[:en]Welcome everyone to the Homestay 2018 trip blog! I will try to update this as well has Pat has done in the past, but alas, I do not have her gift for writing, so she will definitely be missed on this trip!

Pat and Nissa are staying home this year, so I was already feeling a bit homesick before we even got on the airplane. It will be hard to leave them for six weeks. Nissa is right in the middle of her “terrible two” phase, and I am the only one who can get her to sleep, so I know Pat will be missing my “dad powers”!

I arrived at the airport extra early because I was worried about traffic. I got something to eat and then tried to figure out how to use the bathroom while still keeping an eye on all my bags. Around nine o’clock, the kids started showing up at the airport. Nana was the last to arrive (tsk, tsk!) but we got them all checked in and said our good-byes without too many tears. The kids seemed excited and the parents seemed nervous, but that’s to be expected.

This year, we are trying out something new. We gave all the kids passport bags, so they could hold their passports. In previous years, I would always collect all the passports after each check point, but that can be a hassle with large groups. So we thought we’d try something different this time. However, not five minutes after I’d given them a lecture about their passport bags and how they were to be extra careful with them, JT left his passport in a basket at the first security checkpoint!!  Argh!

Luckily, I found the passport before we left the area, I put it back around JT’s neck and gave them all a stern lecture on not forgetting it. After that, the kids were extra careful with their passport bags and we didn’t have another incident. I told the older students to keep an eye on their younger friends and help them through the security checkpoints, and they did. So it all worked out.

The flight to Dubai was uneventful. We all sat together in the same row. I changed their seating around a little bit so the boys and girls could sit together (and so I could get an aisle seat, haaha!). Normally we fly on Korean Air, but this year, Emirates had a good promotion, so we gave them a try.

It was a nice flight. The food was decent and the service was excellent. I would say it compares well with Korean Air, not better or worse, just equally good.

I don’t sleep very well on airplanes, so I mostly just watched movies. I finally saw “The Shape of Water” and I recommend it. It was a very good movie!

When we arrived in Dubai, the first thing we had to do was find our gate. The airline did not give us a gate when we left, so we searched the boards and found out we were at gate B18. When we arrived at the gate, I thought the kids would want to do some exploring, but nope! They discovered that the airport had free wifi, so they were content to sit at the gate and play on their phones!

Well, I wanted to do some exploring, so I walked around for a bit. I couldn’t find any good restaurants in our area, only duty-free shops and coffee shops.

When I came back, I checked the boards and saw that our gate had been moved to B5 on the other side of the terminal! And it was marked as boarding an hour early! I was surprised that there was no announcement of the change. Good thing I checked the board! So I gathered the kids up and we hurried across the airport. We got to B5 and found out that they had only just opened the gate, and we could go down to the seating area.

We waited for a bit and then they started allowing people to board the buses to go to the airplane. It was really confusing because they had us criss-cross with people waiting to get into the gate seating area and so they were trying to keep the lines separate so they could check boarding passes but it was just a mess.

Then when we arrived at the airplane, they made us wait on the bus for a very long time. Then they had one bus load from the front of the plane and another bus load from the back of the plane, but unfortunately many people on the first bus had tickets for the back of the plane and many people on the second bus had tickets for the front of the plane, so it was just a confusing mess. People were log-jammed in the aisles trying to get passed each other.

We all had tickets for row 32 in the back of the plane and we were on the second bus, so it wasn’t a big problem for the kids, but for some reason JT had a ticket in row 18, so I switched with him. I didn’t want him sitting by himself at the front of the plane. After a very long time, everyone finally found their seats and we all settled down. Then the pilot came on and told us that our departure would be delayed one hour due to fog!!

Argh!

Finally we got into the air and started heading north. Unlike Korean Air, which flies East-West over Alaska to get to Chicago, Emirates flies directly north. We actually flew over the North Pole! How cool is that!?  Although, when we were flying over the pole, I did see cracks in the sea ice. Not sure if that is normal for this time of year or if it has something to do with global warming. Oh oh!

I had a middle seat during the flight, which is absolute torture for someone my size and height. Fourteen long hours crammed between two people is rough. I did get up to stretch twice, but for the most part I watched movies and tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep. I watched Coco again, and the part where the dad sings to his daughter about having to travel far away always makes me cry. I wonder what the people sitting next to me thought about that! Grown man crying about a cartoon! Haha! But I don’t care, I miss my baby!

We arrived in America a bit late, but without any problems.

This year, they seem to be doing something new with the immigration system. They had all the US citizens AND B-Visa tourists go through the same line. We put our passports and visas into an electronic reader and then got a little receipt. If we got a red “X” on our receipt we had to wait in the loooooooooooong line, but if we didn’t have a red “X” we could go in the short line. We checked our receipts, no red “X’s”!! Yay!! So we went to the short line and got out pretty quickly.

