Tootsie is one lazy travel dog...

While Tootsie has been flitting about the globe since our last post, she has neglected her duties of nudging us with her wet nose to update the blog. As she's now settled into her new life in Ecuador, we're hoping she will take her job more seriously.

  

Tootsie has made this her resting spot as it is one of the
only carpeted spots in the house.

So here's the quick update to get everybody back up to speed on the Manella clan. 

March 2012: Meri accepted a job as foreign service officer with the US Department of State

May 2012: Meri and the kids left Kosovo for good and Mike came back for a temporary assignment in DC. Meri started her new job with State and the kids hung out in Jersey for a few weeks with Gram and Pop until they had a spot at daycare in VA. We all moved into the Oakwood apartments in Falls Church, which is basically the temporary stopping grounds for many State Department employees between posts, especially those with children.

June 2012: Meri found out that she would be serving a 2 year tour in Guayaquil, Ecuador doing consular work at the US Consulate General (http://guayaquil.usconsulate.gov/).

July 2012: Mike returned to Kosovo to try and figure out what options he might have to get a posting in Ecuador.

September 2012: After a few hard months separated and losing all hope that USAID and State could find a way to get us all in the same place at the same time, Mike decided to resign from his post and come home.

November 2012: We drove to Miami, hopped on a plane and now we live in Guayaquil.

Unfortunately for us, the Consulate was not able to find a permanent house for us before we arrived. The good news is that the temporary house that we are in is pretty nice. Actually, as far as temporary housing goes, it's amazing. It is located in a gated community where many other consulate families live. For now, the place is nice enough, but once our air shipment arrives, it is going to be TIGHT. Hopefully they will find us something soon although the outlook isn't very good for us to be in a permanent house before Feb/Mar. So, we are making our place as homey as we can and are getting to know our resident geckos, iguanas, toads and scorpions.

A view looking down our street.
Our house is at the other end. 

Staying cool in the backyard. We do have a little pool, but
it's been un-swimmable due to iguana poop. Luckily it'll be
open for business again on Monday.

In the mean time, Meri is busy learning her new job and Mike is busy keeping the kids out of trouble and cooled off. Mike now signs most emails Mr. Mom which is pretty accurate. We think the kids are a bit confused because all of a sudden they can't seem to keep Mama/Dada straight. The kids being the globetrotters they are, have settled in very well. Zack is using a bit of Spanish very regularly (leche, agua, hola) and Zoe has a bunch of words that she will only pull out when bribed. Mike is applying for a job at the Consulate so hopefully he will start working 9 to 5 too to keep from going bonkers. We think we have found a nanny to help out with the kids and are hoping to get her contract straightened out before Christmas. 

Speaking of Christmas, it was touch and go for a while whether Santa was going to find us. Thankfully Amazon ships pretty quickly to this part of the world so the kids will wake up to a few gifts. Now, if we could just find a Christmas tree...

A Day in the life of Zoe

Circle time with Ms. Teuta and Ms. Elma, Zoe's teachers.

As we recently got a bunch of great pictures from Zoe's teacher of her day at school, I thought I would try and capture what her normal day is like here in Pristina.

Monday through Friday, Zoe is up and dressed and ready for school. In January she started going by herself to school with the Buchas. William Bucha is one of her best buds and is in the pre-k class at her school. His dad is nice enough to drive Zoe in the morning to save us a trip.

Ribbon cutting ceremony at new ILG
building in Veternik.

Her school, ILG (International Learning Group http://www.ilg-ks.eu/ ) moved over the winter break to a new location which is awesome! Before it moved we had to go to the other side of the city to get to her school which was at that time in two rented homes. The school moved along with all of the teaching staff to a new location which is probably farther by miles but much easier to get to. The added bonus is that it is very near one of the main grocery stores we shop at so its pretty convenient to pop in and pick up a few things for dinner when I pick her up in the afternoon.

A chemist in training?

Anyway, Zoe's class starts at 8:30 and ends at 12:30. She spends her days, learning, singing, dancing and playing outside. They go outside even in the snow to play which is awesome. Although, it's been too cold lately for them to go outside at all. Luckily the new building has an indoor play area as well.

Zoe's buddy Marina who moved back to the
States in November.

Zoe's classmates are from all over the place! I think there are 25 countries represented in the school overall. The only drag is that there are a lot of kids that come and go as their parents jobs end here in Kosovo and they move back home or to their next post. Zoe's best friend Marina left in November to move back to the States but she rebounded and I think it's safe to say that Fransje is her new bestie here. Obviously, Julie and Maeve are her best NJ friends!!!

Zoe and her pal Fransje.
Luckily Fransje lives right down the street from us!

After school Zoe eats lunch, watches a show and in theory takes a nap. Naps are unfortunately becoming a thing of the past. Being the social butterfly that she is, we have been going to more and more afternoon play dates at her friends' houses and also at the Embassy. She's a busy little kid but seems to have adapted to the international lifestyle with no trouble.

Zoe and William playing in the snow during a Friday
afternoon play date.

Flying Solo

I admittedly have been terrible about updating this blog which is too bad because we've been busy. Well I guess that's why I haven't updated the blog. Mike's been in Ukraine and Hungary for work, I have been working on some contract work and we've been trying to get out of Pristina as much as possible. Maybe I'll do some retro posts on Istanbul and Montenegro as they were both awesome trips.

