Journey to Kyrgyzstan

What an amazing journey it was!  ALL my worries about the the additional luggages were unrealized.  ALL my worries about our visas were unfulfilled.  We had  wonderful peaceful flights.  Here's a short summary:

As many of you know, we had 31 check-in bags as well as the 13 carry-on bags.  Michael had packed the bags extremely well, weighing each bag at around 50 lbs., 51 being the max.  When we got to the airport, every single one of them were over the limit.  My heart SANK!  Would we have to open up every single one of them to take things out to reduce the weight?

But thank goodness, the man who scaled the bags said it was ok as long as they was not over 25 kg.  None of them were.

The carry-ons were another thing.  Would we have enough overhead compartment space to fit all of our stuff?  I had recollections of our one time travel to California (on our way to Korea) in which all the seats were booked and we were one of the last passengers on board.  For some odd reason, our seats were scattered and we were unable to sit together.  Audrey (7 years old) began to cry when it appeared she might have to sit by herself.  Between the cries of the kids and trying to find space for our many carryons, we had a short nightmare in our hands.  

In this particular international flight, maybe because it was a late evening flight (10PM), I saw that there were no mass of people around the entrance gate.  Since we had children, we were allowed in first.  Hence the reduction of passengers and our priority in entering the plane allowed us to store away all of our bags and enjoy the ride to London.  We did have to transfer there to another plane but our check-in luggages were transferred for us (which was why we even THOUGHT about bringing so many in the first place). 

In the second flight, it was the same scenario and so we had the same peaceful journey.

We arrived at 3AM as scheduled in Kyrgyzstan.  It took over an hour to get our visa but there were absolutely no problems in getting them since we had all of our documents ready.

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The First Two Weeks:  Metamorphic Changes 

Scene 1:

"Why are you driving SO slow?" I asked.

" I can't drive over 40 km (about 25 mph)because I don't want to get stopped," replied the man who often (more often than not, that is) used to drive 80 mph.

Scene 2:

"Your phone is ringing, answer it, dear," I said to my husband in the car.

"I can't talk on the cell phone because I can get stopped," said the man who use to use the phone ALL the time while driving to save time.

Scene 3:

"Everybody, get ready to go to bed," I told my children.

"Listen to your mom. Everybody, get ready to go to bed.  We have to all be in bed before 11 PM when the lights go out!" ordered the man who used to stay up into the wee hours of the morning.  (The whole city lights go out between 11 and midnight.)

Scene 4:

The first morning here, in shock, he who drank at least 3 cups a day exclaimed, "Man, I can't believe I forgot to bring coffee!" 

Conclusion:

All the years of "Slow down", " Don't talk on the phone while driving", " Aren't you coming to bed?", and "Coffee's not good for you" has been done away with in one fell swoop by you know who.

I certainly had a HUGE laugh over the changes.