Next was baggage claim. For some reason, the airport staff had taken some of the bags off the conveyor already and they were in big piles on either side of the conveyor, which made it very difficult to find the bags and get to the conveyor. I don’t know why they did that, but it caused a big mess. Everyone was trying to get through the piles of bags with their carts and trying to find their bags in the piles around the conveyor. What a mess!

We found most of our bags easily, however, but we seemed to be missing one bag. My bag! So I sent all the kids out looking for it while I watched our carts. It was a purple bag with red-green ribbons on it, so it should not have been hard to find. But the kids couldn’t find it. So I had JT and Phop watch the bags and I went to look for the bag with the other students. After two trips around the conveyor and a careful search through the piles of bags around the conveyor, we still could not find my purple bag! Now I was getting worried. Was anything important in that bag? I tried to remember what I had packed in it. Mostly just clothes, so I should be OK, but still it was going to be a big pain in the butt.

Then I did a bag count just to be sure we hadn’t lost any other bags. Hmm… 23 bags. That’s the same number we left with. So where was my purple bag?

Oh wait, I didn’t bring the purple bag! I had switched to the black bag!  Argh! I’m losing my mind! Hahah!

So after a customs check we were outside of the immigration area and officially in America! Yay!

I had the kids wait at McDonald’s while I sorted out the shuttle and the house. I needed to get the security code for the door at the house from my email so we wouldn’t be standing outside in the cold in the middle of the night when we arrived at the house. I also needed to make sure the shuttle service was still waiting for us since we had arrived over an hour late.

I had told the kids before we got off the plane that I did not want to see phones out at all when we were in the airport. Our first and only priority was getting through the immigration checkpoint quickly and I didn’t want to compete for their attention with their phones. Plus, the Chicago airport (unlike Dubai) doesn’t give unlimited free internet (booo!). They only give us 30 minutes, so I wanted to save our free internet in case we had any emergencies. I didn’t want them to use up all their free internet on browsing and chatting.

So I was disappointed when I came back from the McDonald’s counter with chicken nuggets to see the boys playing on their phones. I gave them a scolding and told them if I saw the phones out again, I would be taking them. Right now, I needed them to watch the bags while I took care of other things, and I had given them a good reason to save their internet, so they shouldn’t need to be told something a second time.

The shuttle came and picked us up quickly and we were on our way to Wisconsin. The ride up was pretty boring and the kids slept for most of it. I talked the driver’s ear off because I was trying to stay awake.

When we arrived at the house, I told the kids to put their bags inside and get some warmer clothes on so we could walk up to the Pick-n-Save supermarket. Since we arrived at almost nine o’clock, I was worried the market might be already closed, but when we got up there it was still open. So we just picked up some stuff for a quick dinner. JT bought a 12-pack of cream soda because he heard me talking about how yummy it was, and he let me have a can. Sssshhh! Don’t tell Pat I was drinking soda!

Once we got home, we sorted out some dinner and then I sent the kids off to bed. With only one shower in the house I told them they would have to manage their bathroom times and be mindful to not use up all the hot water (there is another bathroom downstairs for brushing teeth and toilet, but it doesn’t have a shower).

I fell asleep on the sofa waiting for my turn (a thing I do every year, it’s practically a tradition by now). But I was woken up by the kids banging around upstairs. I checked my phone and it was 1am!! Argh. So I went upstairs and Ohm heard me so he rushed to pretend like he was on his way to brush his teeth. I stopped him and gave the boys a very stern scolding. We’d finished dinner over two hours ago, and so there was no reason for them to still be awake (the girls were in their room, banging around too, but when they heard me scolding the boys, they quickly quieted down and went to sleep).

I reminded the boys that trust is built in the little things. If they wanted me to trust them and give them some freedom during this trip, then they would need to show they could handle themselves about the little things, like getting ready for bed and taking care of their friends. I shouldn’t have to remind them to brush their teeth or get in bed and get to sleep. They should listen to my instructions the first time and sort themselves out accordingly.

After that, the boys went to sleep and I unpacked. I didn’t get back to sleep again until 3am.

When I woke up, it was already 2:30pm in the afternoon! WOW! I must have been very tired!  I came downstairs and all the kids jokingly said, “Good morning, teacher!” Haha, very funny guys. Turns out they had gone to the market in the morning to get themselves some eggs and they made kai-jeow for breakfast. Then they went to the park to play for a bit. Then they came back, went to the market again to get mac-and-cheese for lunch, and then went out again to go to Walgreens. All before I woke up!  Hahah! What a busy day!

Seems like Nana cooked them breakfast and lunch, so I thanked her for being a good leader and helping out. The kitchen was clean and neat. All the dishes were washed and everyone was well-fed and happy. Good kids!

So now I am setting up their blogs and getting their schedule ready for this week. They went out again to go to Walgreens and they also wanted to stop by Pick-n-Save again to pick up ingredients for Pad-gab-gao (or something, I have no idea). So apparently they have already decided what they want to eat for dinner too! I told them I was just going to head by to Thailand and leave them here on their own, since they didn’t seem to need me! Hahah!

That’s all for today. See you again soon![:]