Moving day

Today when I got up, my mother-in-law, Mona, said to me “Well it’s the day before the day!”  After a pause for dramatic effect, I answered: “No, today is the day.  Tomorrow all we have to do is get on the airplane – today we have to pack!”  I guess it just depends on your perspective.  We have been on this journey since October 2008 when we decided to commit to going to Mali.  After all this time it is still surreal that we are finally going to get on that plane.  Tomorrow we fly first to Paris via Amsterdam.  We will spend the night in a hotel in Paris and hopefully get a trip in to town to see the Eiffel Tower one last time before our flight leaves tuesday at 4:30 pm for Mali.  We will arrive in Bamako at 8:10 pm local time, which is 10:10 pm Norway time and and 4:10 Virginia time.  I think.

For now our suitcases are packed and we are ready to head to the airport tomorrow.  Next post will be from Africa!!

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What would you take to Africa?

Loading the van that picked up our stuff

If you had to pack a few things (ok a whole lot of things, but whatever) to take with you to Africa, what would you take?  That is a question that we have been asking ourselves quite often the past couple of months.  Trying to figure out what you have to take, what you should take and what you want to take is not that easy when you don’t really know what you can and can’t get at the local WalMart or Ikea =).  Some things are obvious, like towels, sheets, kitchen items and so on.  But what do you take for fun?  Here are some things that we brought along for ourselves:

Andreas: A big blue plastic helicopter from the movie Cars that PawPaw got him in Paris, 15 tennis balls and all his movies

Petter: A soccer ball, lots of toy cars and a tricycle

Matthew: 100 pounds of books (at least), 2 sand wedges (54 and 58 degrees) and lots of tools (just in case =)

Maria: Scrapbooking materials, a sewing machine and a piano (yes, an electric one, but still….)

So, we should be able to keep ourselves entertained for a few years – as long as all our stuff gets there!

Counting down the days

Hello everyone, it’s been a while since we updated our blog, so we thought we would let everybody in on what’s going on with us these days. This week we packed our baggage for Mali. Those of you who were around when we moved out of our apartment know that it is no small thing for us to go through our belongings. After a few days of searching, buying, packing, taping and locking, we have finished packing. We ended up with a grand total of 7 giant blue barrels, 25 banana boxes, 5 ikea chairs and various other little things wrapped in plastic. Our total weight is a whopping 2000 pounds. That’s right, a ton.

This has gotten me to thinking about how we tend to exaggerate things when we describe a situation. This has become somewhat difficult for me to do for example, when someone asks where we are going and I say Oh, just south-west of Timbuktu It’s true. When someone asks how much baggage we sent I say A ton It’s true. Hmmm, I guess I am going to have to rethink the way I describe things in the future so when people ask how much luggage we take with us next summer I might say, only 400 pounds just 8 suitcases.

We have also started taking our Malaria medicine with no big surprises. This is a great relief and we hope that this will continue to be a problem-free area over the next several years =)

Our departure date is August 30th, so we have just over two weeks left! We will keep the blog updated as often as possible now. We don’t know what the situation will be once we come to Mali, but I am sure we will get something posted!

Some of our stuff

Great-Grandma watched Mia while we packed

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