Today is our first Sunday away, and being Christians, we wanted to go to church. My wife has already scouted locations when she visited in November, and we settled on a church that was a half mile away. Growing up, I was raised Catholic. I went through my first communion, my wife did not. The sacrament of the first communion is sacred in Catholic families, I always tell her she can’t take communion without going through confession, but she ignores me, she’s a true Protestant.

A year after my first communion, the church my family was attending asked my father to be a deacon. My dad, chose to leave the church we were at and look for another, his reasoning was inspired by the Groucho Marx quote “I won’t be a member of a group who would have me as it’s leader.” So my dad took me to a church down the street from our house. Now, my father is a Vietnam Veteran (three tours), and before we stepped foot in our new church, even I knew how much he hated hippies, at 8 years old.

The new church was filled with hippies, only by appearance, and how the acted, and named their children, and themselves. It was what you would call a very Pentacostal church, lots of dancing during worship, lots of praying in tongues, a stark difference from the Catholic church I grew up going to down the road. Well, today we walked into a church that was identical to the church I grew up in.

When we walked in, people were singing worship songs, and dancing. I felt very comfortable, and welcome. My children were in culture shock not from the Spanish speaking, but from the dancing during worship. I felt like I went back in time to the church I grew up in, but everyone spoke another language. After worship (which lasted more than an hour) a group of people brought us outside to welcome us, they gave us snacks, and candy for the kids. The pastor’s son was saying a lot of things to us, and my oldest child the entire time was in my ear translating word for word.

Now I’m a lawyer, and I’m at the point in my career where other lawyers hire me to do work, it’s a nice compliment when other lawyers hire you. I handle very large and complex cases with confidence, and my reputation is thankfully growing in the small area of law I practice in. Despite that, I don’t feel very smart here, and relying on my 9 year old to translate for me gives me a sense of pride, and also I feel dumb. After this welcome speech, we start talking to a few people, and some of them know English. We eventually take the kids to their Sunday School classes and then settle down for a sermon I was able to understand 5% of.

After church we were hungry and we stopped at a restaurant across the street from the church. It opened at 1pm and we got there at 130pm, they were still opening up. That’s a big difference between America and where we are, in America if a restaurant is open at 1, they are ready to serve you food, and take your order. They took our order at 2pm. While planning this trip, we have heard nothing but horror stories about people getting sick here, and we have been extra cautious. This is a seafood restaurant and the ocean is pretty far from the town we are in. We ordered mostly fried shrimp dishes, it was pretty good. When we ordered guacamole, they brought it out with shrimp and other seafood as if it was some type of hybrid ceviche.

After lunch we went back to our place, cleaned up breakfast and watched a movie in our room while I took a nap and Bonnie relaxed. We were going to walk to a playground but it was getting late, and a thunderstorm was supposed to roll in, but it never did. Tomorrow we were planning to go to the US Consulate to check in and let them know where we are living and when we plan to be leaving etc… just to be safe but tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr Day and they are closed, so I guess we will go Tuesday. *

Today we slept in. I slept in. Today I slept in while my wife woke up early to deal with the older three children. The youngest walked onto my side of the bed last night and told me that he missed me, and that he is lonely, and has no one to cuddle with. He shares a room with his oldest brother, he just got done cuddling with his mom, and he is extremely persuasive. The youngest child knows exactly what gets me, and so he slept on my right arm all last night. He slept in until one of his siblings woke him up.

After breakfast we drove to Costco, Costco is 40 miles away, and it took us over ninety minutes to get there. We stopped at McDonalds on the way. Everything tastes different at McDonalds, except the fries. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or terrifying. I’ve had McDonalds in Germany as well, and as far as I remember, the fries tasted the same there too.

We spent a few hours in Costco. Again, the evens and odds sat in the shopping carts together. We needed a lot of items, and I think we should be good for a while. We might be purchasing a used minivan from a Toyota dealership, we are going back and forth. Our home has a garage that a minivan will fit in. As a side note, my wife chose an amazing home we are living in. The house has three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and has on average four locks on every door. Along with iron bars over every possible place a person could come in.

After we got home and put everything away, me and the wife made her favorite dinner, pan fried tilapia with cherry tomatoes, steamed asparagus, and pasta with pesto. All four kids love fish, all fish. They have loved fish since they caught their first fish in Lake Tahoe from a trout farm, and a half hour later a local restaurant cooked their fish to perfection. I don’t know a lot of kids that like fish, let alone an entire family, my wife is doing a lot of things right.

We have motion detection cameras put up all over our house, as soon as any motion is detected I’m texted immediately, and I can watch in real time. The cameras also have an audio function that allows me to speak through the camera in real time. During our dinner my lovely Aunt Patty dropped our mail off, and I’m afraid I gave her a heart attack because I thanked her through the camera. Tomorrow we are going to a local church to see if it’s a good fit. I’m heading to bed, good night.

