Farewells and Hellos

  

After dreading it for months, the time to say goodbye to family and friends finally arrived.  It is always hard to say farewell to people you love.  On the morning we left for our new home in Southeast Asia, we met at the folks’ house for pancakes.  We kind of sat around looking at each other, savoring every last second with our families.

We arrived at the airport three hours before our flight.  With ten pieces of luggage, we were unsure how the airlines would respond.  After overwhelming the lady checking us in, she was gracious to us by letting us go over the 50 pound weight limit on some of our bags.  It was really funny looking at all of our luggage stacked.  Another airline employee walked up to the lady who was checking us in and asked, “Where did all of this come from?”  She responded, “It is his.”  Apparently they don’t get many people with that much luggage coming through their airport.

The check-in was smooth, but then it became difficult.  We had to say goodbye to our parents.  Being a guy, I wanted to get the emotional stuff over quickly and painlessly, so I gave my parents a knuckle bump and bid them farewell.  However, the ladies shed several tears.

After the family left, some friends came to great us at the airport.  We enjoyed our last American meal for a while and went through security only 20 minutes before our flight.  Funny enough, we met one of the staff members at Second (our home Family).

Our first flight was perfect.  We arrived in Dallas with no delays.  We only had an hour layover, but we had time to stop by gate A13 to meet our friends going to another part of Asia.  It was great to see them!

Our next leg was to fly to LA.  The flight was packed.  We didn’t get to sit next to each other.  There were several people with different scientific organizations heading to Antarctica.  I was sandwiched between two rather large men who worked for NASA, both going to Antarctica.  One man was an electrical engineer and he was completely blind.  The flight to LA was the worst leg, but the conversations where interesting.  I felt uneducated compared to my seatmates.

Security in LAX was horrible.  We were told our luggage was checked through our final destination, but we had to get a boarding pass for the jump across the Pacific.  It was an 18 hour flight, but it was wonderful.  Before we knew it, we were in our new country.

The next obstacle was to get through immigration.  We were unsure if we had to get our luggage in our first port of call or in our destination city.  We only had 90 minutes to clear immigration and catch our flight.  Like most international airports, the transfer gate was a 20-minute walk.  After picking the slowest line to get our passport stamped, we finally got to our final flight with only 10 minutes to spare.

We arrived in our new home city on time.  It was a nice sunny day (as opposed to the snow we left behind) and it is surrounded by mountains.  The first ten pieces of luggage on the conveyer belt where ours. 

In the end, all flights were on time and all luggage made it to the destination.  My bike box was beat up pretty bad with several holes in it, but everything seems good so far.

Several colleagues picked us up and took us to our new apartment in the middle of the city.  We have not settled in (actually we haven’t started to unpack…it is a long story for another blog).

We are there!  We are safe!  Everything is good!  Thank you for your thoughts and upholding us.  We love you all.  Sorry for the infrequent updates.  We have been struggling to find internet and the time.