We received our court date! It's scheduled for March 23rd. Our social worker said that would put our visa appt. around April 9th, at this point, which means we would leave for Ethiopia around April 5th. We will not get a confirmed visa appointment, however, until our court date goes through, so the date could change. Travel arrangements, etc. cannot be made until after the court date, so we'll have a very busy couple of weeks after March 23rd! Until then, we've started making the preparations we can. The busy-ness, I'm finding, is a helpful distraction from the waiting.After we got our referral, we were able to send a couple of small gifts to Kezia. We sent a photo album with pictures of Norman, Peter, Sam, India (our dog) and I and a small teddy bear. We were told that the nanny's at the orphanage would show Kezia the pictures of us on a regular basis. I wonder if it will make a difference; if we will be a little less strange to her. I hope so.
When we received our referral, we were sent a picture of Kezia, any known history and of course, her birth name (which we are not allowed to reveal online until our court date). Since our daughter will be two and a half when we get her, Norman and I have decided to keep her birth name and use Kezia as her middle name. We believe keeping her given name is what's best and we are delighted that she was given a beautiful, meaningful Ethiopian name by her birth mother. That is the name we feel she should keep as her rightful first name. However, until we are able to disclose the name and for the sake of this blog, I'll keep referring to her as Kezia.
DID YOU KNOW...
The official language in Ethiopia is Amharic.
