Good Bye Party

A lot of friends stopped over this evening to say good bye. Thank you so much. Taking time of their busy life they came over to see us, learn about our plans, see our little movie and wish us luck. Occasionally an emotional farewell, it was also great fun, ending with balloon fight and dancing. The children worked to put together a little exhibition, stuff we are taking with us, spread out on a table, books we read, and one of the bags ready to be tried on.

The Exhibition

Some of the paper books we used or will use during our trip

They also made it a "fun fund raising party" and we all thank our guests for their generous donations. A little disappointed that some of the people who confirmed their attendance didn't come, we'll get over it and move on with our last few days.

We have a few more things to take care of. A marathon of services at the church on Saturday and Sunday, a couple of lunches, fourteen hours of job time, a few phone calls to make, but besides this just passing the time and trying to relax. Maria spend the last week scanning a lot of the travel books. We sold Ileana's car and decided to keep mine. (A very old, run down Plymouth Voyager, now the doors won't open, the rust is falling by the side and it keeps raining in the car. But we love it and the engine still works.)

Amazon came up with the latest and smallest Kindle, Apple released their updated iTouch and iPhone models. It's funny how I planned this trip and picked the middle of October for departure, thinking that there will be new Kindles and iPhones in the fall. Unfortunately we cannot get the more fancy versions of Kindle touch or iPhone 4S, but happy with what just came out. The iPhone will arrive on October 14th, not much chance for error there, I hope Fedex will do its job. This will be Friday and as we leave on Sunday, there is no back up plan. We got the OneSim card and I'll report from the road on how it works. China Airlines changed the departure time on our flight, we will leave one hour earlier! When we'll arrive in Osaka that hour will matter a lot, it will take about two hours from the time we leave the airport till we get to the rented apartment.


So this is it. I started this blog 827 days ago, it was a crazy dream and now it's not. After spending thousands of hours researching this subject, I feel that we did the best we could, we learned a lot, we made hundreds of little or major decisions and now we are there. Seeing the children preparing for the party, taking it so seriously and being so proud of themselves and their parents it is priceless. They know how happy we are with them, but might not realize how special they are. Yet.