Two Days in America

I thought I might write a blog about our trip to the US. It's purpose is more for sharing with those who might be interested in what we are up to than any great insight.

Obviously, it's not the first time we've made the trip. In fact, during the 34+ hours of travel, we worked out that this is Philip's 5th trip to the US. He came once when we first adopted him, to meet Liz's dad. Then we had a trip to catch up with ministry partners that following Christmas. Then he came with us to Liz's dad's funeral. Then we came 18 months ago (with Katrise) to catch up with ministry partners.

We booked an airport shuttle to the airport. We left at 8:30am on Thursday morning with 8 big pieces of check-in luggage and 7 carry-on (including the mandolin Liz had been given just before we left). Not bad when it comes to moving for 15 months! Our driver - a Syrian guy - took every backstreet imaginable (better than my dad!). But we arrived at the airport safely and in plenty of time.

QANTAS were really pleasant to deal with at checkin. (This was our first time flying QANTAS internationally - Liz had been a United Frequent Flyer previously). We were there early and the checkin counters were open (unlike previous experience with United). They didn't complain about our luggage. And the line was short.

Once we got through security, we let Philip play his Nintendo DS. The lady at the shop told me that, if we turned the brightness right down and the volume off, it's battery should last 20 hours. We were about to test that!

As usual, with kids, we were seated right down the back of the plane. We were glad to see the back of seat video screens. But Katrise' and mine weren't working. (Four requests during the flight to fix them failed). In fact, my overhead light and attendant call button weren't working. The whole armrest control was stuffed. Oh well, so much for inflight movies! Philip and Katrise swapped seats for a while. Philip played his DS, Katrise danced to Taylor Swift. I dozed. I also watched some movies on the screen of the guy in front. There was a good selection: Mall Cop (looked like a funny send up of Die Hard), Frost/Nixon, Yes Man and Gran Turino. All my sort of movies. Oh well.

We landed in LA at 9:30am. We'd been told to leave 6 hours for processing of Green Cards. Philip, Katrise and I had been granted Green Cards. It allowed us to be more flexible while over here - and it is the first step to them being granted citizenship. Fortunately, the processing only took 20 minutes! (Although the refugee family behind us were obviously going to take much longer).

Our flight didn't leave until 6pm - so we had 8 hours to kill in LAX. I noticed our luggage was incorrectly tagged by QANTAS in Sydney, so we loaded it all up on two trolleys and pushed it for 20 minutes along the sidewalk from Terminal 3 to Terminal 7 to check it in correctly at the United counter. Our trip from LA to Denver was using the last of our United Frequent Flyer miles. Check in went smoothly (again), but they couldn't get us on an earlier flight. They were all booked solid.

As we sat in the terminal, we found that solidly booked flights were the norm on this Memorial Day weekend. It seemed like everyone was wait-listed for their flight. On our little plane to Las Vegas, there were 50 people waitlisted (and 31 eventually got on)!

What! Las Vegas? Yes, when Liz booked the tickets all the direct flights from LA to Denver had been booked already. So we flew via Vegas. Fortunately, it was the same plane being used on both legs, so we simply got off at Vegas (did a bathroom run) and then got back on, one row in front of where we had been for the first leg. The kids did really well on the whole trip - Katrise dozed regularly and Philip's brain turned to mush with the DS.

So we landed in Denver at 10:30pm. We caught the undergroud train from the terminal to the baggage claim. All our luggage arrived too. Amazing! By about 11:30pm we were set to leave. Berit (Liz's sister) had come to pick us up in a friend's Expedition (huge car!) All our luggage fit in the boot. We arrived at the hotel by about 1am, moved luggage in, etc. and crashed into bed by about 2am.

At 7am the hotel room's clock radio alarm went off! Philip sat bolt upright, reached for the TV remote and said (as he does at home), "It's 7 o'clock, can I watch TV?". I persuaded him to rest for another hour. We got up at 8am.

Berit had bought us some breakfast supplies (Life cereal was good). But we need to do a bit of shopping to get us through the next couple of days. A visit to Super Target was in order :) We also visited the bank (to make sure our bank account here was all functioning correctly, get a debit card, and set up internet banking). After Liz napped back in our hotel room (and the kids played quietly), we then met our realtor, inspected the apartment at Denver Seminary and signed the lease.

A weird thing happened as we arrived at the apartment. There was an altercation between our realtor and one of the other residents. It was quite unsettling.

Afterwards, we wandered around the seminary grounds for a while and met some really lovely people who were all happy to be living on campus - and that made us feel better about our decision. The key thing for us about living on campus was that it meant we didn't need to get two cars (I can walk to class while Liz takes the kids to school) and so many of the services are available right there - esp. internet.

Anyway, a short visit to Dave & Victoria's (Liz's sister) allowed us to see our cousins Ransom and Anthony (the one graduating from high school today). Twelve years ago Anthony made us all laugh in our wedding video as he said "my name is Anthony" in a squeaky voice. Now he is finished high school!

We had pizza for dinner with Dan & Berit & Delaney. Katrise had been battling a fever all day and was pretty listless. But she enjoyed two pieces of toast with butter on it.

We got home and the kids were asleep by 9pm. But then they woke again at midnight. And didn't sleep until about 2am. So, even though Liz has left for the graduation, I am letting them sleep this morning as long as they like...

Type more soon.