Travel 101 for Dummies, part 3

After trying to remember all of my mental notes from the trip, I'm not sure there is a "category" for the rest. So, I may ramble a bit for this post.

First of all, Duni asked us to give a "shout out" to families coming over who have babies. The little ones at the Transition Home who are old enough to be eating cereal are used to the Ethiopian version of our starter cereal. It is quite sweet and the babies are hesitant to "go back" if you will. Why eat bland crackers when you can dine on a parfait?? We brought rice cereal with us, but Duni says she's found that it is so bland compared to what they are used to that they refuse to eat it. We wound up buying some in a shop within walking distance from the guest house. After coming home, it is equivalent to the cereal with fruit we have here. The brand from over there is called Cerelac.
Secondly, Dennis and I never had a very clear picture of what our travel papers meant by "tip included here". As the week wore on what we imagined to be covered as far as tips seemed not the case. I'm sure this is a case by case basis. I might add that Robel and T never had any expectancy whatsoever.
Before I forget, the whole "gifts" saga really stressed me out. I took over a variety of things that could be stretched out among a few people, or just for one. I was not in the position to take 50 gifts over! I gave Micah's main nanny and his night nanny gifts. His main one sat with us while we gave it to here but she didn't open it right then. It was kind of anti-climactic to be honest. I had made a photo album for her of our family, house, Micah's school, etc that she really enjoyed. As far as anyone else, it was not an issue at all. We only saw Duni for about 2 hours the whole week and that was when we did the paperwork.
In addition to sagas, the donations we took over were quite a burden! We weren't sure who to give them to, the Transition Home or the orphanage. Our group didn't go to the orphanage so we left most of them at the home. This was also anticlimactic. The driver took all of our suitcases off the bus and then the workers took them inside and dumped them out in a pile. Then we left with an empty suitcase. In fact, I missed the whole episode. Dennis said it was a non-event. With this said, we were very glad we took them, but don't stress out about them!
I guess I can sum up this post with, "I didn't know what to expect and if I had an expectation, it would have been way wrong!" I suppose that's what made this an adventure to say the least!