Arrived!

This is our house!

Yes, we have safely made it to our destination, and are getting comfortably settled into our duplex on the outskirts of Chiang Mai!

En route. 

Gabe was asked to deliver Sven to one of the orphanage kids, so he was our trusty companion and main photo subject during our trip.

We left Portland on Thursday evening (our parents delivered us to the airport and we had a chance to hug some friends of the Shulkes before we went through security as well) with our 6 pieces of luggage and Sven, and flew to San Francisco. After a short layover there, we settled into our long flight across the Pacific on Singapore Airlines.

Sven and Dani hanging out on the airplane after a good night's rest.

If you need to make a cross-Pacific flight anytime in the near future, we'd highly recommend Singapore Airlines! They were great! The seats seemed to have a little more leg-room than normal in economy class, there was a plethora of new release videos to watch on a 12-inch screen, AND the seats reclined, like, 8 or 9 inches! Altogether, we had a comfortable experience! Of course, that could also be chalked up to the fact that we were pretty exhausted by the time we left San Francisco, so we both slept a full-night's sleep on the flight!  Our layover was short in Hong Kong, although we did have to go through security again, and then we were on to Singapore. 

Sven and a bowl of noodles.

Singapore offered fascinating sights like glass bowls built to fit around a tree trunk.

The Singapore airport's gardens.

We grabbed lunch in Singapore on our layover there, spent awhile walking around our terminal of the airport, enjoyed the lovely airport gardens, went through security again, and then flew on to Chiang Mai. Altogether, it was an uneventful, smooth flight experience.

We were met at the airport by the director of the orphan home and Bill, our Longview contact. They got us to our duplex where we dumped our luggage and then headed out to eat at a popular Italian food restaurant! We've been spoiled ever since by the care that the staff here have shown us and the delicious foods we've been eating.

We'll fill you in more on what we've been doing since we arrived in the next post – but we wanted to officially get the word out that we're safe and sound and doing well!