We started off today eating breakfast, very fast. The school is about a 15 minute walk uphill and we had to be there by 9am. We got out of the house at 850 and realized we needed to drive. So we drove to the school, and we had the four kids in one room while a school psychologist took a life history of all the kids. It took a very long time, and I left early in order to meet a handyman to fix our hot water problem.

My wife bore the brunt of having to entertain the four kids and answer very specific questions about our kids’ development. When I finally walked back, she was exhausted and had no more patience left. We drove back to the house and had lunch, and then drove to the rental car place at the airport in order to exchange vehicles. They gave us a black suburban when we got off the plane. The last car we wanted was an enormous black suburban. The country we are living in has a certain type of group who uses big black suburbans, and we would rather not be remotely associated with that group. Now we have a nondescript minivan. I feel a lot better now. On our way home we went through many tunnels, like the one below.

After we got back from replacing the cars, the wife took the even numbered kids to a playground, while I stayed home with the odd numbered kids and cleaned the house and relaxed. We walked to a house down the road and I had my first conversation un aided by my wife or children. I asked a man if his restaurant was closed, I’m pretty sure he said he was going to close soon. I asked him to wait for my wife and two other children, and he said ok. This restaurant was out of a garage underneath a housing complex.

The food we ate was pretty good, carnitas, potato tacos, and tortas. The salsa he served was unforgiveable hot, but overall it was pretty good. The prices were pretty good too, feeding a family of 6 for just barely $10 plus tip. I’m certainly not going to come home having lost any weight.

We are now relaxing watching a couple movies after eating what I can only describe as a sweet custard bread pie. Good night.

Today we spent most of the morning unpacking a few hundred pounds of clothes, and supplies. It wasn’t very easy corralling four children into un packing their own luggage, but luckily my wife has more patience than I do. The oldest and third child chose to room together, and the 2nd child and 4th child decided they wanted to room together. It was interesting to see how quickly they came to that conclusion, me and my wife call them the odds and evens. The odd and even numbered kids play very well together. I have no explanation. My wife is a saint, we all know that just merely based on her choice of spouse. But she hung in there and got nearly everything un packed while I set up my office.

We discovered very early on that there was no water pressure and so the landlord called a handyman to fix it. The hot water comes from solar panels on the roof and the water main was not turned all the way on. We eventually made it to a restaurant (my good friend Juan’s mothers favorite) and we ate very well, from the attitudes of everyone in the house, it was apparent we were very hungry because all the fighting ended when the food arrived.

I was hoping to lose weight on this trip and get in better shape. However according to my wife, a regional tradition is to serve chicharrones along with chips and salsa.

After lunch we went back to our home and relaxed a bit, and then visited the corner store that’s about 70 feet away from our house. We bought a bunch of supplies, got to know the store owners name (Jorge), and then came home to play some board games. Quick tip: The card game Munchkin is extremely not appropriate for children.

Tomorrow the kids get interviewed at their new school to see which class they should be assigned to.

It was a very long day. Thankfully all of Bonnie’s family rallied around us in the morning to help us pack a couple cars worth of luggage and take us to the airport. It is dark out so I have no clue about our surrounding area, but the home we are in is very nice. I am very thankful, the kids did great going through security at the start of our trip, and also going through immigration and customs on the last part. We had a few hiccups because we didn’t take into consideration that we brought a four year old. He is very lucky he is adorable, it’s his greatest weapon, it also keeps anyone from harming him.

The whole time we were traveling, I was nervous about moving 18 bags of luggage. But there were luggage carts on our end, and an attendant on the other end of the trip who used a type of hand truck to move our luggage around. It only takes a half our drive from the airport, we rented a minivan and they gave us a suburban, and it doesn’t fit into the garage attached to the house we are in, we are gonna get a minivan tomorrow from the rental car agency.

When we got to the house, we were greeted by four people who run the company that rents these houses out. It felt more like being greeted by some unknown great aunts and uncle instead of a business transaction. The hosts even bought us some breakfast foods for us for tomorrow morning, it was really thoughtful. They also brought us a big floral arrangement you can see in this photo below. So thankful my kids speak Spanish, they were translating for me with the other people.

There are three bedrooms, and each bedroom has a trundle bed. I grew up sleeping on a trundle bed, and so far the kids are very excited and not fighting about where they want to sleep. They started playing hide and seek as soon as they got inside.

We plan to be here for close to 180 days. From here on out I will be blogging by day. Tomorrow I will call “Day 1”, and will go on from there. Bonnie will hopefully add posts as well, but I don’t want her to have this obligation. There will be one week per month that I fly back home to handle business, my flights will be early Monday and then fly back mid to late Friday. I am very grateful to God for getting us here safe. Now I’m going to pass out. God bless.

