Wednesday 9 January 2013

Continued...

Spent the evening doing the last bits of laundry and packing, we had 6 carry on bags and 17 pieces of check in luggage. I weighed everything and it came to over 160kg!
We woke up about 4am and I got all the kids through the shower and dressed. Dianne and Gail came and transported us all to the airport. Gail left and Dianne came inside with us. It took ages to get all our luggage checked in but after that we all went and had a coffee/breakfast as luckily we had plenty of time to spare. Eventually it was time to go through immigration so had a big tight tearful hug with Dianne (just as well tickets to Perth are cheap). Dianne is an amazing lady and has been so kind to our family, I am going to miss her so much.
The flight was uneventful and the kids watched movies most of the way. We had a 7 hour stopover in Bangkok which we spent partly walking around windowshopping, had something to eat, kids played on a little playround we found. By around 9pm the kids were getting really tired and by the time we took off they pretty much fell asleep straight away for the next 2.5 hours of the flight.
They were grumpy when we landed and we waited till everyone was off the plane till we tried to get off. I'm not going to go into the nightmare retrieving the cats was because I am still suffering from PTSD lol...but will do a separate post on that later.
We ended up leaving the airport over 4 hours later....we had hired a 13 seater minivan so all the luggage was on the roof. My husbands cousin in the front with the driver and all of us and the 2 cats in their carrier in the back. The kids went back to sleep and I patted the cats and dozed although that was hard because the driver was a really crappy one who kept on braking hard every few minutes. We got to Ballaldighi around 7am I think....
First priority was the cats so I set up their litter boxes and food/water and let them out of the carrier. They seemed so calm after their huge trip!!
Next job was to blowup our air mattresses and make up all the beds.
The kids were excited to be in Ballaldighi and Vrinda immediately went off to her friends house, I went looking for her and she hid under the table. Her friend's family were cracking up!
Around midday I got everyone back to bed although I kept on waking up to see andom relatives gawking at me I was so tired I just rolled over and ignored them!
Slept for around 4 hours and then ate dinner that my mil and sil had cooked.
Was back in bed around 6pm and slept like a log all night!
The next day was spent unpacking as much as we could and we had quite a few visitors eager to see the cats, in Mallika's words they are CELEBRITIES!
Day after that my husband went back to Kolkata to  start the process of getting our container out of the dock. He had a long day and arrived back late that night. He had to go back in a few days.
OK this installment is done for now, I am off to bed for sweet dreams listening to the howls of jackals...love them.

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