We’re off the ground and finally putting some flight hours behind us. I haven’t been able to estimate how many hours of flight time it will take to get to Taipei for our layover, but according to the itinerary in local times the arrival will be a day and a half from our departure. Just figuring out the flight time getting to Los Angeles is beyond us at this point. We all had too much anticipation to get any sleep. Richard gave us some timely international traveling advice to keep our sanity in check. It turns out other places in the world are different from Spanish Fork, Utah. His view, after years and years of traveling across all spans of the globe, is that “it’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s just different.” He assures us we’ll see a few things we’re not ready for and there will be circumstances we can’t really control. The idea is to roll with it and to if you get sensory overload, close your eyes and zone out for a minute. The foremost focus of caution will be on the water though. Even when you get in the shower, keep it out of your mouth and your eyes. Use bottled water for brushing your teeth and rinsing things off. Stay away from the fruits and the salads that have been rinsed in tap water, because you’ll get a cataclysmic gastrointenstinal eruption. Another thing is to keep your fingers out of your eyes and mouth. I guess that means I have to cut back on my habit of licking doorknobs too.

Richard obviously thought a lot of things through logistically, so packing all of our gear is working out really well. Airline regulations allow each international traveler two big bags (up to 70 pounds) and the carry-on items. Being a family man he has a minivan, as well as a small trailer for hauling away, well, junk like all of our huge bags. We hauled everything neatly, and heaped two black canvas mounds to the check-in counter. One unfortunate agent drew the short straw and had to sort through the puzzle of our passports and tickets leading through three connecting routes to Kathmandu. She had some news for us. The new rule for baggage was that the limit was now only 50 pounds instead of 70. For a moment we thought of the things we would have to quickly dump: my hoarded peanut butter, John Junior’s geometry textbook, our 10 pound bag of prunes. Thankfully our fiber is out of peril. The agent let us pass because the new weight limit was something they hadn’t actually told anyone about.

Right now we’re lounging in the International Terminal, eating our last Big Macs and lavishing in the last safe drinking fountains for a while. It turns out we won’t need to miss french fries since they while form a substantial daily diet staple when we get to the Khumbu. While we wait for our next flight (the loooong one of indeterminate length – It’s like saying, “Flight Duration: We’ll let you know when we’re close”) we’re listening to the announcements and guessing what languages they are in. I don’t want to ruin the fun, but I think they’re all in Engrish.