The News We've all Been Waiting For

Almost six weeks ago we started the process to get our flight home scheduled.  The flight is taken care of by the university so naturally buying the tickets gets outsourced to a consulting agency.  Time ticked by and yesterday we were finally heard back from the consulting agency with our reservation.

We're leaving here early in the morning on August 4th and get back to Detroit by the afternoon of the 4th.  We're flying Lufthansa because they have the best pet program of the airlines that fly from Jeddah.  I flew Lufthansa when I first visited Saudi back in 2009 and I remember them being nicer than most airlines.

We also got Algebra registered with the airline, and it ended up being hilarious to listen to Steve talk with their representative on the phone.  The first call involved spelling out our names using the Alpha/Bravo military technique.  The second call was even funnier because the representative thought we wanted to take a baby on the flight.  So when Steve said that we already had a carrier and were going to put her under the seat, I think the representative thought we were crazy!  I of course didn't hear all of this, and just got the quotation "This is an animal, not a baby!"

We're just getting started on all of the things we need to do before we leave.  Aside from the typical packing, discarding junk, and cleaning, the administrative side to leaving is impressive.   We need 7 signatures from departments across the university, exit visas, a housing inspection, 6 cards turned in, a mailbox to close, and a bank account to close.  All of that is going to result in a lot of needless running around in the next month or so!  I'm impressed that they managed to condense all of that running around into a single one page form, but I was less impressed when they tried to tell me it was prohibited to fold it because it would need to be filed.  Needless to say, that paper got folded.

So, we're coming home, and so far (almost) nothing has been screwed up! Let's all keep our fingers crossed that it stays this way!