The Big Migration

We have finally arrived in Santiago, Chile... our new home for the next two years.

The last few days have been really crazy clearing out our big old house in Parkdale, which we have painstakingly renovated over the last 5 years, to prepare for another family to lease it. It was also a humbling and perspective-building experience to rationalize all of our material possessions to fit into 7 giant suitcases (plus two car seats). I will never shop the same way again - everything screams "Garage Sale!" now when I walk into stores like Canadian Tire :)

The adventure to Santiago began in a highly civilized manner. The logistics were daunting, but through a multi-stage drop-off process, we checked in our dog at Air Canada Cargo, and the rest of us in the main gate with the help of grandparents, Jeremy's siter Laura and the Super Elite concierge.

Fun fact about traveling with pets: We learned that you can't put carry-on pets (i.e., Missy our cat) through the X-ray machine at security. In addition to the chaos of two young kids, a pile of carry-on and three laptops to take out of our luggage, the security personnel had me take Missy out of her carrier and go through the metal detector. If you know our cat, you'll be flabbergasted to know that she was not at all daunted by this - there was no mountain lion-type growling, clawing or trying to get away. Cat nip is the key to success on this one.

Never to make the same mistake twice, we didn't drink too much in the lounge and attempted to time our boarding of the plane perfectly. A large diaper incident and a defiant two-year old sabatoged that plan and we were one of the last groups to board the plane, and struggled fiercely to find stowage space for our carry-on luggage.

Fun fact about traveling with kids: You never want to be the first to board the plane, as the kids will get restless before take-off and are likely to have a tantrum. But, the only thing worse than boarding too early is boarding too late, as all your essentials need to be stuffed below the seats as there will be no carry-on stowage space anywhere in the vacinity of your seats.

The flight went reasonably well - much better than the same flight 6 months ago. Most of the people around us (including the crew) were void of personality and gave us cold stares when our children did anything child-like. The jumping on the seats and kicking a neighboring passenger when she was searching for a rolling water bottle didn't help Jackson's case, but we made it through relatively unscathed.

Bringing a cat into Chile was a breeze via carry-on. I translated (with my limited Spanish) the forms for the vet on duty, and they ushered us through nice and quick :) Bringing a >70 lb dog via cargo is not a breeze. It took over 6 hours to get Hasso released... Just when we thought we had all the paperwork and payments complete, the whole cargo terminal went on a nice long lunch/siesta break, which delayed the process further. We're already feeling the wrath of Chilean bureaucracy!

Our work visa paperwork is now well underway (after the lawyers visited the hotel earlier today) and the lovely hotel management gave us the green light to keep our animals with us, so we are no longer sending them to the mysterious "pet hotel". We have the day to ourselves tomorrow before the serious relocation agenda begins in full-force.

After spending hours waiting for Hasso's release from cargo, and eating lunch at 4 PM with two exhausted kids, then testing out the hotel pool (and accidentally breaking the bathing cap rule), William declared that he "had a great day spending time with Mommy and Daddy". Thank goodness for children - they put it all into perspective :)