To say this has been a busy year summer would be an understatement.
After finishing up our month-long adventure, we had all of 2 weeks to prepare for another move around the world. Oh, whom am I kidding? Of course I had been sorting and organizing the house for the better part of the year to be the most prepared I had ever been for an international move only to be confronted with the worst pack-out in our almost 15 years of doing this…. It “may” have been possible that I lost my cool once or twice when the movers showed up 5 hours late or started carrying unwrapped items to the crate.
I assume that all of our belongings will somehow make it to our new home although our timelines seem to be a bit longer than initially anticipated – oh well, this is all part of the adventure, right? Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that household items will arrive as packed especially my beloved Peloton bike that I watched like a hawk during pack-out and gave specific instructions (over and over again) on how to wrap, pad and pack it. Again, fingers crossed.
Fortunately dear friends who hosted us for dinners and brunches and last minute excursions (Barbie movie!) helped us distract from the fact that we were about to embark on 40+ hours of continuous travels halfway around the world to our new home in Surabaya, Indonesia!
Yes, we moved right into the ring of fire (fun fact: I had never heard of this expression to apply to Indonesia until I took Bahasa language classes earlier this year; until then I had always assumed it was a Johnny Cash song – things you learn!).
After long, long flights (16h – and that was just one of three flights) and lay-overs (10h in Singapore – honestly, not a bad thing since there’s much to do at the airport like checking out the butterfly garden) that seemed to never end, we finally arrived in the darkness known as 6pm in our new city. Living on the equator means that the sun rises and sets around 5:30am/pm year-round. I can attest this takes some getting used to since I am ready to head to bed by 7:30pm most nights (adding an 11h time change doesn’t help).
We finally made in to our new home hotel (home for the time being) and woke up early the next morning (second fun fact: 2am, 3am, and 4am quickly become your new best friends …. and yes, around 5am you finally decide to just call it quits with this whole sleep idea and begin to search for coffee) for John to be whisked to work and for us to sort out unpacking and the never-ending quest for food in a foreign place.
The first few days were a blur as we sorted out night and day and struggled to keep our eyes open past 5:30pm. There was new money (so many zero’s!) and directions to learn, taxis to navigate, and appliances to operate (the first load of laundry took about 7 hours from start to finish). It was a lot….
We are still learning to navigate grocery stores and traditional markets full of new smells and sounds, sort out internet issues in a home where living with pre/teens means that there are (way too) many electronic devices that need wifi, and download new apps designed to make out lives easier but setting them up and navigating their purpose is another story. Fortunately, that’s where living with pre/teens comes in extremely handy – our third day in country, John had an evening work function (yes, you read that timeline correctly) and we were all so tired of eating out (in addition to just be so oh very tired) that I challenged the kids to help me sort out delivery apps for dinner – and success! The pizzas were amazing and delivered right to our hotel!
It’s been a full week since we landed; the kids already started school – their 5th and 6th first day in a new school – and they are back to starting over, yet again, as we do every few years. They have been rockstars in this transition although it’s certainly not been easy and they miss their friends back “home” a lot.
While everyone is at school or work, I am stocking our pantry and kitchen, trying out new markets and stores, hopping into taxis to take me to places around the city just for the fun of it (to the movies to watch the Barbie movie again, yes!? To climb through an old Soviet submarine? Yes! To make the hotel more homey by checking out the local Ikea? Yes, please!), and I am trying to find patience when things don’t work out the way I plan (like when the internet cuts out yet again at a very inconvenient time).
But it’s all good – now hopefully I can upload this post before the kids return from school and hog the internet bandwidth!
Kids with Diplomatic Immunity 