I'm here!

I survived my flights to Monrovia and arrived here last night (Sunday) at about 8p Liberian time. Friends, Rusty and Jamie, met me and a couple other folks at the airport and we went straight over to the orphanage to retrieve Amos and Kalee.

I met up with Scott Bolitho in Brussels and it was great to finally meet him face to face . He and his wife Carolee, my cyber-bestfriend for the past two years, are also adopting from Addy's Hope and Scott is here to pick up their daughter Mary.

It is a holiday here today. In celebration of Liberia's first presidents's birthday, every thing is closed and no one is working. The boys and I are taking it easy this morning and hope to get out to the orphanage to visit with the other kids later today.

Kalee and I spent some time looking at alphabet flash cards and I'm glad to see that he knows all his letters and nearly all his colors. (Green tricks him up for some reason.) It's kind of funny to hear Kalee call out the pictures on the cards--his teacher has obviously taught with some similar cards or maybe a poster or picture book. Kalee recognizes lots of things he has no first-hand knowledge of like quilts, queens, igloos and oranges.

I'm not sure yet, but I think Amos might be able to read some. He can definitely pick out some names and other words as I type and he can read some commands on the computer screen. I'll do a little more research and get back to you.

I'm having trouble downloading pictures so far but I'll keep working on that. My laptop does things differently from the Mac at home and I can't figure out how to get everything to sync up. Makes me miss the guys in my IT department, for sure.

Tomorrow I plan to be at the Embassy first thing when it opens at 8a to meet with the vice-consular for the boys' exit visas. This is the last step on the US side then my next challenge will be to get that clearance letter from the Liberian Minister of Justice. The letter will give me permission to leave the country with the boys. Ideally, I will have that by Friday and can leave as scheduled, but I am preparing myself that I might need to stay on a few more days to get it. But I hope not.....

Thank you so much for all your blog comments, emails and Facebook comments. I'll keep updating as long as my internet connection stays up.