Thursday, November 3, 2011

The calm before the storm...maybe

This move is very different from the last one when we had to unload so many pets, belongings and all that you acquire from having a farm for 10 years.  I love you awesome friends that took in our sweet pets! Now we are moving out of a 3 bedroom apartment and don't need to take any furniture with us or figure out what to do with pets.  Our new digs in Dhaka will be furnished so that means that when the movers come, they will take all of our furniture and put it in storage and then we are left so sort the rest into 3 "piles".  We will have one set of belongings we will take on the plane with us, which will include all our essential documents and some bedding and clothing.  The second set of materials will be a UAB (unaccompanied air baggage) of which we can take up to 700 lbs. that way. The third set is our HHE (household effects) which includes anything else and we can take up to 7000 lbs., I believe.  We will be lucky to get 500 lbs. in our HHE.  The UAB arrives about 2-3 weeks after we arrive and the HHE arrives 2-3 months after we arrive at post. 

I am definitely more laid back about this move and actually looking forward to a road trip for a week and a half where we will live out of a car with our luggage and get to visit family and friends in the Midwest. I think this life will suit us because DH and I get antsy when we are doing the same thing in the same place for too long.  I like living "light".  It really helps you to realize you are not what your belongings are.  We essentially started over here a year ago--new place, friends, furniture, toys and are just as joyful as ever.  I know that with the world being so connected now more than it has been before that we will be taken care of and find what we need.  I am so grateful for our amazing friends that we have made here and hate to say "goodbye", but we know that new friends are waiting for us (literally) and we will make even more when we move.  

I have been making the silly obligatory trips to costco and amazon.com to "stock up" on stuff, but really we would do just fine if I didn't have my Kissmyface soap and Toms of Maine toothpaste and deoderant. We can also get things shipped to a US address that will be sent over to us every two weeks, but I hear you can't get liquids sent to you.  Not a big deal.  We will manage.  And I am honestly thinking we might manage better over there.  Help is inexpensive--by help I mean "help".  Like a maid, cook, nanny, driver, etc.  Yes I am going to get a maid and a cook (hopefully the same person) so I can still work my teaching job that I have and give someone a safe place to work with a decent salary.  Don't think I'll hire a nanny since the kids will be in school and I don't want to share when the are home.  They will go to an awesome international school and make friends from all over the world, too.

I cannot help (there's that word again) but think that DH's and my experiences living w/o electricity or running water for a year each and running an organic vegetable and flower farm has prepared us in some way for living abroad in a poverty stricken country.  I cannot imagine the extent of the poverty, and we will be living quite well by even most American standards in an area that is separated from the extreme poverty.  We will be able to come home to a cool house with fresh clean water and food, which may be the hardest thing because of the good ol' Catholic guilt.  DH is in development work, so I am hopeful that his work and all the similar work that others do will have a lasting impact on the wellbeing and survival of the people of Bangladesh.  I have said this before, and I will say it again "we needed to live in a third world country to be able to live like we are middle class".  We have never wanted for anything thanks to being born to parents that were able to and did all they could to be sure we had what we needed, and often times wanted.  But it is tough these days to have two parents working (and in the past farming, too) to be able to make ends meet, and it shouldn't be that way in the U.S. or anywhere else.  We have graduate degrees for goodness sake.  We are different only because of our luck in being born where we were to whom we were when we were and we were able to get credit.

On a completely separate, materialistic note....DH took our daughter to get her first pair of Chucks and I couldn't be more proud.