I put Eli in the baby carrier where he was nestled and close. It was 8 pm and we trudged down the jet bridge, a little delirious from the 15-hour flight but glad Eli had amazingly slept 9 hours. Immediately we were hit with the heat as if we just walked into a sauna. It took nearly 3 hours to go through immigration, collect our luggage, and make our way out the sliding glass doors into the chaos of the megacity.
We stayed at a hotel overnight hoping we would be able to konk out however reality set in when our sweet boy woke at 3am and played with a few toys between us until 6am. We headed back to the airport and took one short flight to a city where our friends live. The next two days were filled with catching up on the past 10 months of life, playing with kids, and getting through the night with an 8 month old enduring jetlag.
Next, we packed 6 large bags, 2 carry-ons, 2 backpacks and a high chair into our vehicle and hit the road. Five hours later, we arrived at our home.
The second we walked in the door, tears welled up in my eyes. A beautiful banner hung across the kitchen that read, “welcome home.” A welcome basket sat on the counter next to a heaping pile of groceries our friends had bought us. The other counter was filled with groceries another family helped us with. I went through 17 weeks of the pregnancy in this house– wondering if we were having a boy or girl, where we would have the baby, preparing, and nesting. We had been gone for what felt like a very long time. It was truly a breath of fresh air to be back in our apartment–the place that currently feels the most like home to us.
Even though we came home to a broken fridge and Dyson vacuum, it hardly seemed to matter at all. We were just glad to be back and happy to have avoided maggots, meal moths, and monkeys (or civet cats by the water tank). We only found a minuscule amount of mold in our motorcycle helmets so definitely counting that as a win compared to all the nasty things we returned to last time.