the same bread (called Injera) is socially significant in the Ethiopian culture and also creates a bond of friendship and personal loyalty between the diners. It is said that people who eat from the same plate (Mosseb) will never betray one another.”

As an appetizer we ordered Vegetarian Sambusas, pastry shells filled with potatoes, peas and herbs. They were delicious. Here is what we ordered for our entrees as described in the menu.

Doro Wat: Chicken cooked and perfectly simmered with seasoned sauce of berbere. Served with hard boiled egg.

Minchetabesh: Finely chopped prime beef first fried in a pan with ginger, onion, cardamom and white pepper until golden, then sauteed in Ethiopia's famous keywat.

Kik Alicha: Yellow split peas cooked with onions, green peppers and garlic.

Shiro: Spiced and milled chick peas cooked with onions.

My favorite was the split pea dish and D liked the chick peas the best but was also partial to the chicken. All of the meals are served with injera. The injera basically acts as your utensil. Here is how Blue Nile’s website describes injera. “Injera, a flat tangy, crepe-like bread, is the essential part of the meal. It is made out of teff, wheat and corn flours. Teff is a cereal grain, until now unique to Ethiopia, which is rich in iron, protein, complex carbohydrates, calcium, potassium, and other minerals.”

Here is a shot of Allie scooping up a yummy bite with the injera.

All in all it was a great experience and I am so glad we have The Blue Nile in Columbus. I am eager to go back and get to know the owners better.

In adoption news, we completed our fire inspection on Tuesday morning. It was good to check that off the list. This weekend we have our appointment with CIS. It feels like we are moving along and getting stuff done. Hopefully the trend continues over the next few weeks!

Education

First of all, thank you to everyone for the well wishes for our first home study appointment. D and I both think it went really well. I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect but it was actually a very good experience. Our social worker is super nice and I am glad we will be working with her. We basically spent the entire two hours just answering her questions. She asked us how we met, about our courtship (if you can call it that), our strengths and weaknesses as a couple, what we see as our role as parents and other questions like that. But we also talked about adoption in general and how we will communicate with our child about his/her adoption. D and I had briefly discussed some of that but it was good to make sure we were on the same page. I had always assumed that we would talk about it from the beginning and would tell our son/daughter the story of their adoption. It’s not going to be a taboo subject in our household but something to celebrate. Our child will have a story, it will be the story of how our family came to be, and I want our child to know about it. Part of the conversation was about ways to incorporate the child’s Ethiopian culture into their daily lives, which is very important to us. That made me think about how D and I have been trying to educate ourselves about Ethiopia and have learned a fair amount thus far.

I thought some of you might be interested to know some of those facts as well.

*the capital city is Addis Ababa (it means new flower) *the official language is Amharic *the major religions are Christianity (mainly Orthodox Church) and Islam *Ethiopia is one of the world’s oldest countries *Ethiopia was the original source of the coffee bean *the literacy rate is 42% *Ethiopia has only 1 medical doctor per 100,000 people *there are more than 3.8 million orphans in Ethiopia

Being a huge fan of the Olympics and someone who enjoys running, I had always been familiar with the Ethiopian runners and the success they have had at long distances. But I didn’t know anything about the history including recent studies that claim the present-day vicinity of Addis Ababa as the point from where human beings migrated around the world. Very cool.

D and I are obviously trying to soak up as much information as we can. We are going to have our first encounter with Ethiopian food this weekend as we will be going to the Blue Nile. I will give a full report next week.

I will leave you with a shot of a bumper sticker I just ordered from Etsy. I am super excited to proudly put it on my car.

Home Study

I just got back from a fabulous weekend home in Tulsa. My mom had a very important birthday and of course it was Mother’s Day. We took a trip to OKC to go to their art museum and to see The Lion King. It was FABULOUS!! I have a feeling that as D and I go through this adoption process I will need to remember the song “Hakuna Matata” on several occasions to keep from getting too stressed. Although, I am in many ways the queen of worry so living with “no worries” is somewhat laughable in my world but I’ll do my best.

