Czech-ing in

Greetings from beautiful Prague!

Walking towards Charles Bridge from our hotel

Our travel here went off without a hitch.  We left Toronto on Wednesday about midday, had a quick stopover in the US and then took an overnight transatlantic flight to Amsterdam.  Well, it was technically overnight.  We left around 4pm and the flight was just about 7 hours, meaning that by the time we landed it was barely 11pm Wednesday for us even though it was 5am Thursday morning in the Netherlands (+6 hour time difference).  Unfortunately that meant that despite our best efforts, we didn't sleep a wink on the flight because we just weren't tired enough.  By the time we arrived in Prague at 9am (3am in Toronto) the lack of sleep was starting to catch up to us.  We allowed ourselves a quick catnap upon checking in to our hotel (which blissfully had a room available instead of making us wait until proper check-in time at 3pm) but then forced ourselves to get up and go out so that we'd stay awake and start to get our bodies on the proper schedule.

We basically just spent the day wandering around some of the main areas of Prague to get a feel for the place, interspersed with extended periods of time sitting on restaurant terraces eating and pumping ourselves full of caffeine.  We made the rookie mistake of stopping at a pretty touristy spot on the river for lunch, which was fine but incredibly overpriced for some wraps and salad.  We subsequently discovered some awesome spots frequented by locals in the residential area around our hotel that are a million times more reasonable.  For dinner I tried a traditional Czech dish called svíčková na smetaně (sirloin medallions and bread dumplings served in a cream sauce).  I know it looks like something that belongs on my new favourite Tumblr, Someone Ate This, but it was actually really tasty.

I swear there's meat under there somewhere.

We're now back at the hotel and will probably be going to bed pretty soon, since tomorrow is retrieval day!  We are getting picked up to be at the clinic bright and early so M can do his thing.   If I'm being honest, I don't think it's really hit me yet that we're finally here and this is actually happening.  It feels like I've been worrying about it and organizing it for so long, and yet it's still this abstract event that hasn't quite taken shape in my mind.  It's a bit weird to think that M and the donor will be the ones doing all the work tomorrow.  It's even more weird to think that there's this perfect stranger out there somewhere who's going to be giving us possibly the greatest gift of our lives tomorrow, and that we'll never get to know who she is or thank her properly.  More than once I caught myself looking at various women today and wondering, "Are you her?" when I saw someone I thought matched our donor's characteristics.  

I guess I'm realizing that there's a big difference between theoretically thinking about having an anonymous egg donor and being less than 12 hours away from having it actually happen.  When M and I got married, I didn't have wedding jitters, but I imagine this is maybe how it would have felt.  This is something I really really want, and I'm not in any way having second thoughts...but I also can't help freaking out a little bit about what a huge deal we've actually gotten ourselves into.

Gulp.