Our First Day

After a tearful good-bye, my dad brought us to the airport Saturday AM. One of our children (whom shall remain nameless) was asking when we were going to leave - as in hoping it was soon. See, our dear friend, Debbie, blessed the kids a HUGE gift that was only to be opened AFTER we left. :-) I think it was open before we got to the end of the driveway. Thanks Debbie! :-) We only left about 25 minutes later than I had planned. That's actually not bad for me. LOL I knew we had plenty of time though. The ATW airport is small, so lines for security are not a problem. When we checked in, we were issued boarding passes all the way through, which was wonderful. No problems!

We went through security no problems and then waited to board our plane headed for Chicago. Pat shared some cool things he's been thinking about regarding the adoption, so hopefully he will put those thoughts into a blog post sometime soon. I crocheted for a bit and snapped this photo.

Self-protraits are always so flattering, aren't they?

The flight to O'Hare was fine, I guess. I slept the whole way. :-) Friday night/Saturday AM I got to bed VERY late, but hey, I figured it would help me turn my nights and days around, right? The last thing I saw out of the window was Green Lake and the next thing I knew the plane was touching down. It was only a half hr flight.

We had lunch at Chili's near our gate. It's been quite awhile since we've had a meal alone. It was really like a date. Just think, we'll have a "date" that will last 2-3 weeks. Fun!!! I've heard other RR moms lament that they didn't enjoy their time together on their trips because they were too stressed about the process itself. So, I hope we can be purposeful in enjoying this time together. It is definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity to have such a long trip alone together w/ 5 blessings at home.

Unfortunately, Pat thinks his meal at Chili's is what made is stomach so upset. Either that, or it was carry over from the stomach flu at home. But I enjoyed eating some broccoli with my meal and later on some chocolate. Big deal, you say...well, it's been over a year since I've had broccoli, which I do like. Since all of my babies (which have been nursed) seem sensitive to what I eat, I avoid gassy foods (like broccoli) and also foods w/ tomatoes in them. It makes for much happier babies!  Rachel was the most sensitive of all of them, and chocolate bothered her too. Yes, very sad indeed. I thought she would grow out of it, but she had rough nights even last week when I ate some "offensive" foods. So, all that to say, I'll be enjoying chocolate, spicy, tomato-y foods and broccoli while I'm on this trip.

The flight to Frankfurt was long (7 1/2 hrs), but certainly not unbearable. I haven't flown in 5 years, but Pat flew to Singapore (20 hrs in the plane!) last summer, not to mention to this same country this summer for the mission trip, so he's used to it. I slept for a few hours, but Pat didn't very much at all. This trans-atlantic flight and our last flight were both on Lufthansa. Very nice. And a little Lufthansa trivia for you. It is pronounced Luft-hansa. I kept wanting to put the t and h together, but that's not right. And I asked the flight attendant on the way off the plane what bird is on their symbol. It's an albatross. I bet all of you really wanted to know that, didn't you? I also discovered that I know less German than Russian. That's not saying much though.

We had a bit of walking (ok, a lot) in Frankfurt to get to our next gate. We needed to go back through security too . Pat got stopped for a pat-down because the metal on his boots set the detector off. They don't remove shoes there as they do in the States. They are strict about the liquids/gels in Frankfort though. The rule is no container w/ liquids/gels in it should be over 3 oz., and then all small containers must fit into one quart bag. The guy gave us a hard time b/c Pat's deodorant was a 4oz container, even though was only 1/2 full.

Again, I slept the entire flight from Frankfurt to Elijah's capital city. I really need to get one of those travel pillows though! Since the non-visa line for immigration was so long, a guard ushered us over to the visa line which went much quicker. The officer just asked us where we were coming from and that was it. We thought the whole airport process went pretty quickly...until we found out one of our bags didn't make it. Bummer! Unfortunately, it was the bag that had all of my stuff in it. The other bag that made it was all orphanage/missionary donations, which we don't really need until we leave for Elijah's region. Thankfully, I had a change of clothes, pjs and some toiletries in my carry-on. Pat carried all of his clothes on. To say it was a long process to fill out all the paperwork is an understatement. In fact, after quite some time, I left Pat to deal with it as I wanted to make sure our driver, Niko, didn't leave w/o us. Sure enough, he was faithfully waiting. I was VERY relieved to see his sign with our name on it. So, we hung out and he got some money changed for us and a card to put minutes on our phone while we waited for Pat. Normally, he would have done some of that on the way to the apt, but since it took us so long to get out, he needed to come back for another special RR family, the Hannons. :-) We found out that Niko speaks Russian, the language native to this country, Spanish, Polish, and of course, English. Amazing!!! So, if you are an RR family headed here, be sure to tell Niko if you speak Spanish. He would love it!

He got us settled into our apartment. The building looks very rundown on the outside, but the apt. itself is nice. That is very typical of apt buildings here in this country. We are on the very top floor - the 15th floor. He pointed out the grocery store across the street. (Normally he would have taken us, but he needed to get back to the airport.) TGIFs is just down the street about 10 minutes walking distance. TGIFs is a popular gathering spot for RR families. (We are hoping to meet up w/ some families tonight, but at the native cuisine buffet across the street.)

Here shall I give you a tour of our nice, but small apt? I only took a few steps to take these photos. :-) But it's plenty big enough for just us 2!

Washing machine but no dryer, which is very typical here

A view out our window - TGIFs is just past the tall buildings Niko says - Hey, Michelle, if we are anywhere near that Indian restaurant, let me know, ok? Maybe Pat's stomach will be ready for it by tomorrow night. :-)

The enclosed stairwell of the apt building right outside our window. You can see how the outside of the builing looks very run down.

After we Skyped with the kids - LOVE Skype - we went to get some food and water. No one can drink the water out of the tap here, so bottled water it is. We managed fine in the store, although I forgot my cheat sheet of Russian spellings of some common foods. We ended up w/ cream cheese instead of butter, but that's ok. I need to find the word for yogurt on Google translator and add that to my list too. So, here's our very first purchase from the store. All for about $15 USD. Pretty good, I'd say!

The bag w/ the cow on it was milk of course. The white box in back is juice that came very highly recommended by my daughter who told me about it after seeing it on a blog. It is very good! Thanks, Sarah! The cheese was sliced for us right there. Shh....don't tell my kids I bought Snickers ice cream bars. The soda is for Pat's tummy, the ice cream is for mine. :-)

We have cable here - a "luxury" we don't have at home. We found several stations in English, most of them were TV preachers. I suppose, it was Sunday AM in the States. We also found BBC news from the UK, so we watched that for a bit. Pat fell asleep very early, and I was out by 8:15PM.  I just couldn't keep my eyes open anymore and kept falling asleep changing channels. LOL I slept 11 hrs and Pat slept at least 12. I feel like a new woman today and Pat is slowly recovering.

This morning, we just hung out and rested. This blog post has taken a good part of the afternoon so far. That's ok, Pat was napping. Sorry it got SO long.

I just talked to the Hannons and have a time and place set to meet tonight for supper. Looking forward to it! That's all for now, folks! Maybe more tonight after supper! Thanks for praying, and please continue to do so, especially healing for the stomach issues both here and at home. God bless you!