Roooouuugh travel day today. Nothing majorly bad, just a tough day to be a 4 year old. And the parents of a 4 year old.

Here’s how I see it. Every day we wake up with a patience tank. Millie’s tank is small, because she is small. When she is tired, like today, she wakes up with it half empty. Then throughout the day it starts to drain. Certain activities drain it more quickly. For her, the thing that drains it most quickly are waiting and transitions. Unfortunately, today was a whole day of waiting and transitions.

This was our day:

• Wake up and pack
• Taxi to the Bukhara airport
• Go through security to enter the airport
• Wait in line to check in / get our boarding passes
• Go through passport control
• Go through actual security
• Wait at gate
• Board plane & take flight
• Arrive in Tashkent and get off plane
• Ride packed shuttle bus to terminal
• Leave airport and then re-enter to get our next flight. Go through entrance security again.
• Wait in actual security line, then get to the front only to be told we are in the wrong place and need to take a taxi to the international airport to get our second flight.
• Take taxi to international airport.
• This was when Millie’s patience tank ran out and she alternated between whining and screaming for the rest of the bullets
• Go through security to enter international airport
• Wait in an exceptionally long passport control line
• Go through actual security
• Wait at gate
• Wait for shuttle to board plane
• Take flight
• Get off and wait on packed bus
• Wait in long line at passport control in Bishkek

By the last step she was all out screaming, and our patience tanks were also all the way out, which meant we were not at our best. Nick was taking away privileges left and right—his last ditch effort to have any control over an uncontrollable situation—and I was snippy at him for literally anything. We were that family.

I held it together until we were through passport control, when a woman who had been in line beside us literally hissed at Millie because of her behavior. It was so nasty. I wanted to hiss right back at her, but instead tried to think deeply about her inner child and what led her to see a kid struggling and face it with animosity instead of empathy.

We finally got into a Yandex car and Millie passed out immediately.

We were dropped off at what we thought was our Airbnb but was actually a 15 minute walk away. We were still in rotten moods all the way there. And by this point, also starving and thirsty. It was 5:30 and we had barely eaten all day.

We dropped our stuff, used the bathroom, and then ventured out. Our first impression of Kyrgyzstan: it’s even more Russian than Uzbekistan. All signs are in Russian, and the architecture feels so Soviet.

We found a craft beer bar a block away and it was calling our name. We ordered a very unhealthy meal (if you can call it that) but all ate ravenously and started to return to ourselves. I had the first hoppy beer I’ve had since leaving the states.

There was a Russian guy at the bar who had to have been the most stereotypical Russian guy I’ve ever seen. He had on a bucket hat and multiple tattoos. Among them: a chainlink fence, some sort of automatic weapon, and the bitcoin logo.

We walked home and bought fruit on the way so we have something to eat in the morning. I gave Millie a quick bath and paused before washing her with this soap that’s at the Airbnb.

We need to figure out how to make these difficult travel days less difficult. But maybe it’s just the price we need to pay when bringing a little kid on a trip like this. It was a long day for all of us.