Jalbert Family Adventure

Departure

On Saturday, August 18 at 3:00, the shuttle-van came to pick us up on schedule. Unfortunately, we were behind schedule. We had some cushion and had to ask him to come back in 30 minutes. The morning was a whirlwind of running around attempting to finish the 1000 things we wanted to finish but, alas, we had to leave some things behind or not be as prepared with some things as much as we wanted. Laura hadn’t fully learned how to use the laptop nor the Blackberry. Laura hadn’t transferred all of our important information into electronic form so she had to take a stack of papers with us. We didn’t finish getting our blog up and running. We hadn’t finished packing our house. However, we had everything we needed to leave and hopefully could figure things out along the way.

The children had been excited for weeks. We told them about our plans right before school ended so that they could share their thoughts with their friends and get encouragement from their teachers so they would further understand that the trip was something positive and special. With the help of books, maps, movies, discussion and a existing passion for adventure, the children were dying to go. Henry had been in tears several times yearning for the departure date (and chocolate crepes). The boys had been building pyramids with their legos and packing rope to climb Mt. Everest!

They knew they wouldn’t be able to have traditional birthdays so we planned a “Summertime Party” at the beach for all of their friends and having that to look forward to throughout the summer took the sting out of birthdays in a foreign land. The party was a great success and we look forward to birthday baklava for Oliver and a dip in the Ganges for Henry’s 7th!

We had already started our transformation a week ahead of leaving by living with much less than we were used to. Our closet contained only a few days worth of clothes, the toys and books were packed away and we were eating whatever was left in the pantry.Our neighbors were outside bidding us fairwell and after some departing photos, we jumped into the van and waved goodbye. It was then Laura realized she left the laptop and a camera bag on the lawn in the midst of the excitement. We stopped the van and collected our stuff and thought, “We’re doomed!” All we could do is move forward and hope for the best.