Hi to all you lovely people,
We have finally arrived at our destination Louisvile (Loo-er-vill, Loo-is-vill or Loo-ee-vill). However you wish to say it, it does not seem to matter around here. Everyone we have met seems to call it something different.
After a very tough good-bye, 3 plane trips and not a lot of sleep over the 48 hours prior to arriving we seem to have spent the most part of the first 2 days here sleeping.
We had a couple of people meet us at the airport which was really nice and they'd bought us a few groceries to keep us going for a day or so, so that was amazing. Really fabulous actually as we were just shattered!
We really had no hiccups during the trip. In hindsight we know God was in control as take a look at the following:
1. Morning of departure we still had no accomodation despite a whole lot of trying...suddenly we heard (4 hours from departure) that a room was free!
2. Most of our 10 bags were 1-2kgs overweight...they decided to waiver the fee!
3. All our carry on bags were at least 1kg overweight...they decided to ignore it!
4. The guy on the plane beside me asked to be moved at the begining of the flight so his mum and him could sit together...so we had an extra seat to share between us all!
5. We found it really tough to sleep on the plane...but the boys slept for 6hours straight!
6. At LA airport you needed to pay $50US for every bag overweight...they let us shuffle a few things around so that only 1 bag was overweight and even then they only charged us half price! Thankfully they didn't even weigh our carry-ons!
7. A couple of the bags seemed a littly bit on the fragile side..but all ten bags made it to Louisvlle in one piece! However since arriving at our hotel 2 bags have pretty much fallen to pieces (as in handles have broke etc) and therefore had they broken during the trip they would have lost their destination tags!
8. Ashleigh had a very sore ear during the decent of our first flight but she was happy for the most part...upon arriving at our hotel she fell to pieces and was in suddenly a lot of pain. We realised in the morning that her eardrum had burst...once again it would have been a lot worse if we had to carry her as well as everything else during our flights.
So we are incredibly grateful for all your prayers and we are 100% certain that God wants us here for now.
What can we tell you about Louisville?
Louisville feels like quite a big city, with significant motorway systems. But it also seems really small townish where everyone seems interested in where we are from and keen to have a chat.
It is very hot and humid and thunderstormy and people seem to have their air-conditioning very cold, so in the morning we are never too sure how to dress.
Funny things to note so far?
We had to buy a GPS to get ourselves home from the car rental place. Thought we would need one at some stage but had a laugh when neither of us had been paying enough attention.
Kids are waking in the middle of the night not being able to go back to sleep for hours and feeling like they're ready for another meal. Bradd ended up watching motorcross on TV with the kids at 3am.
EVERYONE comments on our accent and thinks it's really entertaining. This can help a lot in that everyone seems to instantly become your best friend - everyone goes the extra mile.
The cheese here is orange?!? It seems they add orange colouring... Not sure why... Also the butter is white instead of yellow...
All in all though, we're having a good time and really looking forward to getting out and having a good look around the place. We've been keeping close to the apartment so far, and looking forward to visiting the seminary and friends tomorrow.
We'll try to keep this blog up to date while we're here so you can see what we're up too. Lots of love to everyone back home.
Bradd and Sonia
Ashleigh, Sam and Jack
