Togo is located east of Ghana and west of Benin in western Africa

Togo is located east of Ghana and west of Benin in western Africa
clipart provided by: www.worldatlas.com

Friday, January 9, 2015

Our First Week in Albertville

Thursday, January 1, 2015
Sam & Liza woke up around midnight and were up for an hour or so before going back to bed.  I woke up at noon (5 a.m. Central) and slowly woke everyone else up for lunch.  Sam was disappointed he didn’t get to eat breakfast.  We spent the afternoon unpacking.  We didn’t take any naps, hoping the kids would be tired and sleep through the night.  Our great upstairs neighbors (who have helped us out so much) took us on a tour to see downtown Albertville. Being New Year’s Day, most of the businesses were closed.

Friday, January 2, 2015
Sam & Liza both woke up at some point in the wee hours of the morning (at what would have been the end of their nap times in Milwaukee).  They were wide awake and ready to go.  After a couple of hours Micah got them back to bed.  I woke up at 9:15 a.m. and woke up everyone else, thinking we’ve got to get on schedule before Monday comes.  We met up with our amazing neighbor, who took us to Carrefour, a 15 minute walk from our school, to get some food and other basic necessities.  We had “fun” carrying everything back in and on the stroller or on our shoulders avoiding piles of snow while navigating upon not completely shoveled sidewalks.  In the afternoon Micah went to register Sam for school.  Sam has to go to pre-4k while we are here.  This was probably my biggest concern coming here, because Sam has never dealt well with going anywhere without Micah or me.  Thankfully this past year he’s done well as long as Liza is with him, but that wouldn’t be the case for this school.  He would be going all alone.  I was afraid we would have a few really rough days.  More on this when I get to Monday!  We put Sam & Liza down for naps hoping that maybe their bodies would figure out nap time vs bed time.

Liza's morning hair in France

Saturday, January 3, 2015
Sam & Liza woke up in the middle of the night yet again, but thankfully it’s been a little earlier and a little shorter each night.  They were only up for about an hour before going back to bed.  I woke up at 9:30 a.m., but left Micah to wake Sam & Liza.  David and I went to the market downtown and bought a variety of vegetables, sausages, and cheese.  FYI: French Munster cheese is not to be confused with the American Muenster.  Thankfully Micah likes it anyway, so it wasn’t a complete loss.  I bought some kind of sausage that was very tasty, and what looked like bratwurst and some sauerkraut.  I am extremely pleased to share, I was right.  The sauerkraut will be a weekly buy, if I can help it.  It was hot and fresh and had bits of pork and sausage in it.  Extremely good fresh, not so much warmed up again, however.  We decided to just nap Liza, so that Sam would start to adjust to not taking naps.  We also decided to try putting Sam and Liza in different rooms for now; even though they were going to bed alright, we didn’t know if they were waking each other up in the middle of the night.  Since David has been refusing to sleep alone in his room, we figured we might as well move Liza in there.

This is what happens to candles when they are placed on a radiator over night.  Oops!

Sunday, January 4, 2015
Sam still woke up for a little while in the night, but thankfully Micah was able to at least keep Liza in bed when she woke up.  Since there aren’t any LCMS churches within 4 hours of Albertville, we had a service in our apartment.  Followed by Sunday School.

Ready for Matins


Monday, January 5, 2015
Somehow everyone slept through the night, except Micah who kept thinking the kids were going to wake up (that and the Detroit Lions were playing).  Micah had his level tests in the morning and then took Sam to see his school.  They came home for lunch.  Then Sam was off to his 1st (half) day of school...  Micah took him and returned about 15 minutes later without Sam and apparently without any problems.  The teacher took his hand, said “ready, set, go” and Sam went without looking back.  Wow, prayers answered.  When we talked about school back in the States, Sam didn’t want to go, so we decided not to talk about it much.  But ever since we’ve been talking about it in France he’s been okay with the idea and looking forward to going, even knowing that Liza could not go with him (His comfort is saying Liza is going to 2 yr. old school, which is really just the school’s nursery).  Thank you Lord for preparing Sam for school.  Of course we pray that he continues to enjoy going to school here, especially with everything being in French.  

Sam's "serious" look, in front of his school.


After picking up Sam from school we ventured to the big store, comparable to a Super Wal-Mart, on the edge of town to buy a few things needed for school and around the apartment.  To get there we had to catch the bus; being new to town and not knowing much French, this was a big thing to prep for.  Getting to know the schedule, map, prices, etc.  The bus ride was fine and we started out alright in the store, but then both Sam and Liza had melt downs and we wondered, “do the French take their kids to the store?”

Riding the bus back from the store


Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Everyone slept through the night again.  We are starting to get into routine!  Micah took Sam to school.  I took Liza to the nursery.  Micah & I went to orientation.  Micah picked up Sam from school for lunch.  I picked up Liza from the nursery.  We all had lunch.  We all went back to school/orientation.  I did laundry for the first time in France.  Really not all that different than in the United States.  Although, we have drying racks in our apartments to dry our clothes on vs using the dryer.  It was interesting finding the best way to get as many clothes as possible hung up.  Don’t worry, I mastered it and got 2 baskets full of laundry to fit.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Wednesday will be a day off for all of us except Sam, who will just go to school in the morning.  Micah dropped Sam off at school and the rest of us went to Lidl (Aldi) to get some groceries.  We got back just in time for our appointment with the bank to set up a checking account here in France.  Sam has been getting worn out from going to school and not taking naps that we decided to give him a nap, along with everyone else.  It was a little harder getting to bed at night, but I think the naps helped in the long run.

