Arrival

Our trip went very well. It's exhausting traveling that far, though. And I've never been good at sleeping on planes. And all three times we've come here, there has been a TV screen in front of each passenger with so many movies & game choices, usually with almost-brand-new movies. Being so out-of-touch in my normal life, I can't pass up the opportunity to watch movies I can't get to the theatre to see!

This time I watched 500 Days of Summer, My Sister's Keeper and another movie I can't remember. Then I watched three movies with the baby: Cars, Up, and yet another one but I can't remember that either - all I remember is that he interrupted it because he wanted to watch Cars again. I think he finally understood what all his classmates had been talking about, and he wanted to use his time wisely to bone up on his Cars knowledge.

We had no problems with immigration. Our previous flights had always arrived in Pakistan at 4 in the morning, and the immigration lines had taken a loooong time. But this flight got in a 2am, and there were almost no lines at all. M and I were split up into Pakistani passport & foreign passport lines, and M was done within minutes. The baby and I took maybe 15 minutes, but mostly because the line we were in was moving so slowly - the line next to us was moving much faster. When we got out, we got a porter to round up our luggage for us. It was easy for him because we'd used spraypaint to mark a large "M" on each bag. We've been using that trick for a few years now and I've seen other people's bags with large, spray painted letters on them twice recently - both times on the flight path we go through a lot, so I think it's people who've seen our bags and copied our idea, but perhaps I'm giving us too much credit.

When we got here, M's family was waiting at the airport for us. There's this one Uncle who ALWAYS comes, but he and his wife have gone to America for the beginning of his green-card process, so it was just the immediate family plus one other guy. M wanted to make sure there were enough cars there to take all of our luggage. It's common to strap luggage to the top of cars here, but M thinks that attracts the attention of theives, so he has always made sure we travel from the airport to home without any exposed luggage.

After getting home, we went straight to bed since we'd arrived at 2am. M said he didn't sleep at all, but I think I slept about 3-4 hours. One of M's brothers and his sister had come to Pakistan the week prior, but his last brother arrived the same day we did at about 6am, so we got up when he arrived at the house. Then we began opening all our bags and distributing all the stuff we'd brought and ate breakfast.

Then it was time to head out and start making the rounds. We always make sure to visit M's grandmother's house on our first day in Pakistan. She's 95! We tried to pack in a lot of visits to people's houses, because people in M's family seem to get offended if you don't actually come to their houses. No matter how many times you see each other at parties and weddings - you have to actually step foot into their house. We actually fit in SIX different houses that first day. Sounds good until you find out that M has 86 cousins - on his mother's side! There are a loootttt more houses to go!