Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, a little family of three went on a great adventure...After a rough couple days of travel, they made it to the other hemisphere in a land far, far away. Little Harrison, the youngest of the 3 did quite well on the airplanes and adjusted to the time very quickly. After 2 weeks, they moved into their palace (aka 4th floor apartment) and have spent the last week settling in. It has been a long, arduous journey filled with lots of highs and lows, but strangely, this place, after not having lived here for 6 years, feels normal. Many other things are not normal, but this far-away land is not one of them.

The city has changed so much so that the little family has to re-find their way everywhere. All the old spots are gone and the way of life here is so different now.

Okay, that may be enough of my fairy-tale writing (for today), but as stated earlier, we are HERE and hopefully I can be a little more consistent in documenting our lives here. We are closing in on a month in-country, which is crazy. It feels very normal to be here, but so much has changed. It's very weird! We are all adjusted to the time difference and still have a little more settling in to do. We have been to Ikea about 800 times (and yes, how crazy is it that there's an Ikea here?) I will take pictures of our place when it's put together a little more and post them. I think we will be really happy here, but it will definitely take some time. Until you hear from me again, here are some things you can pray for for our family::

...My computer is totally broken. Needs a new hard drive. We took it to the store before we left the states and it was completely fine. However, we had to put some software on it to secure our computer and ever since, it has been shutting down. Computers are such a life line here, so please pray that mine gets fixed. (this is why I have no pictures to share!)

...Harrison's stomach. He has gotten into a pattern of only going to the bathroom once a week and this last run has lasted 10 days. At first, we thought it was the jet lag, so we didn't worry, but being close to a month now is concerning. We are taking him to the doctor tomorrow.

...Friends. Enough said. I can live anywhere if I have good relationships, but so far we definitely feel lonely and homesick (except for Harrison, he is by far the most popular Dooley here).

But, overall, we are so very grateful to be here. We know the time will be short, and although we miss the comforts of the place we have called home for several years now, we know that we will cry many tears over leaving East Asia in a couple years. I look forward to sharing with y'all how our family falls in love with this place again!

I will be back with more posts soon!