Last term one of my classes was Digital Photography. It was more stressful than I though, as most of you know I enjoying taking pictures and I thought the class would be super fun. I learned a lot of things I wanted to learn on my own but never really made the time to, so the class was very beneficial. Here is my favorite project from the class, a story told just by photographs. Initially I didn’t really know what to do with the project, then one of my friends suggested I do it on the dogs. It was a brilliant idea, I took over 900 photos! Thank god for digital storage. Any way, from 900 photos down to 23 here is the story.
July 11, 2008 at 7:33 pm
· Filed under dogs, germany
Yay! We’re here and the best part is that we had no problems getting the dogs on board with us. Initially, they told us about the pet embargo for summer but when we asked them about sitting in with us it was a breeze. A huge sigh of relief came out of me, I was almost in tears… finally all the trouble the past couple weeks trying to get them ready to come here has finally come into fruition.
Kookiis and Vandy didn’t really like the little Sherpa bags, tight squeeze compared to the kennels. They were whinning a bit in the airport. They would calm down when we stuck our hands in the bag to pet them. I really didn’t like that we couldn’t take them out, because I knew that they would just lay on our laps quietly. But, I was still happy because we were all together on the plane. Once we got in the plane in LAX Kookiis was whinning up until we took off. Initially I thought she calmed down but when I reached in to pet here she was really tense and shivering, I think she was the entire flight. I couldn’t check on Vandy because we were all seated rows away from each other. We didn’t realize they seated us apart until it was too late.
The flight from LAX to ATL was a little over 4 hours, take off and landing was on time. When we got to ATL we had a short layover. Well it was supposed to be only 2 hours but it ended up to be 4. The worst part about it was that we boarded on time, but we had to sit on the plane for an extra 2 hours to wait for 26 late people who missed their flight to Munich. Arghh! Poor dogs. The good thing is that we finally sat next to each other, the kids were a row behind us. Finally we were off, the dogs started to calm down (thanks Benadryl), I think they slept a lot through the entire trip.
We landed over an hour late. The dogs were ready to get out, just like the trip from Japan to Los Angeles 3 years ago Kookiis couldn’t hold it any longer, she peed in her bag while we were waiting for the bags. Vandy was fine, she was able to hold it till we got to the hotel. Alex felt a little queezy when we landed, but shortly after we exited the airport he was fine.
Our sponsor, Sonya, is great. She was at the airport waiting for us and thankfully brought a van large enough to accomodate everyone and everything. She dropped us off at the hotel at 11am and came back for us at 3pm to check in on base and grab some food. The entire time we were with her we were all dragging ass. The kids and I slept in the van and also fell asleep on the couch while waiting for our turn at the IACS (check in place). I hope we weren’t snorring or drooling!
After she took us to a few check in spots I asked her if there was a McDonald’s close by. Yeah, yeah, we’re in Germamy why in the hell would I want Mickey D’s? Well, since we found out we were coming here I remembered that I really enjoyed the milkshakes from German McDonald’s, plus they have the McRib which they don’t serve in the the US. Any way, we wanted fast food so we could get back to the hotel and crash.
Got to the hotel around 7-ish, scarffed down food and went to sleep. Now I’m up at 3:30am checking email and writing this blog… for a whopping 179 euro internet fee for 7 days! I just hope we find a house soon!
Its currently 12:33AM, yeah, I’m still awake. I tried to go to sleep at 11 like everyone else but I couldn’t. So much has been going through my head; my mind is going all over the place. I couldn’t help but be stressed about the dogs’ getting on the plane with us. Silver lining, I think they’ll be able to fly in the cabin with us if they can’t get in as baggage or cargo. The worst thing is that the airlines won’t actually confirm anything until the day of!! WTF!! So, we’re going to have to deal with this then and go to LAX sweating until we board.
Anyway, since I couldn’t sleep I decided to get online. What else is there to do? At first I checked to see if Delta had any flights at night… of course not… that would be a gift from the travel gods. So I decided to check Friendster, MySpace, and Multiply. No not in that order, don’t really remember. I looked at a bunch of pictures of friends. How cool, I found out that one of my girlfriends from high school is now married.
I didn’t really think of writing a blog until the kids started making noise in their sleep. The cutest thing, Gabby began singing and talking in her sleep. Then she stopped, a few minutes later Alex started to talk too. How funny! I couldn’t really make out what they were talking about but it was cute. Then just moments ago, the funniest thing one of them (I know which on but I’m not going to say) started farting! So loudly that Kookiis popped her head up to see what the ruckus was! I never knew what interesting things happen when we’re all asleep. Vandy, she’s sleeping between Steve and I snores it’s just a bit of heavy breathing and it’s so cute too. OMG! Gabby is humming again. They’re so cute… I wish I had a voice recorder to capture this nocturnal orchestra.
Today, we’re four days out to our departure. Of course there have been a lot of snafus. Last week we had a vet appointment on Wednesday to get the puppies health certificates to board the plane. Turns out the vet had to go on a business trip; we didn’t find this out until we got there. We had to scramble and find another vet who was able to give us the appropriate health certificate. Since, this whole ordeal got me paranoid I checked our airline reservations to make sure the dogs are actually good to go on the flight. Guess what? Hell no. Turns out England does not allow pets to enter their country at all, even as layovers! The best part of all this was that it was a long weekend so it was really tough to get hold of anyone. I was reading up everything I could online and found out through DEFRA that England only approves British Airways to carry pets into the country. We were booked on American Airlines from LAX to London, and then British Airways from London to Stuttgart. Yeah, that doesn’t fly with the dogs. So, Steve calls American Airlines to confirm this… and behold they don’t accept pets on the flight. Omega Travel totally missed the mark on this reservation. Now we’re freaking out.
I decided to post our problems and ask for help from a group in Yahoo! called StuttgartNewcommers. I am so happy I did this; I got so many replies and a lot of advice. The best advice I got triggered me to go to Delta Airlines. They have the best pet travel, without using a pet travel agency. They give you so many options to fly. So, Steve calls Omega Travel to get us booked on Delta. The lady was really helpful; she got us reservations to fly from LAX to ATL, and straight on to Stuttgart. The key is to get our flights confirmed tomorrow with the base Omega people. Wish us luck… 3 ½ days to go.
