Saturday, October 04, 2008

I believe in being organized

I am trying to do things now that need to be done before we leave (a week from tomorrow) and I'm so excited about it! Anna will be staying with 3 families while we're in Ukraine (Thank you all!!!) until Tyler comes back. I decided to buy/wrap a snack and a gift for Anna to receive at each home that she'll be staying while we're gone - it's a surprise, don't tell her! I have also packed her clothes for each home and plan to take those clothes to them within the next day or so and have them all ready for when Anna goes there. I thrive on organization. Perhaps I'm also happy to control something as I realize that when I get to Ukraine - I won't be able to control much! (read: anything) I am curious - for those of you who have adopted internationally, did you procrastinate packing? And if you didn't procrastinate - did you still feel stressed to get everything done the night before?

3 comments:

Diana said...

ROTFL!!!! Oh, the memories this one brought back!!

Oh yah, baby...we procrastinated. Our process had been so long and so drawn out and downright painful that we didn't really even believe it was happening until the last minute. We had been ready to travel once before when our friends who were using our then same agency got an appointment with 3 days notice. We were supposed to be right behind them. Long story short, it didnt happen andd that attempt at Ukraine ended in a disaster that involved international fraud and cost us $$$$$$$$ (over 5 digits). We just let everything sit at that point, assuming that if we ever did decide to jump back in the game and things miraculously moved quickly (which is exactly what happened) we were "pretty much ready." HA!

So, I guess I wouldn't exactly say we procrastinated so much as it just took a LOT longer than we anticipated to sort through everything we'd collected for the trip over the past 2.5 years on the Hades Express. Our first flight left at midnight on Father's Day 07. We were up until 3:00 a.m. packing and still weren't finished. We took our daughter with us, so we had all our stuff plus all hers plus all the junk everyone says not to leave home without (much of which I would have been just fine leaving home.) We went to church early the next morning and came home and finished the rest the packing after the meetings. We left for the airport at about 8:00 p.m. and had probably 1/2 hour to sit down and really relax before we left.

We nievely assumed we'd be able to sleep on the plane to NYC. NOT!!! It was an old, icky plane with nasty, super uncomforable seats. We (me especially) were SOOO exhausted by the time we got landed at JFK that I kept falling asleep on the airtrain in between stops. The whole international terminal was being remodeled at the time and there was literally no place to even sit down and rest. We had something like a 9 hour layover (in which we had planned to possibly leave the airport and play a bit. Dumb plan.) We ended up walking around in a delirious daze through two different terminals that weren't much better than the one we were just in. We finally found a commons area three terminals away with a bunch of curved concrete benches. I used my carry-on as a pillow, laid down on the cold curved benches, and the next thing I knew, I woke up 1.5 hours later. Ahh...lest you think I was a crazy lunatic, we actually decided to stop at this spot because there were several other weary traveler there doing exactly the same thing. Apparently they too had found the same thing we had...it was just about the only place you could even think about putting yourself in anything that even remotely resembled a horizontal position.

We all took some melatonin as soon as we got on the plane to Kyiv. I slept for a little over 1/2 of that 10 hour flight. Wish I could say the same thing about coming home...but we'll save those stories for another day :-).

Tami said...

Well, I didn't think I was procrastinating. I thought I was organized. I had 'packed' all of our stuff besides the clothes and toiletries the week before, but when it came to actually stuffing the clothes in I realized I needed to repack everything! I spent four hours of the night before we left, packing and repacking and repacking again to make sure I got everything I absolutely wanted to take. ;>)

DoveFamily said...

Like you, I'm a planner. And like you, I think I was trying to be ultra-organized beforehand because I knew once we got there I would REALLY have to turn it all over to God! I felt very calm about how well we were doing with getting things checked off our To Do List, but the last 48 hours or so were still very hectic. I didn't really have anything left to do the night before and I honestly wish I had saved something, because I was nervous and excited and I could not sleep :)