On the Plane

March 6, 2010

The last few days have been a big blur of trying to fit in all the goodbyes (or see ya’s), packing up the majority of the house and desperately hoping that our visa’s and passports would arrive before our scheduled flight departure.

After relocating our Kiki (I miss her so much I can’t even talk about it yet), seeing our family’s as much as possible, welcoming a new baby nephew, celebrating both our Mom’s birthdays, wrapping up our current work responsibilities, seeing our dear friends and trying to not let the stress get to us…we are frazzled and completely exhausted.   

So now here we are an hour into our British Air flight to London.  Not for a visit but to live for at least the next 10 mths.  We arrived at the Seatac airport in true American fashion, 2 separate cars (Amy’s Mom & Dad, and Erin, Halvard & Henrick) and 14 bags to check.  One of our bags was 22 lbs over the limit so we had to move brown sugar (literally), pans and utensils to a previously packed backpack, increasing our bag count to 15.  This was fun.

I just made our first toast to “the adventure of a lifetime with the love of my life”.  I’m so lucky to be doing this with Amy.  She keeps me grounded, sane and happy.  After the last couple weeks of utter madness it is nice to sit back, relax and enjoy the 9 hr flight.  Or so we thought….Amy’s seat has no power.  So…no reading light, no reclining and no privacy screen.  She’s already drafted a complaint letter that will surely get us a response.  

The process of moving to a foreign country has so far allowed us to discover many ways that we work well together and other areas where our differences “compliment” one another.  We’re both misers.  We agreed that we would ship over essentials like paper towels, toilet paper, lentils, etc in order to avoid having to buy them there.  You’d think we were starving students, I guess with the cost of living in London we may very well be.  Amy’s high point was discovering that London has a Costco (now we just need to befriend someone with a large car).  On the other hand I am a “big picture” thinker (confident that we have plenty of time to pack up the few remaining things at the house) while Amy concerns herself with the minutia (“I mean is it really necessary to start packing a whole week in advance???” I asked many times last week. “Can’t we just go out for a run and pack later?”).  Needless to say we never would have made the flight if it had been left up to me….or gotten our bags packed….or gotten our visa’s on time.  We’re a good team. J

We’re most excited about all the visitors we’ll be having.  So far we have Mary coming in May; Jamie, Shell, Reed and Madi in June; Erin in July, Melissa and Joni in July; Sean and JR possibly in August; Shannon, Adam, Elizabeth and Theo in August; Barbara and John in September….party on!  We’re still working on a few others like Jan and Vince (London is SOOOO much more fun than Africa!); Kerry and Jim; Kim and Hunter.

Work will be busy for me, but I am excited about the new challenge.  Amy can travel with me when it makes sense and we can plan some pretty neat weekend trips.  We are considering a yoga retreat in Italy at the end of July and a cooking excursion in the south of France.  It sounds so elaborate but from London is so easy and inexpensive.

Jeri