While I was away, D spoke to our social worker and set the date for our first home study appointment – next Monday!! This is huge and makes me feel like we are really starting to move through all this paperwork and accomplish something. I am eager to find out what sorts of things we will discuss. From my understanding, they really just want to see our home environment and make sure it is a safe and healthy place for a child. It is a time for the social worker to interview us in person and just learn more about us. A lot of the paperwork we have been working on the past few weeks all goes into our home study. D and I have had physicals, filled out autobiographical statements, completed financial statements, asked various folks to write references and more! So once it is all complete it will be a pretty extensive packet of information about D and me. The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services require our home study before they finalize approval to allow us to immigrate a foreign born child into the U.S. So as you can imagine the home study is a very important piece. Of course, the faster we get all of this done and get approved then the faster we get on the waitlist!

On a funny note, several weeks ago we were chatting with some of our closest friends here in Ohio about possible baby names for the little buster. One of the couples has a three year old and D and I just adore her. She has MAJOR personality and I think in her twos she had a little crush on D. She referred to him as “my D.” Does it get much cuter than that? Well, back to the original story. We were discussing names and asked for the advice of our favorite three year old. Her exact response was, “umm…. Arson.” Where did she come up with that?! D and I put it on the list but so far there are about 150 other names ahead of it. J

Send us good thoughts on Monday!

The Timeline

It seems that when we tell people we are adopting one of the first questions we get is, “how long will it take?” I wish I had an exact answer to that question, but in the world of adoption there is no exact science to the timeline. However, we do have a rough idea of what it will be like.

Here is what we know so far. We have picked our international adoption agency. We are working with the Gladney Center for Adoption. Their link is on the side bar. We are very confident in this decision as they have been so organized and kind as we start this process. They have so many resources, and it is obvious they do everything they can to keep their families updated on what’s going on in each specific adoption program. We are also working with Worlds Together as our local agency and they will help us through our home study. They have also been extremely helpful and have answered tons of our questions. We are currently working on all of the paperwork. We sent off our I-600A form, which is basically the request for approval to immigrate a foreign-born child into the US. We have submitted our initial applications to Gladney and Worlds Together, we got our FBI and Ohio background check fingerprints completed and we went to the doctors for our physical all in the past week. My arm is still sore from the tetanus shot!

We are told it will take about 4 months to get all the paperwork complete and that includes completion of the home study. Once all the paperwork is approved (hopefully that goes smoothly) then we go on the wait list. The average wait time in Ethiopia for a referral for babies is about 8 months these days. This could change of course by the time we go on the wait list. A referral is basically when our case worker gives us the information on our possible future child. Just because we get the referral it doesn’t mean that child is 100% ours because we then have to go through court in Ethiopia. Getting a court date and getting approved can take around 4 months (unless delayed by the rainy season). There are still things that can happen during that process that would derail it. We will hope that doesn’t happen to us but there are no guarantees. Once we pass court then we make travel arrangements to go to Ethiopia and pick up our baby!!

I find it is really easy to get ahead of myself, but in this moment D and I just need to focus on the paperwork and the home study and get it done. Once all the paperwork is done and we go on the wait list, then I feel like we can use that time to do the more fun things like get the nursery ready, shop for cute clothes, etc. But we feel like any free time we have right now has to go towards the paperwork. Thank goodness D is ULTRA organized because he has really tackled all this paperwork and keeps us on task. Those of you who know D well are probably not at all shocked by this!

Because I enjoy blog posts with pictures I thought I would share with everyone a cute shot of my first “child.”

This is Raney. We rescued her when we she was 2 years old. She was not a happy dog when we first got her and she had SEVERE separation anxiety. I am quite proud of us for pushing through and not giving up on her. It took her a while but Raney is a changed dog and is incredibly loving. She told me the other day that after having us to herself for almost 5 years she is finally ready to have a sibling. Yes, I am one of those dog owners. J