Airport security wasn’t too bad. And our kids have not been acting up too much. Pray for our youngest, he was having a very rough morning waiting to check our 300lbs of luggage.

We are so well taken care of. Thank God for my mother in law, Aunt Carol, and Papa Rob for picking us up. Especially thank you to our very close friend Steve for carrying our luggage out to the truck. I guess those aren’t glamour muscles. 😃

My amazing wife just spent the last 4 days packing, and re-packing. And Re-packing. My sister in law has been here these past 4 days about 80% of the time. Helping us pack and repack and repack and repack.

Packing for a trip like this is a Herculean task, and it mimics a lame math word problem. “A family of six is moving out of country for 6 months. The parents decided to pack for at least three weeks. The kids will be using school uniforms five days a week. Checked luggage can have up to 55 lbs. You are also allowed a carry on and personal item that may need to weigh no more than 44 lbs.”

We missed the weight on one of the bags of luggage. Now the real trick is not just getting this luggage to get checked in. But obtaining it after going through immigration. Below is a photo of our packed luggage. We will some how need to carry this through customs. No clue how that’s going to happen. AND once it’s through custom we will need to pack this all into a rented minivan. No clue how that’s going to happen.

Finally we will need to unload and put away all the things in these bags, I’m sure I know how that will happen. Over the course of many weeks while losing my temper with all of my children constantly. 🙂

Five hours and forty minutes before takeoff.

Growing up, my favorite super hero was Superman. I would run around the house with a red towel tied to my neck and act it out. My favorite movie was Superman 3 (don’t judge, I was a child). And only Christopher Reeve can be Superman. I envied his fortress of solitude.

I also have a fortress of solitude, it is my office. It has everything I need to keep me busy, but my office speaks so much about who I am. The following are photos from my office I took this morning after a great day in court (<—-sarcasm).

The below photo is the view to my right when I’m sitting down. You may not know this but I’m kind of a Star Wars fan, and my favorite character is Emperor Palpatine. Of course I have his lightsaber AND Darth Vader’s.

This is my view to my left. I can’t photograph anything below it because then I’d have to move confidential documents and I don’t want to do extra work.

• 

I love my office. It is my home away from home. Wait, I wrote that wrong. I love my office BECAUSE it is a home away from home. I quote Ron Swanson “I don’t like loud noises and people making a fuss.” Unfortunately we have four children and they are children, so they are loud. When I’m at my office it feels like vacation.

I can work quietly, type, listen to a podcast, usually I have Netflix on in the background because what I do as a job is really boring. I’ve been in my office for 9 hours straight and not said a word. When I got home that night Bonnie asked how my day was and she said I got this creepy grin. It was one of my better days. I’m going to really miss this office. I need quiet time to recharge, and I doubt I’m going to get much of that for the next six months.

24 hours and 40 minutes before takeoff.

We are still packing. We have done more math in the past two days, than I have used in my job in the past few months. When I substitute teach I dread teaching math, and I just tell the kids if you don’t want to do math, just hire people to do it. That’s what I do.

We have to weigh everything. Everything. And the scale in our bathroom is older than me, my wonderful sister in law brought a luggage scale and that has been a game changer. We discovered that our bathroom scale is off by 5 lbs and my only thought was “I really need to lose weight now”.

We were lucky to have my mother in law take our kids after church to a movie so we had time to work without kids distracting us. We got a lot done, until we started weighing our luggage. Each large piece of luggage is between ten and twenty pounds over.

We get 6 checked pieces of luggage up to 55 lbs. we also get 6 pieces of carry on up to 44 lbs. We also get a personal item to bring onto the flight as well. We are misreading than 75% done and a thought occurred to my wife. We have to bring this luggage through customs somehow. I don’t know how that’s going to happen. I think we are about to raise the white flag, and will need to ship a box of items. Luckily there is a fed Ex within walking distance of the home we are renting. I don’t feel comfortable shipping anything to the place we are renting just yet.

The flip side of all this packing is that we have to bring it back. We are going to be living for six months abroad, I’m pretty sure we are going to be purchasing a large amount of items for ourselves but also for our friends and family. Coming back I hopefully can take items back we aren’t using the last couple months we are there.

It’s 10:03pm and we still need to work for another couple hours. Then I have to go to court to try to convince a judge not to do something.

Tomorrow is my last court hearing for a month. My office is slowly getting organized, and the next time I’m in court is to close a case and open a case. Tomorrow is my last day in the office. I plan on waking up at 5am to be ready for this hearing. Crossing my fingers and praying that it turns out the way my client needs it to. This is a really scattered post. Days are merging together so fast. I’m going to start counting down the hours.

T-Minus 63 hours.