We Made It!

We arrived, and so did all our luggage.  The kids were great on the long flights (2 x about 8 hours, 1 x 2 hours), including T sleeping for about 5 hrs on the second one!  Screens on the back of each seat on the airplane and being able to select your own movie, priceless!

The kids asked some interesting questions at the airport, mostly about the toilets and some of the clothes.  I'll post pictures of the western and eastern style toilets once we get our full internet access up and running.

We landed in Hyderabad at 9 am today (Dec 31) and were met by one of L's coworkers and a driver.  The kids got in the car and looked in the front seat and said the guys on the wrong side!  We answered with they drive on the other side of the road too.  The drive to the apartment was interesting,  leaving the airport you'd think you were in florida with the trees and flowers and highway. The highways were pretty empty for 10 am by the time we were on the road.   The landscape is interesting, lots of boulders (I'll take pictures another time).  Then came the traffic on the city/local streets, chaos is a way I would definitely describe it. It will be interesting to see that while we're here.

We have arrived at the apartment, explored a little, took naps, which we woke up from but couldn't get the kids to wake up till about 8 pm local time.  So we're watching a movie, and hopefully will get them to bed just after new years (local time here) which is in 2.5 hours.

Lots to explore tomorrow, we've been told there is a supermarket we can walk to tomorrow so that should be interesting.

Happy New Year to all from Hyderabad, India.

The big day has arrived

So packing is done and we have spent the morning cleaning and organizing the house. The below chaos of packing

Has turned into this seemingly well managed group of luggage and carry on packs.  Funny half the luggage was empty after packing clothing and filled up pretty well after packing us food, educational things for teacher B to educate K and T while we are in country. 

Explosion of kids stuff

We thought we were doing great, until we started pilling up all the "kids stuff"!  Alot of the kids Christmas presents from people were geared towards keeping them occupied on the plane, which is perfect until I made a pile of it all. Well I guess we'll see what fits! And I think we made the decision that with the exception of a few choice stuffies, we'll buy them some toys in India and not pack them.

Gear we are bringing

L. Here.  As you may know B and I are kind of gear heads.  So I will have a couple installments on what we are bringing and how it works out.  The tech that we are bringing for water purification is the staripen classic (http://www.steripen.com/classic/) and msr miox (http://media.cascadedesigns.com/pdf/msr_miox_manual_en.pdf).

The MIOx is pretty cool but is discontinued so I got a deal at rei.  It actually uses salt ( the white pouch in the photo, not any elicit substance to get the adults through 20 hr plane ride). The salt is broken down to components and added to purify water.

Hopefully this will keep us all safe.  

Backpacks 

We also splurged on new packs for our carry on luggage for the plane and weekend trips.  B and I both purchase the REI lookout 40. In his and hers versions.  The kiddie packs are just for cuteness factor.  :).  K. Really likes hers in the store. Let's see how it goes after carrying for 8 hr on a city tour.  If that goes well it means family canoe trips could be in our near future. 

  

Note the lack of fullness of the packs.  Still a good amount of packing to do in the next few days.  The lookout packs have a good mix of volume and pockets to stash.  The foam back rest seems like it will be comfortable and airy.  Time and 90 degree weather will tell.  

First aid kit contents and update soon.  

Packing has begun

Finally.... we broke out the suitcases and started finding warm weather clothes.  I realize we need to buy K some clothes but T has lots. And we've started the list of things to go get.... I'm not sure were going to fit everything in 4 suitcases.
But we'll see.

Oh and we now have all our visas and the kids have been given their first dose of anti-malarials.

Takeoff in 5 days - let the countdown begin!