Chris graduated with his PhD in December, I quit my job in January. We listed our house in Riverside and it sold in a day with a very short escrow. In the period of 2 weeks we sold our house, car, most of our possessions, and closed the Southern California chapter of our lives. It was a whirlwind, and really hard, especially with a 5 month-old baby who refuses to not be held at all times, and doesn't like sleeping at night. Not to mention we had to say good-bye to friends and a town that we grew to love.
To give you an idea of all of the stuff we got rid of, check out Chris' ad for our garage sale. This was the third(!) garage sale we had. Thanks, Riverside friends, for coming out and helping get rid of our stuff... hope you're enjoying it!
We had a little over a week in between when our house sold and when our French visas arrived, so we went to Chicago to spend some time with family and friends. Leaving 80* California and arriving in 1* Chicago winter was definitely a shock to the system, but a good preparation for life in France. Lilah got to experience snow for the first time, and Wilson got to meet his cousins Bailey and Egon.
Here's Little L on her first walk in the snow. Thanks Grandma Nancy and Grandpa Andy for your hospitality!
On February 10th we left Chicago for the trek to Paris. We decided that we would bring Wilson with us - he's part of the family, we didn't want to leave him for 2 years, and we were nervous that if we did leave him that he and Lilah wouldn't get along when we got back. But we were also really nervous to fly him as cargo for such a long, and non-direct flight. So I got a note from my doctor saying that I need Wilson for 'emotional support' which gives him the same rights as other service dogs. We also bought him a service dog vest online so he looked the part. Though we hoped this would do the trick, we were still obviously nervous, especially since the whole 'service dog' thing isn't as recognized outside of the US.
Luckily, it DID work - Wilson is safely here with us. But, it was terrifying at times! The first scare was when we were checking in for our flight to Turkey - the manager came out and looked at the doctors note - and told us the note didn't have enough information on it. I think all of the blood must have drained from our faces, I could feel the tears starting; but there was a nice ticketing agent who took pity on us, talked to the manager, and got him to allow Wilson on the plane. She also set us up with an entire row so we had tons of space for Lilah and Wilson. In addition, she said she would send a note through to Istanbul so they knew to expect us on our connecting flight. Phew! We thought we were in the clear. The flight was 10 hours and went well - Lilah slept on my lap and Wilson slept at our feet. We arrived in Istanbul and the TSA-equivalent there checked Wilson's international health certificate (the EU does not quarantine dogs from the US, but you do need to have a vet and USDA-certified health certificate with vaccination records, etc). They stared at us like we were crazy but let us through. Again - phew! We walked Wilson through the Istanbul airport and people either came up to us wanting to pet Wilson or scurrying as far away from us as possible trying to avoid him.
When our flight to Paris boarded we were the first people allowed to board since we were the only ones traveling with a baby. However, when the gate attendants saw Wilson they were not amused and told us to wait while they figured out what to do with him. We sat on the side of the gate as we watched the entire plane board and the gate attendants converse on their phones, and walkey-talkies about what to do with us. We still don't really know what happened because it was all in Turkish, but we do know that they closed the boarding doors and we really did not think we were going to be allowed on the plane. About 2 minutes before the flight was scheduled to take off they told us to board the plane. Everyone stared at us as we boarded - and to their credit we looked ridiculous with a baby, a dog, 2 carry-on suitcases, a diaper bag, and a backpack. But we were safely on the flight!
We landed in France, prepared with our health certificate, and our rented microchip scanner (Wilson has a US-only recognized microchip and we read online that dogs will be scanned going though customs to make sure their microchip matches their rabies vaccination information, so we had to rent a scanner from the US and mail it back once we got here). We walked through French customs and they barely even looked at us as they told us to continue through the airport. It was so nonchalant that we thought that must have been the initial check and we would go through actual customs before we left the airport or something. But then we just walked out of the airport and were safely and successfully in France with our pup! Of course, one of our bags was lost along the way, but we got it back the next day. :)
Here's a pic of Wilson all decked out in his attire.
Now we are moved in to our new home in Orsay, a quaint suburb just southwest of Paris. More to come later....
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