We have arrived in Sudan

I have been way behind in blogging, so let me catch up from where I left off.

So we were in Washington, D.C. ...yada...yada...yada.. we arrived in Khartoum.

I may have glossed over a couple of details.  So lets pick up our story at the airport.

We departed Dulles at about 11 AM on a Wednesday, and flew direct to Addis Ababa,  The flight was about 13 hours, and we had exit row seats, so it was way better leg room than usual.  When we took our seats, we noticed that the guy sitting next to us had a Diplomatic Passport like ours.  It turns out he was a Political Officer heading to Juba, South Sudan.  Small world.

In Addis, after a short lay over, we headed to Khartoum.  A short 2 hour flight, and we arrived at about 11 AM local time on Thursday.  When we travel, the embassy hires a local "fixer."  His job was to get us through immigration and customs.  We even got to use a special line for diplomats.  Very Cool.

Then came the luggage.  We have always prided ourselves on traveling light.  But traveling for vacation and traveling for relocation are two very different things.  We had 7 bags, plus carry on.  And this is the stuff that we will live on until our shipments arrive from the US.

Once we were past security, we were met by our sponsors, and one of my coworkers.  Once you are assigned to a post, the embassy assigns a sponsor.  This person is supposed to help you get acclimated.  Our sponsors are a couple, Suzette and Chris.  They have been great.  We sent them a package with a few things we wanted in the house when we got there.  They also made sure there was a meal we could reheat in our fridge.

We were also met by Scott, who works in my department in the embassy.  I have met him back in DC, and he has been very helpful in getting me up to speed at work.

We went straight our humble home.  And by humble I mean HUGE!.  I am sure this will be the subject of another blog post in the future, so for now I will just say we have 5 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, multiple living rooms and balconies, etc.  Wow!

After unpacking and a nap, we headed to the embassy for the Thursday night happy hour.  Embassies use the same work week as their host government, so we work the Muslin Sunday to Thursday week.  Thursday night is our new Friday.

Soon we were ready for bed.  Luck for us, we arrived at the weekend, so we had two full days to recover.  By the time Sunday (our new Monday) rolled around, we were pretty much recovered from jet lag.