The flight...

The flight to Thailand was great. After our trip to Korea in February, we were really dreading it. Our flight to Korea from Dallas had been almost 15 hours long, and after about 12 we were really ready to be off of that plane. So, this time we wanted to split it up as much as possible and take the shortest flights available. We even thought about going through Hawaii. In the end, we flew from New Orleans, to Denver, and then to Seattle. That was a good 8 hour ordeal in and of itself (leaving at 6pm and getting in at 2am our time) and we were so glad we weren't jumping right on the plane to Chiang Mai. We stayed in Seattle for 36 hours to rest and get ready for the long trip.

We flew on Korean Air and since there isn't a direct flight to Chiang Mai, we actually stopped in Seoul. It was strange being there only 7 months after we were there last. Almost surreal. We were dreading the 11 1/2 hour flight but it went so well. The kids did great. God certainly had his hand in the entire thing. It is so nice that Korean Air has individual entertainment systems. The boys watched movies and played games for much of the time. I brought lots of toys this time so they'd have some other options. Sora did really well too. We spent the money to get her a seat because I really didn't want to hold her the entire time...and I knew she'd want some room to stand on the ground and play. All of the flights were completely full so I'm so glad we did that. She slept quite a bit. When we got to Seoul it was about 5 am our time so we were pretty tired. The kids slept for about 4 hours on the plane and were totally wired when we got to Seoul. We had an hour and 1/2 layover. We met another women who I knew at the center in Dallas who was also moving to Chaing Mai. It's funny because she's in our training course and the kids have really just taken a liking to her. I think seeing a friendly face in Seoul gave them some sort of bond to her.

The flight from Seoul to Chiang Mai was a total blur. It was 5 hours long and for us the time was about 5:30am to 10:30am. Suffice it to say, we were dozing much of the trip...and when we weren't sleeping we were zombies. We were most dreading that flight but it really ended up being much better than we anticipated the kids slept much of it thank goodness.

When we got to the airport, 4 guys from Damien's office were there. It was so great, especially since it was about midnight local time. We made it through customs but the customs agent actually made us open all 16 of our bags! We were just happy they didn't want to take anything. The guys were able to pack all of our belonging in two cars and then drive us to where we were staying. Ironically, they picked us up in our car...the one we bought a few months ago.

On a side note, did I mention we had 16 bags! It was insane. It is REALLY expensive to ship things here so it's better just to pay the extra luggage charge. We actually thought we had 14 bags but when we got to the airport to leave we actually had 16...I'm still not sure how that happened!

This is from the first of the four legs of the trip. Flying from New Orleans to Denver on Southwest Air.

Our hotel in Seattle was literally across the street from the airport. Seriously, we walked there one day to find food and it took about 5 minutes!

Taken from our balcony..

Sora sleeping on the plane from Seattle to Seoul. She would start on the arm rest but change positions about a million times. This was was worlds apart from the trip with her back from Korea 7 months ago. I think I spent about 10 of the 12 hours coming back from Korea walking around with her. This time she was mostly all smiles. :-)