As of this post, the whole Manella clan is back in the US until January 3rd. Zoe, Zack and I travelled back to New Jersey (more on this harrowing adventure below) on November 29th and Mike flew over on December 9th for a training in DC. We'll all be reunited (FINALLY!!!) at Newark airport on Saturday on our way to go spend a few days in Myrtle Beach with Mike's grandparents, aunt and mom. His grandparents haven't met Zack yet and haven't seen Zoe in 2 years, boy are they in for a pleasant surprise...

While embroiled in the 18 hour door to door journey from Pristina to Newark with the two bambinos, I started writing down all of the things I learned traveling alone with my kids. Come to find out, you learn a tremendous amount about yourself and humanity in general taking something like this on. At the end of the day, it wasn't all that bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping to never have to do it again...

Here are a collection of my lessons learned, tips and general musings from my solo journey with Zoe (33 months) and Zack (6 months)...
1. If you are traveling with two kids and a stroller, you will need to ask someone to hold your baby to get everything on the conveyor belt. My approach was pretty straight forward...just thrust the 6 month old at the closest security agent. Generally speaking, European security staff are happy to oblige you. In Munich the security guard danced around with Zack and gave Zoe candy.
2. People will look at you with a mix of awe, pity and confusion. I may have also sensed a bit of anger, but I'm not 100% sure...
3. Your toddler being potty trained will be a mixed blessing. God bless Zoe for her unbreakable determination to not have an accident during the trip even though she was wearing a pull-up. Her commitment to the potty lead to her only breakdown of the trip when she didn't want to pee in her pull up but we couldn't go to the bathroom because they were de-icing the plane while we were on the runway.
4. It is important to keep in mind that whatever sweater/jacket you wear may become any of the following: blanket, napkin, tissue or fort. Keep the cashmere in your suitcase.
5. Bulkhead seating is the way to go with kids, the extra space is invaluable. The only problem is that pesky flight monitor screen that will be glaring out at you during your 9.5 hour flight letting you know that there is still 8.5 hours left. Kind of messes with your head a little. This will undo any psychological benefits of #8.
6. It's very tempting to make up an outrageous response to the question, "Where's daddy?"Here are a few I considered...
     *On the international space station
     *Sailing around the world
     *Flying the plane
7. Stewardesses that have travelled alone with their kids will become your biggest ally.
8. Creating milestones during your trip that you can literally check off as your traveling will help you feel like you're making progress.
9. Don't underestimate the importance of having many plastic bags with you for trash, dirty clothes, stinky diapers, etc...
10. Sometimes it is the most unlikely thing that will provide the most entertainment on the flight. Nope it wasn't the iPad Zoe played with most, it was a red ribbon and my shoelaces. For Zack it was an empty water cup and a bag of mini-pretzels.
11. You shouldn't feel rushed while changing diapers in the airplane bathroom. Nobody else rushes for you, so don't sweat it.
12. Whatever you do, keep the bottles and sippy cups full at all costs. As soon as they are drained, fill them up. Trust me on this one, it will save you lots of tears.
13. You can in fact use the airplane bathroom while holding a 6 month old. Key to doing this successfully is wearing pants with an elastic waist.
14. Don't bother bringing a neck pillow or book and don't plan on watching any movies on the plane as you will not have any chance to sleep, read or do anything for that matter. This helps with #15.
15. Keep your carry-ons to a minimum. The more stuff you have the more chances are that you will leave something somewhere.
16. Get to know the other parents and kids on your flights. This seems to happen naturally, but if it doesn't it won't hurt to strike up a conversation with the other poor souls traveling with their kids. The families on a plane end up forming an unbreakable alliance for baggage handling, elevator holding and stroller wrangling.
17. Embrace the fact that your kid will cry at some point (and most probably many times) during the flight and that there will be nothing you can do to comfort him/her. The sooner you accept this, the sooner your stress level will drop.
18. Think of the trip as an opportunity to work on your creative thinking, problem solving and patience. The experience will likely age you but you will all survive it!!!

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.

Travel Dog Lives!!!

For those of you hoping to follow our move and new life in Kosovo in excruciating detail...you're in luck, we've brought the blog back to life. Well, for the next little bit let's just consider it on life support as things are a bit crazy around here. There will be some inevitable overlap between this and our facebook posts, but we'll try to breathe a bit more life into things on the blog. Plus, we've got some dear friends and family that aren't facebook'ers so this will satisfy their curiosity.

Just as a quick update on the major goings-on since our last post...
*Babies: We had 2 of them. Mandy and Brian had another baby (Logan). Janel and Matthew had James. Chris and Rosie had Nate. Jennie and Gene had Julie. Brandon and Elizabeth had Blaise. There were a lot of babies, so apologies if I left yours out!!! That was just right off the top of my head and I'm sure yours is the cutest.
*Weddings: Geoff and Stacy; Andy and Brittany
*Jobs: Mike took a job as a Foreign Service Officer with USAID, hence the upcoming 2 years in K'vo. (Yep, that's how I have decided to shorten Kosovo to make it seem more interesting for potential visitors. Is it working?)
I changed jobs and then pseudo-retired to get ready for K'vo (is it growing on you yet?)

A bunch of other great stuff happened, but after the two kids, who can remember any of it...

We'll be focusing in on last minute shopping and pack out until we move into our temporary housing on 8/30. After that I'll just be chilling downtown at the Newseum Residences trying to stay busy with the kids until we take off on September 8th.