OUR BAGS!!!

Reuniting with our travel bags!!!!!  They were with us when we checked onto our flights from Yerevan, Armenia to Abu Dhabi, UAE.  Got separated from us when our flight from Abu Dhabi, UAE to Paris, France was cancelled for maintenance.  Never arrived with us in London, England.  And we spent five days in NYC calling non-stop to every baggage claim agent and bag handler from NYC to Abu Dhabi, finally locating them in a misplaced baggage cage in Abu Dhabi.  We then spent the next few days (when we were supposed to be sightseeing around NYC) calling 2000+ times on Skype to keep the bags moving along towards us.  (Baggage claim agents do NOTHING!)  Got the bags to JFK airport in NYC and had a British Airways agent on the phone with us telling her we wanted them sent to Chicago O'hare airport where we could pick them up the next day as we arrived via overnight train from NYC.  She told me she couldn't send them because I couldn't provide an exact address and she would instead send everything we had past us to our family's home in Olympia, WA.  That meant no clothes for another week (plus the five days in NY and overnight train to Chicago), and we wouldn't be able to give the gifts we had collected and carried with us from all around the world, Turkey, Armenia, Greece, SE Asia, Eastern Europe, just to name a few.  Desperately we sent off one final e-mail to my mother from the Amtrak as we got just enough of a signal at a stop along the way.  We had no phones and had no chance to call the airports to try to get our bags.  And to our MASSIVE relief and amazement, she had gotten the baggage claim agent to actually forward them to O'hare.  Once there the O'hare baggage agent even claimed to not have seen them.  Finally, after days of work, countless calls, and probably far more prayers, and even a few tears (I think those are tears of joy in Jihye's eyes as she finds her diamond engagement ring that she had left in the bag), we had our bags and 15 months of living around the world back.  Thanks mom!!