Hey all! After my last post in April we had some major changes happen and I had to step away from the blog for a little while. Ben was offered a job in Santiago, Chile four weeks before we planned to come back to the States for the summer. We had to pack up our house, say goodbye, and prepare to leave Thailand in four, very fast weeks. I'll post more about our last month in Bangkok later, but after an amazing summer, also another post, we made it to Chile!
Saying goodbye to Gigi & Papa
Ben had to leave way back at the beginning of July to get acquainted with Santiago and start his new job, which meant the boys and I would be flying to Santiago by ourselves. This was a simple flight, only 12 hours which is short compared to our 22 hours to Bangkok. No time change, which meant no jet lag. Easy peasy, or so I thought.
We left Detroit on time at 3:30 and had to fly to Dallas. If all would have gone as planned, we should have arrived in Santiago at 7:00 am on Saturday morning. Well, we made it over Dallas and had to keep circling the airport due to a terrible storm that was over Dallas. DFW ended up closing for a few hours and we were rerouted to a small little airport in Arkansas. We had to land there and stayed on the runway between 2-3 hours before finally flying back to Dallas.
All flights coming and going to Dallas had been delayed but by the time our flight landed, our next flight to Santiago had already left and we needed to re-book our flights. This meant standing in a line for 2 hours with 3 exhausted kids, but this is where some good started to happen. A super nice stranger stood with me for at least 30 minutes trying to get a hold of American Airlines on the phone so I wouldn't have to stay in that line. It didn't end up working, but it was so nice that he took time from his night to try and help us out. The sweet woman at Auntie Ann's gave me a discount on our pretzels because she felt so bad. We met a really fun young couple from Australia and their 4 year old daughter that were stuck on their way to Disney World. The lady helping me re-book our flights was wonderful and did a great job finding our fastest route to Santiago. And thankfully, we have family in Dallas that was able to book a hotel room for us near the airport after all the other hotels were completely filled up. Our taxi driver was also really kind, but I did have sticker shock after seeing taxi prices in Dallas compared to prices in Bangkok. No $5 fares in the States!
We finally made it to our hotel after midnight, but we were so thankful to be able to take showers and sleep in an amazing bed for the night instead of staying overnight at the airport.
After a great nights sleep and a yummy breakfast, we left for the airport at 9:30 am to make it to our flight to Miami. Our shuttle driver to the airport was also really wonderful. He was a retired teacher, so it was fun talking to him. Funny little side story: Greyson had on an Ohio State shirt and one of the security guards said "Go Blue!". I asked him why in the world would he like Michigan all the way in Texas. His response, he thought Michigan had awesome helmets. Perfectly good reason to like Michigan better, I guess.
Our flight was supposed to leave at 12:20, but ended up being delayed until 2:00 because they couldn't find enough staff to help with the flight. Most of their crew had been rerouted to other places due to the storm and they were having trouble finding people to work. We left at 2:00 and had a pretty uneventful flight except Britton and Lincoln decided to have an eating contest which ended in Britton throwing up all over himself. I handled it like a champ, cleaned him up right in his seat, stripped his clothes, got him in fresh clothes all without anyone even noticing he had gotten sick. The attendants were so sweet and made sure we had whatever we needed to get everything clean again and I made sure Britton and Lincoln didn't try to have any more eating contests on that flight.
Made it to Miami, walked about a thousand miles to make it to gate J to transfer airlines to Latam Chile airlines, which is amazing by the way! I highly recommend flying with them if you are coming to visit us. The boys and I were all able to sit together after the two young guys in the seats in front of me were willing to switch. We left Miami at 10:00 pm and the boys slept almost the entire way. Now, the tricky part with all of this was the boys and I had to switch airlines, my luggage was going on the original flight directly to Chile from Dallas on a separate airlines. I was just hoping it would all make it there.
Got to Santiago, made it through immigration, and then started searching for all my bags. Thankfully, I found 10 out of 11 big bags and all 4 checked carry-ons. Two workers at the airport were amazing at helping me get everything loaded up and were great about helping me find my lost bag. Had to wait an hour to make a claim to find the lost bag, but in the process met another great guy who is originally from Chile but Lives in the States. He stayed with me and the boys for an hour after he found his luggage just to make sure I got the claim filed and helped translate when I had any trouble.
So, I thought we were going to be cutting our flight in half (flight to Bangkok), but ended up doubling our travel time to 48 hours!
The boys were absolutely amazing. Only a few hairy moments, but for sitting in airports for 2 days they were really well behaved. We are here. We made it. Now time to start setting up the house and starting our new lives in Chile.
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