We're in Amsterdam!

What a great story this would make for our child: We were up all night Thursday packing and excitedly discussing our journey to meet you. Then, we felt the earth move – literally – when an earthquake centered 200 miles away shook our souls. Except, here is the real story. After a relatively stress free evening Thursday night, we went to bed a bit after midnight, and slept right through the earthquake. The first we heard of it was when we turned on the morning news at 7. So much for a great story.

While the packing was time consuming, it wasn’t horrific. I believe there are two key factors that contributed to the relative calm (one factor that is within your control and one that isn’t): Spring clothes and massive master list(s).

Spring clothes: I am certain that packing layering t-shirts and cotton sweaters is a heckuva lot less stressful than boots, bulky sweaters, long underwear, and mittens. It’s actually amazing how much of the former will fit into a suitcase. Between us, we have three checked bags, one of which is primarily toys, food, “home goods” (e.g. a long phone cord) and general baby stuff. None of our bags is over 50 pounds

Lists(s): I started a packing list and a “to do” list six months ago. I simply plagiarized the lists I found in cyberspace, and added to those two lists over the last several months. (At some point, I will post ours). As dumb luck would have it, I kicked into overdrive about 6 weeks ago and accomplished some key items: I ensured we had all of our gifts, I downloaded bunches of docs about development stages, play games, and medical jargon (using primarily Suzanne’s links and blog– what I like to refer to as the mothership), and I spent one long Saturday afternoon roaming every aisle of a super WalMart -- Not necessarily PC, I know, but I could accomplish so much under one roof. I would venture to guess that it took me about 10 hours to complete those three “tasks”, and I was able to do so in a leisurely fashion.

Looking back over the last 12 days, we didn’t have ONE spare hour, let alone ten. The morale of the story: if you haven’t yet traveled, believe what you’ve heard others say. It’s never too early to start planning and shopping and staging your packing area. I’m sure we could have said to our agency, “we simply can’t be ready in 12 days.” It was a joy to be able to say, “We are ready.” So, enough about me. ☺

A few other shout-outs: Kathleen was amazing as she transported us to the airport. I’ve been driving to that airport at least twice a month for the last several years, and I’ve never seen traffic like that (due to a complete shut-down of I-71 because of a multiple-car accident). She displayed just the right mix of illegal traffic moves and patience as we worked our way through multiple detours. (If you are reading this in Cincinnati, and you were cut off by a white Rav-4 sometime between 4:30 and 5:45 on Friday evening, our apologies). So much for getting to the airport 2 hours early! It turns out that you can indeed check in for a flight from Cincinnati to Almaty with less than an hour to spare and make it to the gate with a few seconds to breathe. It remains to be seen if our luggage can also bear the challenge of that same tight time line.

I definitely owe a shout-out to the bank despite a tiny notary glitch a few days ago. I’ve read so many accounts of banks that have not cooperated with either the bank letter or “new’ money. Our Fifth Third branch colleagues at our neighborhood Kroger were rock stars on both accounts.

My co-workers. Our employers received 9 business days’ notice that we were leaving for weeks (how many weeks remains to be seen). Everyone at my company kicked into overdrive to help me. We even snuck in a couple of celebratory send-offs. I love my job, and I have the best colleagues around the world.

We’ve finished two flights, with two to go. We are in the KLM Lounge in Amsterdam. I managed to get a lot of sleep on the overnight flight from Minneapolis, but we can’t say the same for Glenn. Coach airline seats are not made for 6’ 2” guys. He’s lounging on a bench now. Once we arrive in Almaty, we have a six-hour layover before heading to the region. We are able to get a hotel room for that layover if we’d like … we are going to wait and decide if we feel we need it.

I miss our pets already. What can I say? I'm a wimp.