After a week in California to
obtain visas, we left the country to return to our overseas home.
We found a great deal on tickets, but the itinerary included two 18-20 hour layovers.
The jury
is still out for me, Erin, whether that was a better way to travel or not.
On the one hand, we felt much more rested as
we were able to sleep in beds at hotels during each of the long
layovers.
On the other hand, I had a
great deal of time to think about all we had just left and all we were
traveling to.
The boys did really
well.
The technology these days is
amazing. The immense selection of movies and shows to be selected individually, kept both Caedmon and Whitman
occupied for most of the plane ride.
They
only shed a few very tired tears as we traveled to the hotels during the
layovers.
We arrived in the big city of our
host country on Saturday, the 16th, along with all 8 pieces
of luggage. We checked into a hotel at
the airport, grabbed some fried chicken and rice, and went straight to
bed. The following three days we stayed
with our very first host family, in the big city, with whom we first lived with upon
arriving in 2012. It was
really good to see them and we were treated like their own children. It made for a much quicker transition back
than I expected though as the four of us shared one room, one fan, ate local food on
their schedule, all in a local home. On the next few days we saw
some friends in the big city, along with other co-workers.
On Tuesday we took the night
bus towards Barat.
John had the amazing
idea to stop at a city an hour outside of Barat and stay in a hotel.
This enabled us to go straight to bed when we
disembarked from the bus at 2 in the morning. The we were able to travel to our house, in Barat,
the next day during the day light, with all our luggage driven straight to our
door.
When we arrived we found two large
sink holes in our house, one in the kitchen and the other in John and my bedroom.
There was also a fair amount of cleaning to
do. Making our day time arrival a big blessing.
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| Sink hole in the kitchen with a temporary patch. |
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| The movement of the floor caused the main water pipe to break under the sink. Thankfully water still comes into the house, but water no longer runs into the bathroom, hence the hose across the floor: our temporary fix to get water to the bathroom! |
