Guest house review: Ethiopia Guest House

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY THE ANDERSONS ON NEW FLOWER

From July 2009:

One of the things I stalked adoption blogs for was information on where to stay while in country. We stayed at the Ethiopia Guest Home and I highly recommend it. We loved our time there. It was very comfortable and we really like the part of town it was in - kind of a residential area so not as busy as main roads. It's about 15 minutes from the airport and 10 minutes from Sele Enat and our agency's care center.

We originally booked the Adoptive Family Suite - which is huge, has it's own bathroom, a queen bed and bunk beds with plenty or room for a crib or two. We ended up switching rooms with this totally amazing family because they had all 5 of them crammed into a much smaller room (due to a last minute booking change they had to do). It worked out just fine. We moved to a room that was smaller but still had a queen bed, bunk beds and room for a crib for Grace. We shared a bathroom just outside our door, but that was no big deal at all. Oh and the fourth floor suite is incredible - two bedrooms and a bathroom, a living room and the most amazing deck with a view. If you are traveling with a crew - it would be perfect. This was our room.

The food was also great and just easy. Breakfast and lunch included and dinner for just $5 per person more. We actually ended up eating dinner there every night. We had planned originally to go out one night but we didn't want to leave Grace and the fellowship with the other families was just too fun!

The lobby has toothbrushes, diapers, formula and some medicines for sale and they let us use the lobby laptop anytime we wanted to. As for internet access, the EGH has wireless, however, its out a lot due to rolling power outages. They have a generator so we were never without power, but that just means that the only internet is dial up from the lobby computer. Oh and you get a cell phone thats yours for the week. It's preloaded with a few minutes - you can get more pretty easily but have your family at home buy a calling card with cheap minutes and they can call you whenever you want! You can get these "calling cards" online. We didn't realize exactly how this would work and so we payed a pretty penny for our family to call us without this cards.

I cannot say enough about the staff at the EGH. Everyone from the sweet girls who do 24 shifts at the front desk to the cooks to the drivers - totally amazing. It was so neat to sit and talk with them. They were willing to help in any way. They showed Scotty where to go buy water and cokes and snacks around the corner. They cared for Grace one morning. One driver took us shopping all over and bargained for us. Another driver took us to Grace's town so we could get some pictures and was an awesome translator and friend that day.

Here are a few shots of the guest house.

Of course, the absolute best part was the friends we made. We hit the jackpot with house mates. Hanging out with them was one of the best parts of our trip. We all left our doors open, loved on each other's children, shared supplies, learned a ton from one another and had some serious laughs. Here's our house bunch. We miss you guys!!!!