Retour dans le passé

The flight went fine. Really, it did. Over London with verrry nice personal over there, indicating the playground where the kids spent most of our long waiting time, and afterwards sleeping half of the trip - the last 4 hours were long. 

Quickly we learnt our first lessons: 

 - it is not the best timing to have gastroenteritis just before leaving. Even worse when Hubby Himself is a bit sick as well. Husbands and being sick, you know ...? 

 - it is a good plan to check in a corridor and a window seat in a row of 3, chances are the seat in the middle stays empty and The Princess can sleep on two seats ... like a princess.

 - it is a challenge to start potty training just a few days before leaving. X 2 (twins remember) + gastro. GREAT!

 - it is great to have good friends bringing you to the airport and then others picking you up! Thanks! 

- jetlag sucks. no really, it does. i'm sorry. by the way, breakfast should be jetlagfriendly and start at 4am on your first day, then 5am, etc...  Par contre, tant pour le vol comme pour les early wake ups - vive les casques audios individuels!

 Ensuite, une fois accepté qu'il fait plus frais que prévu, on est super contents de revoir des amis (d'ici et de Belgique et d'être accueillis et entourés!) et aussi de retrouver les saveurs (medialunas), sons (le 'psshit' des bus qui fascinent les enfants) et petits coins de notre passage à Buenos Aires il y a 7 ans, quand nous y avons vécus! La Costanera Sur, la viande de la Cabrera, les tortues dans les quais de Puerto Madero, et biensûr un passage au Hostal Via Via, le marché de San Telmo, en passant désormais par le petit banc de Mafalda, enfants et nom de l'école des enfants obligent.

En gros, nous avons passé 4 jours à Buenos Aires avec des amis belges et argentins; dans la costanera, palermo, les bus, à retrouver nos repères, à combattre le jetlag, à trouver nos premières façons de voyager, s'organiser, .... Les premières 2 semaines ici en Argentine auront la particularité d'être un bout de voyage accompagné d'amis, de familles, ... tout cela dans un seul but .... Le Grand Mariage de Thomas et Teffi le 7 novembre à Corrientes! Amélie décompte déjà (comme nous) car elle y sera 'enfant de bonheur' avec ses cousins et cousines! 

PS: Aujourd'hui Matthias a fait un x-ième meltdown.... Devant une machine à petits sous pour sortir une balle (nen shikkenbak) il a découvert que je n'avais pas amené ses sachets de petits sous (4tonnes de sous bruns) ... avec son 1 peso argentin, il n'arrivait donc pas aux 6 nécessaires ... Sorry Mat... Mauvaise Mère...

D-Day - 4

As usual, I'm brillant in doing the most important things first, so today - D-DAY minus "4fois dodo" - I thought I might want to check out if I can pimp our 'old blog' and make it work for our new trip! I think it is a good symptom of my disease to do first things first and ignore urgencies; we still need to pack our bags (as I think it won't fit, I prefer not to try to make all the stuff fit in the bags)! but hey!! We have our medical stuff figured out, I spent an hour and a half at the pharmacist around the corner, and my mother in law probably did the same in Belgium, so that we now have so much stuff we can open our own pharmacy ... ; the kids are proud (omg..) to wear their new Keen sandals in school every day (it is luckily a bit warmer in Barcelona and sandals with socks are still more or less accepted, at least for kids of strangers/ guiris, I guess almost everything is accepted!) Amélie is counting down ever since she can do it on two hands, and the boys (now aged 2 and 9 months) don't really realise how far or close away the 'Grand Voyage' is (how lucky are they being so naive), but honest to himself, Matthias is already collecting stuff to be fully prepared; a few days ago we saw him put some coins in a little box, asking him what he was doing, he answered 'des petits sous pour le grand voyage'. So finances? check! Tio Tim was probably our last visitor and he left today (at least, I think so, I did drop him off at the metro just to be sure ;-) but hey, you never really know ... I expect him to stand in my living room any time) The working men (werk-man, werkende mannen, ...?) are coming to fix some last stuff to our new barcelona place and then we'll hand over the keys to some friends here so that they take care of our 'maison citron' in Poblenou while we are away ... The itinerary will be Argentina for some Buenos Aires revival, Iguazu with Pierre's sister&family and then partying at Pierre's Tom & Teffi's wedding in Corrientes! 2 weeks of Argentina that is! Then we'll be picking up our Campervan in Christchurch for 3 weeks of New Zealand adventure! No more info available. Still one spot available in the campervan ... After that ; a week in Sydney (and maybe tripping to Bleu Mountains) and on the 11th of December we'll fly over Bangkok to Cambodya, where we'll stay 2- 3 weeks before heading back to Bangkok for New Year's Eve! After a week around there, we fly away so that Matthias and William will have there 3rd anniversary on the 8th of January in Abu Dhabi, before we land again in Barcelona, perfectly planned after 3 Kings madness, and just in time to start school again in the weekend of 9/10Th January! And now lets get packed!! For those who are not used to reading our blogs, some advice: I usually add more pictures (but camera still at nikon for repair..) , I almost always start by saying I'll be short, but I am never. I think you need a certain level of concentration to follow my way of thinking, 'cause it jumps from one thing to another, and so that gives very long sentences with a lot of different info in it. Said this, you'll immediately recognise a post if - pierre wrote it - pierre posted it - pierre corrected it WHEN - it is bullet pointed - short sentences - with a powerpoint - explained with some mathematical/logical formula But that will probably not happen very often ;-) Also, we will probably mix languages AND none of the languages we master, we master really well. we do apologise. Feel free to comment, kids will love it, and so do we! And now lets really get packed!