The Purple Bane

(I promise they won't all be this long, but I know a lot of you were interested in the actual trip.)

We have arrived in La Paz, hooray!

We flew out of DC early Monday evening. Reagan is one of the few airports to do international curbside check-in, and it was well worth a tip to be able to pull the cars to the curb, unload them, and not have to try and drag them through an airport line. We have eight bags. Eight filled-to-the-max bags. And we each had a carry-on. And a personal item. We had a lot of stuff.

The only incident in DC was when they had to unload our bright purple carry-on. (Due to the fact that we try to abide by the rules, we had to get a new carry-on at the last minute. And they had a purple one. So it became Alexis' future luggage.) Anyway, there was something ball-like that was suspicious to them in the purple bag, and LO AND BEHOLD it was a globe. A small globe that spins whenever there is light around. And it has a small layter of fluid between the globe and the material covering the globe that doesn't come out. And it's really, really cool, and it's fragile so we wanted to take care of it. And there's liquid and we did not even think about it. So it is now gone. (This was actually a Christmas present to Jason from my father, and he's really bummed about it.)

However, that's the only thing that has been lost in transit so far, and that was our fault. We ate a little bit of dinner before the flight to Miami, and the kids were great. I don't think the take off and landing bothered either of them much, but I was stuffing craisins into their mouths on the first take off in case they had ear issues. It was actually really great to just spend time with the kids in the airport and on the flight because things have been so crazy that we haven't had a lot of time to just hang out.

And while the globe is the only thing left in transit, we almost lost the entire purple bag. I will take the blame for this one. I was getting three personal items and checking to make sure we didn't leave anything behind, and Jason asked me to get the purple bag. However, I heard a flight attendant ask if she could help, and I thought she was getting the bag. Apparently, though, she had fallen in love with my daughter and was walking her out in her arms! We got out of the gate and did a bag check and realized we were missing the purple one. I rad back and got it, fortunately, but that would have been bad news! (This is why we occasionally did checks to make sure we had everything.)

By the time we landed in Miami it was about 8:30, and we had to walk quite a ways to the next gate. This is where it started to get hard because the kids were tired. The walk throught the airport was fairly hard, but we got to our gate, gave the kids a small snack, and proceeded to go through the most confusing boarding process ever. We got to go in early on the first flight, which was nice, but on the second flight they kept switching which line we were supposed to be in and had too many lines open, etc. Everyone was really nice and didn't understand why we couldn't board first, though. We got on board, though, and a fellow passenger helped Jason with some of the luggage. (We did, after all, have three rolly pieces. In the first flight I pushed one ahead and pulled one behind, but this flight was too narrow to do that.) We got situated and took of about 45 minutes late, and the kids fell asleep instantly. Micah slept almost the entire time. Alex did too except for the fact that her sleep was interrupted because she was sick. She lost her voice on MOnday morning before we left, she started to feel a little warm to us while we were on the first flight, and by the middle of the night she was burning up. We both prayed for her and her fever went down, which was great, but she has been coughing really tired and throwing up a little bit. (This could be due to altitude as well. She threw up right after we landed.)

We got through all of the customs and visa processes without a problem, which is great, and then we met the SP guys who loaded up our stuff, dropped off some of it at the office/house they have, and took us to our hotel.

La Paz is awesome. We got into the airport, which is REALLY high, and drove El Alto and other parts of the city into Zone Sur, which is where Calacoto is. Calacoto is the really nice area of the city and where SP's office is. The drive down was spectacular. There are tons of mountainous crags all over the place, so while I'll miss forests, the landscape is truly unique. I could see the temperature rising on the thermostat in teh car as we would drive further down.

You really do have to take it easy, though. When I got off the plane I felt a little dizzy. Micah just wanted to run around after we got off the plane, and it was really funny because he kept falling down. It's a little harder to keep him calm, but he is feeling fine it appears. Our day was busier than I anticapted yesterday, but we got a tour of the city and SP's office (and met a lot of the staff), the school Alex will go to, and a lot of other places. We also had lunch at the acting director's house, where I proceeded to fmuble through my limited Spanish, Alex slept on a couch the entire time, and Micah went about capturing hearts, which is his normal M.O. We got back to the hotel around 3 and rested for a while. Later in the afternoon I actually went out to the grocery store, which in many ways reminded me of Nicaragua. We are drinking milk out of a bag again and having to use bottled water, and we'll also have to remember to stop flushing toilet paper! And last night we put the kids to bed early, ordered room service pizza, and we were in bed at 8:00. That was really, really nice.

Alex woke up a few times during the night with coughing fits, and she threw up this morning, although that could be due to the altitude. One of the SP employees is a pediatrician, though, and she's going to come over and check out Alex to make sure she's okay. Jason's going to go look at some apartments this morning to see if we can find something within walking distance of his office. Alex should be able to take the bus to school, but we do have a car to use while we're here: a 2006 blue Rav4. (That's lind of exciting to me.)

So that's the wrap-up of our first 24 hours in La Paz. We're acclimating and will start to get situated soon.

UPDATE:: Alexis has laryngitis (this started on Monday before we ever got here) and is a little low on oxygen. We got an x-ray of her lungs this morning ($10!!!) just to make sure that she was okay, which she is, and she's taking some ibuprofen and will get a little bit of axygen for a few days.