We've arrived! For a trip halfway around the world we couldn't have asked for smoother traveling. No delayed flights, no missed connections, no lost luggage. The worst I can say is that United's food was mediocre at best.

We were met at the airport around midnight by the school superintendent and the administrative assistant and dropped off at our new apartment. They couldn't have been nicer. We learned just enough to know how to get around in the apartment and then they left us to settle in.

This is our living room. The apartment includes 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a galley kitchen. The "laundry room" is a little porch with the washer, dryer (!) and clothes lines for hanging out the wash. Given the humidity I can't believe anything could possibly dry outside right now.

We also have a balcony off of the living room. It faces directly east. Here's the view:

There's a park and a middle school across the street from us. You can see the track off on the left. We're on the 10th floor of a 19 floor building. I haven't had a chance to look around in the lobby yet but it looked pretty impressive last night.

I was quite pleased with myself when I figured out how to read the toilet flusher:

The character on the left means small and the character on the right means big. The rest is self-explanatory.

The taxi is picking us up in a half hour and we're off to see the school and our new city. 

We've made it to Hong Kong. Three hour layover. We seem to have lost July 30th - we left on the 29th and it's now the 31st.

We flew over the north pole (thought of you, Julia, when we passed north of the Arctic Circle). It gave me pause to fly over Russia but there were no "incidents." Last leg of the journey is an hour and half hop over the South China Sea.

Here's our plane from Bradley to Newark. Yes, it's as tiny as it appears. For some reason there were no rows numbered 8 through 17. I'm hoping someone put them on our next flight, just to give us a little extra leg room. Thanks to my lovely sister, Jenner, Lee and I are spending our 3-hour layover in the United Club at Newark.

So tomorrow is the big day. It's been 33 days since we sold the house and hit the road on our Goodbye Tour. We've been to New York and back to Simsbury, to Virginia, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, Maine, plus three separate trips to Amherst. We put about about 3500 miles on the car, which we sold today to my brother and sister-in-law. Now there's nothing but us and our luggage.

All ready at the airport hotel.

Imagine picking up everything you own and deciding whether or not to take it with you for the next two years (or more) halfway around the world. The other options are to get rid of it or pay to store it. And in the end it all has to fit into 4 suitcases, 2 carry-ons, a purse and a briefcase. 

I did "cheat" a little and packed one box with cool-weather clothes, a couple blankets and a handful of books plus a second box with weaving/knitting/sewing supplies. Those boxes are taking the slow boat and should arrive by the middle of October. By then I imagine I'll be looking for a distraction from the culture shock.

Our plane leaves tomorrow from Bradley to Newark at 10 am. Then we head to Hong Kong (16 hours in the air!) and a final hop to Kaohsiung. We are due to arrive just before midnight Thursday night, Taiwan time. From Bradley Airport to the Kaohsiung airport it should take 25 hours. Then 9 hours after we land the taxi picks us up to start our new faculty orientation. I think we may be too busy to be tired. 

Here we are, stop number 12, back in Amherst one last time. The family has traveled off to Chautauqua so we're taking care of the cats, doing laundry and packing one last time. This time next week we will be attending the new faculty dinner at the head of the school's home in Kaohsiung, Taiwan!

The trip to Maine was everything I had hoped for - time with the boys and Cierra, peaceful, relaxing. I even took the time to unpack my suitcase for the first time in a month! Here are the promised photos.

The house was on its own little island. The bridge on the right is the footpath to the mainland. The tides were about 12 feet so at low tide there's no water under the bridge.

This is the view of Penobscot Bay from the porch. Imagine having your morning cup of coffee with that view every morning. Fabulous.

We spent one day at Acadia National Park. This is me and Josh at the summit of Mount Penobscot.

Josh and his kayak

Cierra and her kayak.

Zach and his kayak. (We did a lot of kayaking.)

We spent a couple days with Lee's mom outside Boston, then headed north to Maine for a week with our three sons and one girlfriend. The cabin is on its own tiny island on the coast near Bucksport and clearly a piece of heaven on earth. Pictures will come when we drive the extra 30 minutes to Blue Hill where the Dunkin Donuts has wifi. I guess heaven doesn't come with internet service.

We left Amherst, once again, and headed to the Boston area for a few days.
A note for my dad: When we got ready to say goodbye your eyes lit up and you had a huge grin on your face. It was the best bon voyage I could have hoped for. You reminded me that this adventure is truly an adventure: exciting, daunting, stepping off the cliff edge into the great unknown and thrilled to do it. I think you're a little jealous that you're not coming along and can't wait to hear all about it when we come back. Thank you for being so excited for us.

Before I start crying again let me tell you about yesterday. We spent the night at our long, long, long-time friends Steve and Jody's farm-in-the-making. They've teamed up with a goat farm down the road that makes the most delicious cheeses. Steve and Jody "foster" some of the adolescent goats until they're old enough to breed and the goats help clear the brush in the overgrown meadows.

