Countdown to Caracas...take 4

It's for real this time. The visas were finally issued on Friday, March 14th and we leave April 25th for my parents' home in Williamsburg, stay the weekend, fly out of Richmond to Miami on the 26th, stay the night in Miami (explanation to follow) and fly to Caracas on the 27th.

On Thursday, Kris and I were convinced we would not be going to Caracas and started making plans for openings in other areas. The deadline his office set for the BRV (Venezuela) to issue us visas was Friday the 14th at 1pm and we just didn't see them giving them to us. We had been waiting 5 months from the time we applied. Keep in mind, the US issues visas to diplomats in a matter of days usually in less than 2 days. The BRV for the most part does the same; the other agent in Caracas who will be working with Kris got his visa in 2 days and he is there now. So as 1pm approached, I was mentally prepared to start the process over with another post once Kris gave his higher-ups his country choices. I'm still trying to get my excitement back up to the level it was in December but I am looking forward to it all.

OK...So why stop in Miami? The excitement begins upon arrival...turns out it is better to land in Caracas during the day for safety reasons. You can no longer use the main road from Caracas to the airport (damaged from neglect among other things I guess) so now you have to use secondary roads. There is a section of road between two tunnels that has seen its share of nightime ambushes on unsuspecting vehicles...so we stay the night in Miami in order to take the early flight into Caracas and not the one that gets us in at night.

When we were initially getting ready to leave after Christmas we had done all of the hard work; garage sale, home repairs, stocking up (that is going to need an entire blog to itself to cronicle) and initial separating into the 3 shipments (long term storage, air and sea). We have the movers coming on or about April 23rd and at this point I'd just rather have them pack everything into one big shipment and I'll deal with it later.

Weston and Braedon are extreemly excited, mostly because they will have their own rooms in the apartment. I am really looking forward to this too. I am already tired of the nightly threats to "stop talking and go to sleep OR ELSE there will be no TV this weekend!" (they only get to watch TV on the weekends because I am a horrible, mean mother). I am also looking forward to each having their own space. Weston tends to be neater and organized where Braedon is more 'let things fall where they may'. It really agravates Weston to have Braedon's stuff encroach on his side of the room so only a few more weeks and I won't have to hear about it.

At this point I am also paranoid as to whether we will actually make it down there. "Is this really going to happen?" After being in limbo for those months I've turned into a cynic...what else is going to happen? Can the Venezuelan govt. take our visas away if Bush makes them mad? Trying to fight those thoughts and just move forward keeping track of the whole experience in detail in my journal so I can laugh about it later.

I got onto Google Earth to see where our apartment is. The area we will be living in looks fantastic. We are close to the embassy and the boys' school. We are close to shopping and the view from our apartment looks over Caracas (we are up on a hill).