We made it!

Bless me, reader, for I have sinned. It's been days since my last post. In that time we've traveled halfway around the world to arrive, at long last, safely at home. I'm writing to you now from the relative comfort of the wireless network of our favorite local sandwich shop. Tucker and Mia are playing. We got here at 7 AM -- been up since about 2, as we're still adjusting to jetlag.

Our trip home was blissfully uneventful, or at least as much so as a trip like that can be. No flight delays, no problems with luggage or customs. The only thing that's gone wrong is that I personally developed pretty bad flulike symptoms. The last time I felt like this was just after we got married. No joke. It seems that once the pressure of a big event is off, my body has a way of collapsing. I'm OK now, but was pretty out of it for about 24 hours.

My parents were here when we arrived -- they stayed in our house for two days to "get it ready" for us. Really meant a lot to me that they made the drive from Jacksonville, FL to do that. We were met with bubba burgers and hot dogs, and saw all the neighbors.

Bacha woke up many times the first night, crying and afraid. One time I met her in the hallway, where she was crying and pointing at the bedroom. She must be so confused. I found a note from Linda on the bathroom mirror yesterday morning that read "We went to Wallmart. 4 AM". Bacha slept for 12 hours yesterday, though -- 'till 2 AM this morning.

Linda's brother Don and his wife Lisa are here, too, as a stopover on their trip around the east coast. They just came back with a huge haul from Wallmart -- new clothes for both kids, a tricycle for Bacha, and new Batman and Spiderman toys for Tucker.

When we left, Tucker had tears in his eyes when he said he didn't want to leave Kazakhstan. "I like this town," he said. I'm sure he's over that now, now that he's got the latest Batman accessories and some brand new light-up shoes.

Things we noticed upon coming home include the following:
- The pace of life at home is slow. Small southern town slow.
- Driving on the freeway felt like flying, since we didn't have to dodge potholes.
- At the airport in Detroit, we were shocked at the size of the Sprite we ordered for Tucker.
- There are SO many overweight, even grossly obese people here.
- Hadn't seen a black person in 7 weeks.
- Asian-looking people actually stand out now.
- The sheer joy of being able to talk to people.
- Humidity.
- Lightning bugs.
- The birds sound different.
- We're relatively anonymous again.

I do intend to continue this blog for a little while -- at least until it feels like we're all acclimated again. But since we killed our cable TV in an effort to save money and just do the right thing, we also lost our internet access, and it turns out we don't have dialup. So we'll be relying on local wireless networks for a while. So anyway, posts will be less regular. One thing I hope to post for sure is a complete photo album. We have hundreds of pictures that were never posted.

That's it for now. There are so many people without whom Linda and I could not have done what we just did. I don't know how to thank all of you. That includes people who just read our blog every day. It really meant a lot to us that people were watching our adventure unfold. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Stay tuned, at least for a little while...