How long have we been here?

Waiting for our makiatos on a lazy Saturday in Pristina.

As of today we've been in Kosovo almost 3 weeks. Part of me feels like we've been here forever. Not in a bad way, just in the "we're pretty settled in and back into a normal. boring routine kind of way."

Not a whole heck of a lot to report really...here are some general updates.

• Grammy Jo and Tootsie will be arriving on October 4th and we are all very excited!
• Our nanny, Vala, started this week which has lead to a lot more Facebook posting, playing with videos on IMovie and also getting some billable time in.
• I will be starting a survival Albanian course on Monday, which will be two hours per week for 22 weeks. My expectations are pretty low, but I'm going to work hard at it and hope to be able to muddle through some basic conversations by the end of the course. 
• Our UAB shipment arrived on September 23rd so we got some more of our stuff. A few things we wished we had packed in this first shipment...more toys, bigger coffee cups (the cups we have now are glorified espresso cups), umbrellas, clothes hangers, more toys and more toys. We could have done without the 3-6 months clothes for Zack as he has already grown out of them. It was fun unpacking the stuff as every little bit makes our house feel a bit more like home. 
• We got our first package in the mail here. Grammy Jo sent us a bunch of goodies and the box arrived in about 1.5 weeks. The favorite item in the care package was a recordable book. Grammy Jo recorded herself reading the book and Zoe LOVES it. I highly recommend doing this if you know of people living overseas.
• We had a courtesy call with Ambassador Dell. It is really a nice gesture on his part to meet everybody that comes to post here. We only spent about 15 minutes with him as Zoe started melting down and screaming, "I have a booger" over and over again. Awesome. 
• We got our Armed Forces Network decoder box which is pretty great. There aren't many channels but all of my favorite shows (DWTS, Glee and Modern Family) are broadcast usually a day after they air at home. Mike gets his fill of Sports Center, NFL, MLB and Tosh.0. Zoe is quite pleased with the kids channel which has all the best from both Disney Junior (Special Agent Oso, Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse) and Nickelodeon (Dora, Diego, Blue's Clues). 



Waiting in the Chancery for our meeting with
Ambassador Dell.

• Zoe and I started sharing a ride to school in the morning with the Bucha Family who's son is at her school but in the pre-K class. Once we get our car we'll probably work out a better carpooling system. It's been a huge help and a big cost savings for us. I was paying about 12 Euro per day getting Zoe back and forth to school which wasn't sustainable.

A few of our new favorite things:

• Macchiatos or makiato as they spell it here. I will likely leave here highly addicted to these.
•  Ajver. This is a DELICIOUS roasted red pepper and eggplant spread that we are spreading on everything. 
• Taukbashçe park.

Things we could do without...

• The bidet.
• The 15 different keys to different doors in our house. 
• The traffic downtown. 
• Our electric range, boy do I miss gas.

Strolling through Taukbashçe Park.

Apologies for overuse of CAPS for emphasis. I am aware of this problem and hope to find a way to stop the insanity!

Hope to post soon about our day trip to Pejë and get some pictures up from around our house. 

So we got here fine, got settled into the house and unpacked. Spent our first weekend just kind of bumbling around the house battling our jet lag. Jet lag with a 3.5 month old and a 2.5 year old is not for the faint of heart. It took about a week for everybody to get back into a normal sleeping pattern. Zack seemed to adjust the fastest to being 6 hours ahead of our peeps on the East Coast.

Our first meal out at an English pub.
Mike's been back here to watch some premier league games. 

We headed down the steps into town for dinner on Saturday which was a nice walk. We quickly realized three things: Zoe needed to step up her game when it comes to walking, people here REALLY love kids and we weren't going to be picking up Albanian too quickly. 

Back in the States we took the kids everywhere in our double stroller. In doing so, we pretty much ensured that Zoe would be accostumed only to walking between different pieces of equipment at the playground. We should have scrapped the stroller for parts before coming here because I'll be shocked if we ever use it. There are virtually no passable sidewalks in Pristina; either they don't exist or there is a car parked along or across it. Zoe has been doing a lot better even after only a week and is now walking all the way back to our house from downtown tackling all of the crazy stairs. Last comment on our getting around...thank God for the Ergo baby carrier.

Dragodan stairs, we're all going to have great legs after 2 years here.

Right from the minute we got here, it was obvious that EVERYBODY loves kids. We were in our house for about two minutes and probably 5 different people had pinched Zoe's cheek, ruffled her hair or just plain old picked her up. It can be a bit shocking at times still, but strangers on the street will just come over and give your kid a little pinch or a snuzzle. We were walking up the steps from town the other day and this teenage boy said something to Zoe and tousled her hair while walking by. People on the Embassy compound will just plain grab the kids from you and play with them. They have been starved of kids as the USG just started allowing children under 5 years at this post. We actually had a guy from the consular section tell us he thought we were a family in some sort of trouble looking for help at the Embassy because he had never seen a family there before. Most of the kids are here at this point, we're just waiting for 2 more to arrive. In total there will be 8 US kids associated with the Embassy before the end of the year. 

