back in the US

Thankfully, the trip home was pretty uneventful. We left Kudjip on Friday morning for our flight from Mt Hagan to Port Moresby, where we stayed at MAPANG, a missionary guest house. It was nice and relaxing, but much hotter than in the highlands! Saturday we flew to Tokyo and spent the night in a Holiday in by the airport. Once again, a nice relaxing night. On Sunday, we made the marathon plane flight to Chicago. We left around 4:30 in the afternoon, but crossed the international date line on the way, so we arrived at 1:30pm on Sunday. The weirdest thing about the flight was watching the sunrise at 11:30pm. Caleb did well, and managed to avoid any "accidents" the whole way! We were awful proud of him. The last few hours on the way to Chicago were a bit hard on us all, but we made it.

I've tried a couple times to write a nice summary blog about our experiences in PNG and how it has affected us, but it just isn't coming out right. I think that's going to have to be a process. It will have to suffice for now to just say that it was the time of our lives, and we really won't ever be the same. When Caleb was looking at pictures while we traveled, he just kept saying "I wanna go back to Papua New Guinea!" It was tough for all of us to leave, but hopefully we'll have a chance to go back some day.

Since being home in the States, I have been struck by a few things.
1)It is indeed possible to be in amongst a group of people and not be overcome by the BO
2)Public bathrooms are amazingly clean
3)Most folks really do wear shoes
4)Fast food really isn't as good as you remember it
5)Jetlag is a bugger, especially with a 2 year old

As a reward for Caleb doing his business in the big boy potty, we have been promising him a new Thomas the Tank Engine train of his choosing when we got back to the States. He always insisted he wanted a Diesel 10. Now, this is not exactly a main character, so we kind of doubted that we'd be able to find it. Chalk one up for Wal-Mart! The three of us made a trip at 4am on Monday (mid afternoon for us) and there he was. Caleb was pumped, and has been playing with him almost non-stop since.

The reason it was "almost" non-stop: Caleb drew blood from another child for the first time last night. He was playing with his cousin Katy (6 year old) in the living room unsupervised. We hear Katy crying from the other room, and when we get in, she's got a nice little 1cm cut over her right lateral cheekbone and is bleeding from it pretty well. Caleb is standing there with a large train flashlight in his hand saying "Katy has ketchup on her." He was just as suprised as everyone else, I think. That was the end of playing with trains for the evening. Thankfully, Katy's cut was nothing I couldn't fix with a little superglue!

Katy and Caleb don't exactly play well together, and usually both of them end up pretty ticked off. Katy wants Caleb to be her doll, and Caleb wants Katy to stay away from any toy he lays eyes on. Not a great combination. Who knows what led up to The Incident, but it looks like they'll be restricted to only supervised visitation for awhile.