We Made It!!!!!!!!

We're finally here! The flights were on time and went well. We flew from San Diego to Chicago to Frankfurt for a layover (long enough to check into the Sheraton at the Frankfurt Airport) and then to Addis Ababa. For anyone traveling from west of the Mississippi, we definitely recommend incorporating a layover in your itinerary. It helps with the jet lag. Ethiopia is 10 hours ahead of the west coast and 7 hours ahead of the east coast.

The trip started at 4:08am. That's when we showed up at the San Diego airport. We made a mental note for next time that the ticket counter folks don't even show up to work until 4:30am! Here's Alicia enjoying the early morning. We packed 3 suitcases with about 1.5 of them being donations for the Transition Homes.

After a brief layover in Chicago, we headed to Frankfurt. We lucked out to have two seats on the side by ourselves, and we flew United and had Economy Plus with extra legroom. We arrived at Frankfurt at 5:45am. The airport was deserted which allowed us to get through customs and passport check in less than 30 minutes!

The hotel room at the Sheraton was great, but to be honest, the fact it had a bed was what we really cared about! We took the train to downtown and surrendered to fatigue after a couple of hours. Luckily, we set the alarm because we may have slept through the flight!

Internet connectivity is limited here so our next post will be about our Frankfurt adventure and the our first day in Ethiopia.