The language could prove to be a real challenge for us... Luckily most people speak enough English or German (not that we speak German) or are superior at charades to make communication possible because Albanian is hard! I can barely pronounce people's names when they introduce themselves and I see some combinations of letters strung together that I've never seen before. I am hoping to start a survival Albanian class in October and Mike is planning to start learning a bit of Serbian. So far it seems that the phrase that everybody here knows in English is "no problem". I need to start keeping track of all of the ways I hear that phrase being used.

First day of work for Mike and school for Zoe.

All in all, we're settling into a pretty normal existence here. Mike's at work, Zoe's at school half day, and Zack and I are just chillin' for the moment. 

Hasta luego USA...

Time to get caught up.

Zoe with some of our stuff.

Well we've arrived and mobilizing the whole family was no small feat. The past few months were some of the most frustrating and stressful yet oddly exciting times that our little family has experienced. The fact that we all survived relatively unscathed is testament to the fact that we have an amazing support system of friends and family. I think everyone in our life played at least a small part in either keeping us sane or helping us with the heavy lifting (sometimes literally).

One of the bigger frustrations over the past few months was the condo. Despite our best efforts, as of our departure on September 8th, the place still hadn't sold and we hadn't found a tenant. The fate of 1300 Taylor Street #4 is now in the hands of the property manager. Hopefully they'll rent that puppy soon.

The other major downer was that we couldn't get Tootsie on our flights. It was a last minute scramble and we almost pulled it off. If we had TWO more days to play with we could have gotten her international health certificate endorsed by the USDA and her rabies vaccine would have been within the right timeframe and it would have been a go. We're now looking into flying her over solo and if that doesn't work she'll come back with Mike in December when he goes to DC for a training. We will get her here so we can continue to call this blog Travel Dog without too much guilt.

Our empty condo after pack-out.

One of the more exciting things was living through our first USG pack-out. It was like a SWAT team of master wrappers descended on us. Four guys showed up, spread out and started packing anything and everything they saw so fast that at this point I wouldn't be surprised if we find a used kitchen sponge packed in one of the boxes. The most stressful part of that day was when Mike's wallet went missing about 2 hours into the pack-out. At one point we were all just staring at each other contemplating the prospect of having to unpack each box to find his wallet. Thankfully upon one last check in the car, we found it under the front seat, PHEW!

Rosie, Chris, Brett, Jamie, Anna and Erin visiting us on the roof.

After the condo was emptied, we moved into a sweet pad at the Newseum Residences downtown. It was a great place for us to spend the last week or so of our time in DC. I highly recommend it to anybody else in temporary housing with the USG in DC because they will give you the government hotel rate for a 2 bedroom apt with a full kitchen. The building also had a decent gym (completely unused by us) and a great roof deck (definitely underutilized by us).

Grillmaster Grimland.

During our last week or so in town we tried to pack in as much time with friends as possible. I had a happy hour with Chemonics and USFS/IP colleagues at the 18th Street Lounge, we did a kiddie happy hour at The Reef with friends, and then Brian and Sara (Mike's Peace Corps friends) hosted an amazing farewell BBQ for us. They went completely overboard as is customary when Sara hosts anything. I think it was the first BBQ I had ever been to with Kobe beef on the grill. It was a total blast and a great send-off.

Grammy Jo and Pop at Dulles.

After the BBQ we pretty much packed up and headed to the airport. We were in for a bit of a surprise when the car to take us to the airport arrived. Despite telling the company that we needed the biggest vehicle they had, they sent a Town Car.  Um, 2 adults, 2 kids, 5 giant suitcases, 2 carseats and a pack and play ain't gonna fit in a Town Car. Luckily, the Manellas had planned to come to the airport to help with the kids and had plenty of room in their car for our bags. We were so glad they were there to help with the kids at the airport while Mike was at the ticket counter for at least 30 minutes getting Zoe and Zack's tickets re-issued. Always fun when you get to the ticket counter and your kids don't have tickets! There's really nothing to say about the flights because the kids were AWESOME!!! They both went to sleep after dinner and slept almost the whole way.

Settling in for the 9.5 hour flight from Dulles to Vienna.

Next post will be about us getting settled in. Hopefully I can stay on top of things better to keep these short and sweet.


Special shout outs:
The Delfs Family - For storing a whole bunch of our stuff in their basement for months as we pretended for prospective condo buyers that even though we were a family of four with a 72 lb dog in a 2 bedroom condo that we had no clutter.
Grammy Jo and Pop Manella - For all of their back and forth to DC to help babysit, transporting stuff from their basement back to us before we left, and also fostering Tootsie for a few weeks while we were showing the condo.
Grammy and Pop Stelling - For all of their back and forth to DC to help babysit and for providing Tootsie with a temporary home until we can finally get her over here!
Sara and Brian - For hosting an incredible going away BBQ, although this party also resulted in one ridiculously hungover husband... Thankfully none of those late night photos have surfaced.
Carlos and Heather - For being our sounding board about everything related to foreign service life with kids.

Zack reading the safety instructions for the Vienna - Pristina leg.