Back in the USA....briefly.

Culture shock!  We are back in the USA for the first time in over a year.   Of course our plans for airport pick up changed at the last minute but our wonderful friends Ken and Herme came to the rescue and met us at the airport in Phoenix.  They hauled us and our luggage out to my brother Ed’s house – since we had sold our house before we left he had graciously offered to put us up for the duration.  Thank heaven for little brothers and fabulous friends!

While still in Spain we knew we would need to acquire a good amount of stuff for our sojourn in the Peace Corps.  We had hit Amazon.com and ordered a bunch of items to be delivered to the house before we arrived, one of them being a prepaid phone and the minutes to use while we were in the US since neither our Spanish nor our Uruguayan phones would work in the US.  Imagine our surprise when only a couple of items had shown up, and the phone was not one of them.   I had checked the web site before leaving Spain and it had shown that all the items had already been delivered, hmm….

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Somehow, part of the way through the orders, the address in our Amazon account had reverted to our old home address.  The house we had sold over a year ago.  I called the realtor and fortunately Melissa Schwartz was on the ball as usual and was able to give me an email address for the new owners.  It turns out they had a whole stack of boxes sitting in their garage waiting for us.  Everything was there including the phone, so now we could actually communicate with our friends and family.

While we were in Spain we had set our dental appointments (thanks Susan) for the first couple of days after we got back.  Mike found out that the tooth that had abscessed in Spain really needed to come out before he could get his dental stuff signed off.  My appointment with Dr. Michael Thompson at Kierland Dental Center was the best dental appointment I have ever had.  He took care of everything including the lengthy forms for the Peace Corps while I was there and I left with the hard copies and a promise to send the electronic X-rays and report later the same day.  Very impressive, when I next signed into my email they were all there!

Mike was a different story, he was unhappy with the way his dentist, a former golf buddy, had handled his appointment and then when they decided that an extraction was necessary  he sent Mike to someone else who could not even get him in until the following week.  Quick phone call back to Dr. Thompson and we had the extraction done in two days and the follow up appointment the following Monday with all paperwork completed and signed off.  If you ever need a great dentist in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, they just don’t get any better than Dr. Thompson.

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Our appointments at Patient's Choice Labs were a great surprise as well. TB and HIV tests handled professionally and quickly, by the time we went back for the TB skin test to be checked the other results were already in our email and TB results followed just as quickly and painlessly.

With the last of the paperwork finally off to the Peace Corps we were able to relax and enjoy visiting with family and friends for the remainder of our short time in Arizona.  My brother’s home became the BBQ haven and he is a marvelous cook so every meal was a delight.  Fortunately our friends were mindful of how little time we had and they got together in groups to see us.  Mike and I actually got to play a round of golf with the friends who are baby-sitting our clubs, Guy and DeeDee and Mike shot 78 without having touched a club in over a year, I lost count at some point so my score will go without saying.

Our oldest daughter Jasel had managed her work schedule so she could spend some “mom” time with me and I cherished every moment of it.  She also played chauffeur for us and drove us all over the valley in the first few days so we could manage all our appointments.  My sister came up from Tucson and spent time with us and also played chauffeur so I could get all the last minute shopping done.

One of our great friends Lloyd was leaving town just a few days after we got there and offered us the loan of his car for the rest of our stay. We dropped him at the airport and suddenly found ourselves driving a vehicle again, for the first time in over a year.  I can tell you, that is one thing I had not missed!

Mike managed another round or two of golf with friends and I spent his golf course time drinking champagne and eating great food with MaryBeth, Robin and Royce around the pool or spending time with Jasel.  What a life!   We had dinner with Herme and Ken so we could actually enjoy their company (when they picked us up we were so exhausted that we were useless) and catch up on their lives.

Two weeks flew by and we found ourselves saying our good-byes again, this time knowing that in all probability we would not be back to the states for over two years.  Many of our friends still think we are absolutely nuts, and maybe we are, but at least we are never bored! 

Our staging for the Peace Corps was set in Philadelphia,  a non-stop flight on Sunday afternoon had us at the Crowne Plaza in plenty of time to meet a few of our fellow volunteers and to get a good night’s sleep before we started our orientation the following day.