after over 28 hours of travelling we are finally here! and surprisingly, i would have to say that this was the easiest trip across the world i have ever had. after spending days (well, weeks) packing up all of our stuff, we got it into 4 checked bags and 4 carry-ons. out of protest to united airlines for raising their overweight baggage fees from $50 a bag to $150 a bag, i refused to pack our bags to be forced to pay overage. but try packing all of your stuff into 200 lbs, it's not so easy. and packing as a married couple was totally different than when we both came single and i think we both were a little surprised by the priorities of the other when it came to things that needed to be packed. i'll try to take some pics as we unpack tomorrow to let you see a what we ended up bringing across the world. anyways, i think we got them all down to like 51 or 52 lbs (as low as possible) and hoped that the ticket counter in norfolk would just let it slide, and, amazingly, they didn't even weigh our bags! not in norfolk, not in country, not at all! this has never happened, so naturally we were pretty stoked. disappointing, however, was that jarred's 2 rainbow chip frostings were taken at security in va. he was pretty crushed, for like 5 min. i don't know why it didn't click that frosting is a liquid/gel. dang.
and despite jarred's threats that we would have our temperatures taken rectally as we entered the country, we got through just walking through a gate that took our temp automatically. interesting enough, however, once we got through immigration and picked up our bags, we saw the newest form of pandemic protection- "the quarrantine detection dog." i'm not sure using a cocker spaniel was the most intimidating choice of breeds, but he was cute. all in all, it only took us 30 min to go through the health scan, immigration, get our bags, go through customs, and get in line for to re-check our bags. that is def a record. we had a 6 hour layover in the capital airport before the final leg of our trip and there were a few notable modern advances that were quite enjoyable:
1. toilet paper in the bathrooms. and clean bathrooms, western, to note. so far, i have been in the country for multiple hours and have yet to use either a squattie or the toilet paper in my backpack. impressive, east asia.
2. free drinking water stations. while it looks a little different from a water fountain to have cups and a water tong in a little cubby near the bathrooms, it is a drastic improvement over having to buy bottled water everywhere you go.
3. free wifi in the whole airport. this is the kicker. america doesn't even have this. i started this post sitting in the airport and it made the forever-long layover a little bit better.
this place is like a whole new world from what we left 14 months ago. and that makes the next few weeks...months...years...seem like even more of an adventure. enjoy the stories...
ps- as of today we have been married 6 months. this is my plug for marriage bc it is wonderful, and for jarred, bc he is too. it is fun to start the next 6 months of our marriage on the other side of the world :)
