Getting Regular (from Aaron)

Its 6:23 am, local, 11:23 pm Amarillo time.  Been wide awake for an hour after Kimbo and I finally fell asleep about 1:30 am, so I figure a good solid 4 hrs of sleep.  Kimbo got up about 2 hrs ago and took a shower and is now asleep? 

“getting regular” is the title of this entry because it is the thought that pervades my mind, for a number of reasons.   I know it is somewhat a personal subject, but when I am away from the house for any period of time, whether or not I can make things happen in the bathroom could mean the difference in a miserable time or my “movements” not affecting my movements during the trip. 

There is something different about this time though, this is the 1^st day of 45-50 days in which I will have to get in some sort of regular routine.  At this point I cannot fathom being gone from home/work for this amount of time.  How long will it take to get a regular sleep schedule, a regular eating pattern, regular everything, to make this time go by fast? 

Disclaimer:  I like my history, especially 20^th century war history, however, I am not an expert on Eastern Europe specifically or cold war era Eastern Europe. 

I have only been here about 12 hrs but my impression is that there is a big difference in the city of Budapest and the rest of Hungary as a whole.  I have heard that Budapest is westernized, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, full of history, yet modernized.  That is not my feeling about the city of Miskolc that we are in now.  I can’t help but think of gulags and goulash,  iron curtain, KGB, the Berlin Wall, Communism and cloak and daggers, war games and Clint Eastwood flying the stolen Russian jet in Firefox.   It could be I am romanticizing it my own mind so that it makes everything more interesting. 

The city - Miskolc (Miss-kolch) - looks old, narrow streets, some neon lights and advertisements but not much, street car running every 10 minutes by the hotel, but not a soul around.  The hotel seems like right out of a World War II street battle only not bombed out.  The room has 16 foot ceilings and looks out onto a small city intersection that seems perfect for a cold war spy thriller movie set. 

The hotel lobby has a lonely middle aged guy setting behind a counter.  Behind him is the number of every room with a hook for the room key.  Looks like there are about 32 rooms and Kimbo counted our key as the 3^rd missing key from the hooks.  I told her that the guy probably took 2 off and stashed them just so we wouldn’t know that we are the only ones staying here.   The room is not bad, but there doesn’t seem to be another person around for miles. 

Kimbo was hungry when we got to the room last night about 9pm.  There are restaurants around but they are all closed.  I didn’t see anybody around at all.  She went down to ask the man at the counter if there was anything to eat and he told her he would be up in about 5 minutes with cheese and salami and bread.  That is awesome!  It was good too.  I hope nobody tried to check in while he was up here serving us the salami.  He might have missed a customer.

Today we will go to the local authority to let them know our intentions of adopting.  Then we will go and meet the boys for the first time.   This is surreal.  When will our lives be regular again, how long will it be before they are just like Gus in our family and everything is almost perfect as it was before we took on this life challenge?  Right now it seems like it could be an eternity.  So many things to figure out in front of us.