Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Foreign Service Worldwide

Because our home leave address is more than 14 transit-hours from our post, when we go to post for the first time (aka PCS or Permanent Change of Station) we are permitted to stay overnight at our plane-changing location - called a "rest stop". A long, long time ago we would have gone business class and straight to post. While I internally yearn for the business class seat, with our children at this particular stage in their lives, I actually really appreciate not having to get on the 3rd plane after 18 hours of sleepless transit.

So there we are in Amsterdam, with our mountain of luggage that's only a mountain because it has to include 2 car seats, the double stroller, and any luggage at all. We look like death as we haven't slept in a very long time and have had to spend every ounce of our being keeping an 18 month old and a 2.5 [editor: oops! 3.5. Thanks mom.] year old from completely melting down in their sleep-and-proper-nutrition-deprived states. And then .... a very friendly and enthusiastic woman who's clearly waiting for someone coming off the plane breaks away from her family comes over to us and asks in perfect American English if we're from the embassy. Our jet lagged haze made us first look very confused, because we're from a consulate and then we realized - this lovely woman was a sponsor to some new family coming to post in the Netherlands. How cool and small world is that?

5 comments:

Becky said...

That's really cool! How did the rest stop go?

Lynne said...

For us it was brilliant. The kids don't sleep well on planes so we napped from 10:30am til the afternoon - around naptime, then got outside to the huge park next to our hotel. Dinner, bath and bed for everyone super early. My daughter was on local time the next day (she's like me, yippee!) and even the little guy only needed 3 days to adjust. Nobody came down with an awful cold the first week back, for the first time. I'd call it a raging success. Did we see a dang thing in Amsterdam? Nope. That kind of thing will come when they are older.

Becky said...

Wow. That sounds great. I'm hoping ours goes about the same next year when we go to Asia. it sounds like you were really smart about it.

Ethel Madnick said...

I believe my grand daughter is 3.5 years old

k @ oh the many places! said...

I love it!