Lee and I got to bottle feed the baby goats.

The cheeses mature in their cheese cave.

  Now we're at Lee's mom's place for a couple nights before we head up to Maine. We're planning on going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and going on a Duck Tour. Good touristy things.

Stop number 8: we're back in Amherst. I've had the chance to do some laundry, repack and work on shipping a couple boxes to Taiwan. It turns out that if you're patient and can wait 68 days you can send a table loom halfway around the world for about a hundred bucks!

The travel gods have a twisted sense of humor. They gave us car trouble but waited until we were in town for a couple days, had the trouble be covered by the warranty and gave us one of the nicest Subaru repair shops I've ever seen. Once that was taken care of we were back on the road to Connecticut one more time to deal with various bits of paperwork.

While we were in the neighborhood we took advantage of the opportunity to have one more dinner at Plan B Burger Bar with our wonderful friends, the Cox/Sheldons. This is me, Riley and Darby, who's hiding behind her hands:

It's been a little odd, all these goodbyes. Wandering around for a month between selling the house and flying away means that we've said goodbye and then reappeared a number of times. I hugged my sisters goodbye last night but I'm still in town for a couple days (while they're busy with work) so I haven't even gone anywhere. It's made leaving seem unreal. We say goodbye and nothing changes. It's just odd. 

Yesterday was kayaking on Ninigret Pond in Rhode Island followed by a lovely boat ride and picnic on the beach with the Overbyes. It was like having a vacation from our vacation!

Today we took a ride in Cathy's brother's bigger boat and toured around Stonington, CT and Westerly, RI. It's an opportunity to see how the 1% live, including Taylor Swift, who by most accounts is a nice young woman but still managed to piss off the locals by spending $6 million on a wall to keep out the riff-raff.

We have arrived at stop number 7 on our Goodbye Tour: Rhode Island. We left Washington after a wild thunderstorm and incredible double rainbow.

Unfortunately, this photo doesn't do it justice.

Anyway, we drove down to Virginia Beach for a couple days. We swam in the Atlantic, hiked in First Landing State Park and biked around the Virginia Beach boardwalk.

Poseidon guards the Virginia Beach waterfront.

There were some wild thunderstorms there too, including what may have been a tornado. Now that we're back in New England the weather has turned dry and bit cool. We're planning a day on the water thanks to our friends Cathy and Mitch.

We're two weeks into our trip and it has really sunk in that we have no home to go home to. While it may be true that home is where your heart is or where you hang your hat, it's also where you have a place for all your stuff. A table to toss the mail. A place where you get mail! A bathroom where you leave your things on the counter. I'm getting pretty good at being organized with finding things in my suitcase, but a suitcase just isn't home.

We got an email from the secretary at our new school asking how much luggage we're bringing so she knows what size taxi to send to the airport to pick us up. In two and a half weeks that will be home. At least the place where we hang our hats. I wonder if it will be where my heart is?

Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial

Me and my kayak

Lee and I rented kayaks and paddled down the Potomac River and around Roosevelt Island. To get there and back we walked a couple hours, mostly because we took some wrong turns but it's all good. After all, we're on vacation with no place to be except back at Geoff's by 4:00 for the World Cup. Plus all that walking justified the really good burger and fries we ate in Georgetown.

Day 12 of the Goodbye Tour. We left Amherst, MA on Sunday, spent the night in Philadelphia with eldest son Zach and his lovely girlfriend Cierra, and arrived in Washington D.C. on Monday afternoon where we're spending a couple days with my brother Geoff.

Our timing was perfect in that we got to enjoy lunch with niece Amanda as she had a layover at the D.C. airport on her way to Paris. After a fabulous meal we dropped her off at National. Unfortunately, one of the flight attendants fell ill and they had no replacements so the flight to NY got cancelled. Amanda scrambled for a flight to get to NY in time to catch her evening connection to Paris, to no avail. The airline did book her onto an early morning Paris flight and by the time I went to bed last night she was arranging to fly into La Guardia, take a shuttle to JFK and spend the night at the airport.

I relay this story to remind myself that even when travel plans get completely mucked up there will always be some way to work it out. Lee and I will be doing an awful lot of flying in the next couple years. I'll use Amanda's experience as a reminder to NOT PANIC when stuff hits the fan. (It would be especially helpful if Geoff were available with his computer and calming influence to get us through any rough patches.)

Happy Fourth of July!

Lee perfects his form in bean bag tossing.

My mother's family has had a family reunion during the Fourth of July weekend since the 1960's. The family tree has branched far enough to include fourth cousins this year. The menu includes potato salad made from my grandmother's recipe, including mint that originally grew in her garden. But times do change and lunch included vegan options as well as the traditional ham and turkey.

It was wonderful to reconnect with family before we fly away.

We have officially moved out of Simsbury and spent our last night in town (thank you, Nicki!). Now I can turn my attention towards the future. First it's a month of vacation then off to Kaohsiung, 27 days and counting.