Clearance

For all of those who have been following my husband and me in our venture to travel the world and  move overseas, we finally have medical clearance!!!  We received the phone call this morning from the doctors.  I can't believe it....I am still very much on an adrenaline/excitement high.  Working on ticketing now, but it looks like we might be leaving next week.  Thank you all for your continued support and "thoughts" for us!  We hope that you will all stay tuned for the next leg of our journey.

The First of Many...

Well, the time for our departure is quickly approaching.  We will leave all that we know and love here and head off on the adventure of a lifetime, for a lifetime.  Today is Monday and our flight leaves Thursday evening.  For the most part, we have what few belongings we have left sorted into what is going, what is staying and what will probably not fit so hopefully someone will bring it out to us when they come visit.  We are filled with so many different emotions at the prospect of leaving.  Andrew's brother and sister-in-law have been in Georgia for the weekend spending time with us.  This afternoon we had the first of many hard good-byes.  We are so grateful for this time to spend with family before we leave.  It is so very difficult to say good-bye to loved ones, we have to constantly remind ourselves that it is all worth it in His name.  Andrew's parents have flown out to spend our last week here with us.  I am so grateful that they made the trip out.  It is an enormous encouragement to both me and Drew to have their love and support.  In the midst of this difficult time, it gives us such a peace and calm knowing that both sets of parents and families completely love us and support us.  Most importantly though, they know, love and desire Glory for the Name that is above all names.

We still have a lot of preparation ahead of us before we leave on Thursday.  While we have most of our things sorted, we have not even begun to put those things into bags yet.  I believe we will get to take a total of seven bags with us when we go.  It sounds like a lot, but I'm sure once we start actually putting our stuff in them they will quickly fill up.  I am a bad packer.  It's not that I am bad at getting things to fit (I think I'm actually quite good at Tetris), it's that the packing part is where I get the most stressed out.  There's just something about putting your things in a suitcase that makes it all so real.  You have to sit there and watch it all go in.  More and more of your stuff going into the suitcase and less and less of your stuff sitting on the floor in your house.  I am definitely going to need a lot of "morals" for this packing process.

Thanks for keeping up with us!  I will try to keep you updated with our process and travels as we go along.  I apologize that in my stress I often do not communicate as much as I should :)

Busy

It feels like a lot has been happening lately.  This week we got pictures of our new apartment :)  we had our second immunization clinic where we got TB skin tests done (I think mine might be positive), we started taking the oral vaccine for Typhoid Fever, we went shopping and got a few impulse purchases :-/ and we got our first newsletter sent out.  Tomorrow is our two year anniversary and the day we start training for "just in case" scenarios.  All in all it has been pretty exciting and I believe it will continue to be pretty exciting.  I can't believe it, but we are a little over half way through this training process.  It seems like it has been just a short time, but it also feels like it has been forever and I am ready to move on.  I think I done with the basket weaving...for now anyway.  Now I am just ready to get overseas!

Immunization Day

Today was immunization day!  It's the day that we have all been looking forward to and anticipating for the past month. All we've heard about over the past month is how many shots we will be getting, how you'll get a shot in each arm at the same time, etc, etc.  I had all this anticipation built up expecting to get five or more shots.  I show up to get my shots and all I got was one!  I couldn't decide if I was glad to only be getting one or disappointed because I was expecting to get multiple shots at the same time and quite frankly was a little excited about seeing if that really helped it not hurt as bad.  All in all, I think I am thankful.  We still have two more immunization days before we head out overseas, so I still have shots to look forward to.  Andrew on the other hand was not so lucky...

ESL and Skype

This past Saturday, Andrew and I were involved in an all day course to become ESL/EFL certified.  This course consists of two Saturdays, going to class from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.  A very long Saturday!  After we finish these two days of classes, we will officially be certified to teach English as a second language or english as a foreign language.  We learned all about the differences between these two things yesterday which I will not bore you with today.

I went into these classes thinking that it was going to be one long very boring Saturday, but the teacher was actually really good.  She has been teaching since before I was even born, so she has a lot of really great knowledge and was quite interesting.  But...as can only be expected when you have internet access, I was online during her class.  I just did a quick email check and then right back to taking notes. :)  Did I mention I kept my Skype on?  Thinking I might be able to chat with someone, I had the forethought to go ahead and mute my computer.  It was a good thing too because not long into the class my sister, Carrie, called me.  I quickly denied the call and sent her a message over chat saying that I was in class.  We chatted for a bit and then she told me to answer her video call but just keep my computer on mute so she couldn't be heard....

Five perfectly placed hair rollers and the most adorable face of my nephew, Zeke, were the first things I saw on my computer screen when I answered the call.  It was all I could do to not burst out laughing and waving right in the middle of class.  Thankfully the hair rollers were not in Zeke's hair, but in Carrie's who was sitting right behind him in the screen.  I could see Zeke pointing emphatically and laughing with excitement at seeing me.  Jeremy, my brother-in-law even made an appearance.  It was such a joy to see them, especially while I had to sit through a long day of classes.  It was so hard to not give away to the teacher that I was video skyping with my sister during class, but the rest of the day I had a huge smile because I got to see them!

Thank you ESL class and Skype.

"Busy"

I know it has been a little while since my last post, so I wanted to write just a quick blog to let you know what all has been going on around here.  One word could describe it all, "busy."  We are pretty much in meetings from 8:00 am to 4:00 or 5:00 pm.  Breakfast is at 7:00 and supper is at 5:00.  Sometimes we even have meetings after supper!  We stay pretty busy in meetings all day and then we come home to the quad that we share with eleven other people.  Needless to say Andrew and I don't get a lot of "us" time.  We are going to have to be intentional about getting away from everyone and just having some down time together.  Well, that's the scoop on things.  Not a whole lot interesting, just crazy :)

More Packing

As of late, our days have mostly been filled with packing.  It's been crazy trying to get everything in order. We have a little over a month before we are actually leaving, but we have put a two week time limit on ourselves.  This time next week we should have everything thing packed up in boxes ready for the crating company to pick up bright and early Thursday morning and load in our crate.  Some may think giving ourselves this two week time limit is crazy, and a lot of the time I think it is too.  But, we do have a reason behind our madness.  1) We need to get all of our stuff out of the way so we can sell everything that is left, and we need time to sell it.  2) We need to get this all done so we can have time to head out to NM and spend some quality, stress-free time with Andrew's family. 3)  Finally, which builds off of point 2, we want to have time just to relax and spend time with family and friends without all the stress of having to worry about packing.

Earlier today we received a potential itinerary for flying overseas.  It's finally happening!  Exciting and weaving at the same time.  But I am trying to think logically, so I first look at what airline we will be flying on, then check baggage allowances on that airline.  Clearly the most important thing is how many suitcases we will be able to take with us.  We haven't quite figured that out yet since they keep throwing weird symbols next to numbers.  Regardless, how do you minimize your life down to just a few suitcases?  My life in a suitcase...what does that look like?  When I figure it out, I'll let you know.  Until then...more packing