Trip 1 - Day 3

This was the one day we had nothing on our schedule.  Our whole group actually loaded in the vans to head over to Hannah's Hope to spend some time with our kiddos.  Half of our group was scheduled to go to court in the afternoon.  When we walked in the gates of HH, all the babies are in the court yard.  It didn't take long to find R sitting in a bumbo.  If R were not in this, she would be all over the place.  She knows how to get places with her army crawl!  A  few minutes after we arrived, the staff at HH got a call saying that the group that was scheduled to go to court in the afternoon, needed to leave right away as their court time had been changed.  And the rest of us were told that we needed to go shopping (one of the activities they plan for us) because they were not sure we would have time to go another time.  So after saying a quick "hi" and "bye" to R, we were off to the market.

It was so different than shopping here at home.  Each shop was no bigger than my walk-in closet with merchandise covering the walls, floor to ceiling.  Some shops were so small that you could walk in, do a 360 and you'd see everything. Every shop had pretty much the same thing and there were no prices on any items.  So we would ask the shop owner how much they wanted for an item we were interested in and then we could barter, which I'm not very good at.  It also paid off not to buy anything until we had looked in every shop and talked to many about prices because some shop owners would start at a lower price than others.   I was amazed at how good their English was.  We ended up only buying a couple dresses for R and something for each of our kiddos at home. 

After shopping, we went back to the hotel for lunch and then were able to return to Hannah's Hope.  We got to spend some more time with R.  We got to read books.  R loves to turn the pages!  And we just played.  R has the best belly laugh and smiles most of the time.  She loves to bounce and is constantly jabbering and making noises.  We will not have a quiet house when we finally get to bring her home...which is perfect for us!  We also got to spend some time with the older kiddos at Hannah's Hope.  They are all so sweet.  We brought a basketball with us and Bill had fun spinning the ball for them and then helping the kids do it too.  We would like to bring them all home with us!