Hello and Dubai

Just a quick update to let you all know that we are safe and currently killing time in Dubai.  It's 4:54 in the morning.  Dakota, being the worrier that she is, made sure we both got up an hour too early.  We can't eat until 5:30 and should be at the airport sometime shortly after that.  The good thing is we now have 30 minutes to write an $8 blog post.

Not really much to report.  The flight was fine, if a bit cozy, and Emirates seems to be a great airline, so long as your in-flight entertainment consol works - Brent's didn't - fortunately he can sleep on the plane (and in the hotel room).  Dakota hasn't slept since we left California, but she did get the highest score ever in Bejeweled 2 and has now seen the new Karate Kid and Shutter Island.

We were feeling a bit too cracked out to check out Dubai and ended up just using the free meal vochure at our hotel - which had a great buffet with amazing fhoul.  Next time through though, we plan on taking a 2 hour driving tour of the City.  We've got the info. so we can arrange it ahead of time.

Dubai really doesn't seem all that different from America except for the different types of clothing and the blingiest watches we've ever seen.  People are friendly and the architecture is beautiful (what we've been able to see in the dark).

In 7 hours or so we expect to meet one of our kids - likely Ashegre - but we'll figure out those details once we arrive in Addis Ababa.  Reality is starting to sink in, although, maybe not quite all the way.  The first words out of Brent's mouth this morning was, "Where are we? What are we doing?" (with a big grin on his face).  Reality seems to come at us in small bite-size pieces ever since we started this process - we have a feeling the full course is about 7 hours away.

Sending lots of love around the world.  We'll post again when we can.