Getting ready...

The great part of life in the Foreign Service is living in foreign countries, immersed in foreign cultures and languages, meeting people from different places and walks of life, experiencing daily life in societies that are sometimes very different from what we're used to as Americans.

The absolute worst part, bar none, is the physical act of getting yourself, your family, your pets, and all your worldly possessions from point A to point B.

Our plan for this move was fairly simple: Send our sea freight (the bulk of our stuff) to Washington about 6 weeks before we'll arrive there, which is how long it took our things to get here from Washington. Send our air freight (a smaller load of things you need more quickly) to Cleveland, so we have it before we leave for Omaha. Heck, keep a few things we'd prefer to have for these last weeks (kitchen stuff, our own sheets and towels, a small TV/VCR, etc.) and do a second air freight shipment to Washington - since both Tim and I have travel orders, we can do all sorts of creative things.

Then, after many e-mails to my point of contact in the US for the company that will be receiving our stuff, processing it through Customs, and delivering it to us, I finally called him last week and learned:
1. The air freight shipment to Cleveland wouldn't arrive until mid-July, 3 weeks after we send it.
2. Our sea freight shipment isn't due to be delivered until late August, possibly after I've gone back to work. So much for those extra days of home leave so I wouldn't have to take time off to help unload shipments and unpack our house.
3. Our car won't arrive until mid- to late-August either, so the vehicle we'd been planning to rent for our summer driving will need to be rented longer. At our expense, of course.
4. No one has done anything yet about arranging for delivery of the things we have in storage, mainly furniture we were counting on since we've been in fully furnished quarters overseas for so long.

Bugger! Now, instead of a fairly relaxed last few weeks in Berlin, we've been scrambling to call people, make arrangements that should have been made months ago (if only someone had told us this), revise our plans (e.g. find boxes and mail the things we were planning to send to Cleveland, at our expense, so they get there in time for us to take them to Omaha. Things like Pauline's portable crib, spare diapers, etc.)

The good news is, by sometime in September, we should have everything at our house, boxes unpacked, and by October I'm hopeful that we'll have the house fairly put together. The bad news is, getting from here to there is going to be a huge headache.

But there's more good news! We have a house!!!!! Thanks to a very helpful real estate agent and our good friend Kristi, we have secured a lease for a townhouse in Alexandria. It looks very nice, from the photos we've seen and from Kristi's description of it. 3 bedrooms, one of which will be set up as a guest room - we anticipate plenty of visitors! It's just off of Duke Street, so convenient to major roads and also to Old Town. And there are lots of amenities within walking distance, like a big grocery store, a public library, and a dog park. Something for everyone! It should be fairly convenient for me to commute to and from the office, which is very important. We can't wait to see it!

Friday is the big day - we'll be up with Pauline from early in the morning to close our suitcases, load the pets in their crates, and leave for the airport. We fly to Amsterdam, then to Detroit, where my parents will meet us with their van and a U-Haul (really) to schlep the six of us (2 cats, 1 dog, 1 baby, and 2 exhausted parents) back to Cleveland. We're hoping Pauline does well on the flight, or at the very least, doesn't repeat this morning's opera performance. Our girl isn't content with just talking to us anymore, now she wants to sing. Loudly. I'm thrilled that she seems to have inherited my capacious lung power, I just hope she doesn't use the flight to show it off...