We left Dallas, TX on December 29th, 2022 and didn’t arrive in Ukarumpa (our new home) until January 3rd, 2023. Just leaving our home of the previous two years in Dallas was a challenge. We had to pack up literally everything we owned, which we had decreased severely over the last few years, and either send it home with Kelly’s parents for long-term storage, bring it on the planes with us to Papua New Guinea, or give/throw it away. We spent weeks going through everything and finally finished in time for the move. The items we ended up bringing with us were 10 large plastic totes, 2 full-size suitcases, a mandolin, and various carry-on items. It took three vehicles to get us and all our stuff to the airport, assisted by Kelly’s parents and a friend from DIU.
After we got to the airport, we dragged all the luggage inside and waited in the check-in line. One woman at the front started to weigh each individual item, including our carry-ons, which I knew were overweight. Her supervisor glanced at our tickets, saw we were eventually transferring to a different airline, and took over, simplifying the process and skipping the weighing of our carry-ons, which she also knew by this point were overweight. All twelve checked items were shipped off out of sight and we were waved through to security. The rest of our time in Dallas was a pretty normal airport experience. We said goodbye to Kelly’s parents before going through security, then headed to our gate until it was time to leave our home behind.
About 14 hours later, plus another 9 hours for the time difference, we landed in Doha, Qatar on December 30th. Our next flight took off only three hours later, headed for Singapore. This flight lasted 7½ hours, jumping ahead another 5 time zones, landing in the morning on December 31st. This time we were in the airport for about 11 hours, taking time to eat, sleep in beds (thankfully a room opened up a couple hours after we arrived), shower, and stretch our legs walking around the airport. After this we were ready for the last leg of our commercial flights. We left Singapore on New Year’s Eve, hit the New Year somewhere over Indonesia, and landed in Port Moresby about 6 ½ hours later (and 2 more time zones), very early in the morning on New Year’s Day, 2023.
All three of the flights were overnight flights, which led to the kids sleeping quite a bit of them. That made the very long flights go smoother than we anticipated, which was a big blessing. The airports in the middle were a bit of a struggle with the kids. They were tired and we had too much carry-on baggage for two people to lug around; most of the time John was carrying most of it while Kelly carried a couple things plus Tallis. But in each one we were at least able to get some food and stretch our legs a little.
We spent two nights at a hotel in Port Moresby, mostly just resting and recovering from the travel, but we did get out into the city briefly during our one full day there to look around.
Two days later, we headed back to the airport, this time to the SIL hangar to catch a flight out to Aiyura Airstrip, the SIL airstrip that services Ukarumpa. Some of our cargo needed to stay behind, but it would catch up to us the next day on another flight. On the other end, we were herded into a truck and driven right up to our new house, where we had dinner waiting for us, after which we went promptly to bed and slept.
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