Fingerprints to Big Brother...Check.

Teanastëllën,

Well we had our appointment with USCIS (formally INS) Thursday to get our fingerprints done. I had all kinds of smart alec comments in my head to use while there. Stuff like "I hope they don't solve any old crimes with this data" but when the time came I quietly went up and let them have their way with me. The whole process only took us about 15 minutes which was also a little disappointing. I got to leave work and was hoping to be gone longer.

Saturday night we had dinner with another couple who are adopting from Ethiopia. They have their referral, a beautiful baby boy (13 months old I want to say), and are waiting for their travel date. We had actually gotten together with them in December when the larger group of us met at David's. Nice night, good food, great conversation.

One of the questions that have come up a lot recently amongst ourselves and from others is what are we going to name our child. To be honest that is a tough question for us. I may ask Jen to hop on later and give a better answer, but in a nutshell we don't know. We are kind of waiting to see what our child's name is before we make any decisions. It seems from the people we have met and those on the boards that it is a about 60-40 in keeping the original name. For us it will depend I think on what that name is. At the very least I think we plan on using a combination of our child's Ethiopian name and one that we pick. I am including a link which gives a sample of some of the names used in Ethiopia. Any comments and suggestions about names will be greatly appreciated.

Ethiopian boys names A-T
Ethiopian boys names T-Z

East Africa Coffee Dispute

Starbucks to Buy More E. Africa Coffee

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Starbucks will double its purchases of fine coffee from East African countries by 2009, the vice president for procurement said Thursday at a coffee conference in the Ethiopian capital.

Starbucks Corp. also announced it would help small-scale coffee producers by providing $1 million in micro-financing loans and would set up a farmer support center in 2007 to improve bean quality.

"We will double our coffee purchases from East Africa in the next two years," said Dub Hay, Starbucks's senior vice president of coffee procurement. "East Africa is not only the birthplace of coffee and the origin of some of the finest coffees in the world, its coffee trade is tied to the well-being and economic development of the region's countries and people."

The announcement comes following a dispute between Starbucks and the Ethiopian government over the trademarking of certain coffee names. British charity Oxfam accused the coffee giant of denying Ethiopia from earning $88 million a year by blocking its bid to trademark three types of coffee beans _ Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe.

Oxfam's Horn of Africa regional director Abera Tola said the new measures taken by Starbucks were appreciated, but that they should also increase the price they pay for coffee.

"The volumes they are asking for are quite high," Tola said. "They are not talking about price."

Starbucks buys 294 million pounds of coffee a year and posts sales of more than $7.8 billion a year. Currently, Starbucks buys 6 percent of its coffee from Africa, but that is expected to reach 12 percent by 2009, Hay said.

Half of Ethiopia's 77 million people live on less than $1 a day. Starbucks already provides $4.2 million for social development projects in East Africa.

The announcement came at the largest-ever coffee conference in Africa. More than 500 industry leaders attended the meeting, the Eastern African Fine Coffees Association said.

East African growers account for about half of the world's specialty coffee. Producers have increasingly sought to brand their coffee in order to capture higher consumer prices. Most coffee growers in Africa live in poverty.

Pictures, message boards, and other stuff

So sorry for the lapse in postings. I would love to say it is because we have been so busy, but when the temperature outside starts with a "-" it is safe to say we haven't been going anywhere. So why the long interval? Basically we haven't been able to come up with anything new to say. Well enough of that I say, today I plan on throwing about a dozen different things out here. (If I lose you all I apologize)

• Jen asked that I post some pictures of the kids from our Chicago trip as well as some outdoor playtime so I will be putting them in at the bottom of this post.
• On Saturday night we met with another family in the process of adopting from Ethiopia. We got their e-mail address from Angela our case worker. Jen had been e-mailing her over the past month or so and we decided to get everyone together. They have two boys and have received their referral for a beautiful baby girl. They are now waiting on their travel date. Oh I forgot to mention they live here in our area too. There are a couple other families we have been in contact with who were unable to join us this weekend but want to get together next time. It is so nice to have other families close by who have adopted or are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia. We really think it will be helpful to our family to have these connections close by.
• Ahhhh, message boards. You could say I am slightly addicted to them. (Jen is slowly becoming a junkie as well.) The wealth of information as well as the camaraderie that is out on the web is unbelievable. I think Jen mentioned the CHSFS board in a previous post, but if not this one is GREAT! The Ethiopia forum is the biggest and most active of all their boards. As of today there are over 12,000 posts. What is nice about this board is that everyone here for the most part are using CHSFS or have used the agency in the past. If you have a question you can post it and have a reply in minutes. I also have subscribed to a number of boards on Yahoo! There is an Ethiopian adoption board which has people from all of the different agencies, there is another board for people using CHSFS and recently I stumbled across an Iowa international adoption board. This one has posting from people in Iowa about adoption, it is not as active but still something I check with some frequency.
• We didn't mention a nice little get together we had in early December. We got together with about 4 other families at David's Place in Iowa City. I mention this because David's Place is an Ethiopian restaurant and I highly recommend it. In fact I beg of you, if you are in the area stop in and give it a try.
• We love that people have been posting comments! Please do so if you have time, it lets us know that we have people reading this and actually makes doing this blog a lot more fun. We have not replied to the comments because we weren't sure if that was the "right way" to do things in the blogging world.
  
• Finally, Jen wanted me to mention that I have ended a couple of my posts with a word in Amharic. So for those keeping score at home:
• Dehna hunu - Goodbye
• selam - Peace
  

I guess that's it for now. I know that isn't quite a dozen but I tend to exaggerate at times. Just ask Jen. Here are the pics.

To my wife and family, Afekrishalehou!