Musings - Leaving for Hong Kong

It was not an unusual morning August 31st 2017 when my family opened their eyes and slowly woke to a beautiful Calgary morning.  Jenn and I rose a little earlier to take care of a few last minute details before the kids woke up.  Details such as ensuring we had access to everything we might need for an 18 hour journey from one home to the next.  These included but were not limited to headphones, iPads, charge cables, delicious snacks, stuffies, colouring, extra clothing and toiletries (in case our luggage was lost), and everything else under the sun.  Most of these were not used and others were found to be redundant as they still serve meals on international flights.

We arrived at the airport with our eight, no less then two large suitcases per family member, of checked luggage and six carry-on items; two carry-on suitcases and four backpacks all stuffed to bursting with the afore mentioned necessities.  I started wondering that maybe we packed too much, but the kind Air Canada employee noted that for a family moving internationally we seemed to have very little.  Yes I was puzzled.  Apparently some families pack a number of boxes with much more than the afore mentioned necessities.  In fact I have read that some families arrive in their new location, then wait for their shipping container full of furniture to arrive.  As we decided to rent our home furnished there was no need to ship over any of our furniture.  Nevermind trying to cram our 2267 square foot home into an apartment less than half that size.  Can you imagine? We would have wall-to-wall furnishings, I mean you couldn't even see the floor because of the jigsaw puzzle of furniture.  Besides how could we know if the style would match our new home.

We checked our luggage and headed for breakfast with Cliff and Debbie, Jenn's parents, for the proverbial last breakfast, headed to security, said our final tearful goodbyes and crossed to a point of no return.  Our journey was about to begin.

The flight from Calgary to Vancouver was a breeze.  We were delayed getting on the next flight to Hong Kong for about 2 hours and for the sake of this entry I wish I had something more exciting to tell you, but all went very smoothly.  The girls handled the 13 hour ordeal like professionals.  In fact Amélie proffered the idea that it wasn't that long a flight at all.  While she never really fell into any kind of deep sleep she is quite proud of the fact that she "basically" stayed up for 27 hours.  Juliette on the other hand did sleep about 3 - 4 hours immobilizing her mother the entire time.

Me... I dozed in and out, never really could sleep on planes.  And somewhere over the Bearing Straight I celebrated my 43rd birthday.