Thursday, January 8, 2015
Our first day of classes were today.  It was a long, tiring day of focusing hard on the phonetics of vowel sounds.  Especially hard for me since I have TMJD (jaw problems) and the French really work their jaws when they speak.  For those of you wondering about David.  I’ve decided to take David to class with me for now, until he gets to be a distraction.  Today he pretty much just ate and slept through class.  Hopefully this will continue.


We are still working on getting cell phones.
Email & Facebook are the best ways to contact us.
(we still use our personal emails too)

Our mailing address is (mail is always welcome!):
Wildauer Family
50 Chemin de Galibouds
73200
Albertville
France

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Mission Possible


At times it seemed this small part of our mission would be impossible.  Getting everything together before leaving the states.  Selling our house.  Flying half way around the world sure seemed impossible a few days ago.

We had so many late nights getting everything together in time to leave for France, but we did it.  Tuesday morning we were pretty much packed and ready to go with minimal loose ends that could be taken care of later.  We headed to the title office and signed all the papers to sell our house.  The excitement was very short-lived, since we had to rush home to finish packing up the bags and throw them in the 2 vans that were headed for Chicago.  We met up with Micah's family at a Culver's near the airport for one last treat and then made our way to O'Hare where we had great help unloading all of our bags, taking back our rental and checking our 8 ginormous bags.  We all walked to security together and said our last goodbyes before leaving the states.  

Right before saying the last of all of our goodbyes.

Now Micah and I were on our own to get our 3 little ones and all our stuff to France. Stuff: 5 carry-on bags, 5 personal bags (think plane activities for the kids' bags), 2 car seats, and an umbrella which wouldn't fit in any other bag. We decided, since we could, we would take both a regular stroller and a sit and stand stroller to get all our kids and stuff to the airplane.  It was smooth sailing through security and all the way to our gate.  The first flight was the longest, yet overnight.  I figured we would sleep most of the way over the ocean to Dublin, Ireland.  Apparently, our airline didn't think we should.  They decided to serve dinner a few hours into the flight.  Thankfully the kids kept sleeping, but not for long. For some reason, two of them woke up; Sam went back to sleep with some persuasion, but Liza did not.   We didn't get much sleep before they served breakfast 2 hours before getting off the plane.  We arrived in Ireland at 8 a.m. (2 a.m. Central Time).   It was a little crazy getting our travel-weary kids, car seats & all of our bags off the plane.  I was so glad we had our strollers handy on which to load everything.  Haha!  Not the case.  We quickly found out that we would have to do some walking without the help of wheels.  We had to walk all the way to the terminal, a very long walk with sleepy kids and lots of stuff. Remember how I said "3 little ones?" Not so little when tired and needing to be carried.

Thoughts of a 2 year old on an airplane, "Must stay awake!"

We found our strollers and walked all around the terminal to end up practically where we started to wait for our next flight.  We had a few hours to wait, but they passed quickly.  The kids were some how really excited to get on the next flight so we really didn't have any problems getting them on. From Micah's e-mail to family: "One of the highlights for me came in Dublin where we were having a handful with sleep-deprived older kids who also needed to release energy but we were about to board. The attendant had just come over to gate check a buggy and simply said to us it was time to pre-board the families. To which, Sam starts dancing a four-year-old's circle dance and cheering at a surprisingly acceptable decibel, 'Yeah! It's time to board. Time to go to France!' Hands in the air, Liza joins the circle dance and chant for a minute. Got a few chuckles from others around."

Our second flight was only 2 hours long, but we were so tired by this point that we all slept the whole flight.  It was so nice to get some sleep. That is, until it was time to depart the plane and our kids didn't want to wake up and walk on their own.  With a little help from the stewardesses, we carried all 3 kids off the plane along with all of our stuff.  Once we were off the plane at the gate (where one would normally pick up their stroller) we were left to carry everything by ourselves without any wheels.  Apparently, even though we checked our strollers at the gate we had to go all the way to baggage claim - which was after customs - to pick them up.  Really?!  We finally convinced sleepy Sam to walk on his own albeit lightly crying along the way. I carried a couple personal bags and the two car seats (1 with a baby in it), and Micah was loaded with the rest of our bags and Liza.  Since the camera was buried, I'll leave to your imagination the picture of Micah loaded down by all the bags and a 2 year old!  Getting through security was fun; we had no problems getting our passports stamped (except for me scratching my knuckles up trying to get the passports out of the first bag Micah loaded on his shoulders).  Thinking we were almost there, right after the stamps was a one-way security gate that Micah couldn't possibly fit through with all the bags and once I went through I couldn't go back to help him.  Micah had to throw most of the bags through to me as to not set off the alarm, which we actually set off a couple times anyway (you would think someone would have helped us, but I can only imagine they were too busy chuckling at the sight).  

You can imagine Micah looked a little like this!

We finally got to our strollers and 8 ginormous bags (thankfully they were all there).  I went to get a couple of carts to put our bags on, but realized they only take coins and all we had were paper Euros.  After being the last to disembark the plane and getting through to the baggage claim area, there was no one around to ask for coins from, absolutely no one! European fliers are rather quick and efficient. Micah started carrying our 50lb bags 2 by 2 to the first exit door.  We then had to find a way to get through, not one, but two one-way doors and a security gate. Thankfully this one was a little wider than the last one. By this time a few airport employees came through and explained that we just needed a plastic chip to get a cart.  Apparently the carts don't cost a thing, you just have to have a little plastic chip and know how to read French.  Who knew?!  And where exactly were we supposed to obtain these chips?!  So, we loaded up 3 carts and gradually got through our last 3 obstacles before seeing "Wildauer" held up on a sign by our taxi-bus driver.  Whew, we had made it to France and would eventually make it to Albertville without any problems.  Mission impossible was somehow possible.

Mission Possible!