We have a house. It’s been confirmed. I saw a sketch of the floor plan and it freaked me out a bit. It’s big. Huge. Cleaning it would be a full time job! It’s a traditional Middle Eastern home with an inside kitchen and a separate “dirty kitchen” that is accessed from the outside for all the heavy cooking so the smoke and food odors don’t spread throughout the house. Just imagine me frying things up out there by myself. #notgoingtohappen It appears to be palatial, but I think I’m going to miss our smaller open-floorplan home here. Our house has great character with crown molding and tray ceilings and wrought iron railings, chandeliers, and sconces. It’s also really dated, with harvest themed tile in the kitchen, cracked bathroom fixtures, and old plumbing, but our one of a kind house has been perfect for us.
This new house has enough bedrooms that the kids have already started claiming ones for themselves, but I’m tempted to still have them share. They do not need their own bedroom and bathroom. Yes, the house has enough bathrooms for each person to have their own too. So much for the growing up years being “good preparation for college” in the Chartier household. My kids are going to show up in the dorms looking for a place to lay their Persian carpet and wondering why their private bathroom has 5 stalls and 3 showers. Rude awakening indeed.
But I don’t care how many bedrooms and bathrooms it has (though the extra square footage does have me rethinking my carpet inventory). The important part . . . is there grass?
This is not our house (I don’t actually know which house in the compound is ours), but on Google Earth I see some GREEN! It looks like some trees or bushes are growing around or near all of the houses. If I could show you a screenshot of the entire area you would see a little green patch in a sea of brown. It looks like the oasis I’ve been hoping for.
One step closer. We’ve cleared medical, been assigned a house, and the kids are in communication with school counselors to determine class placement for next year. Josh comes home tonight after 3 weeks away completing training for this new job and his next steps will be to schedule our shipments, both car and household goods, and then all of our lease termination paperwork and schedule temporary lodging in a hotel for the final 10 days before we fly out. And I’m supposed to do something with these pets. The big expensive unknown. Good thing we love our kids because international transport of animals is a pricy pain in the behind. (And when I say kids, I mean our human kids. The animals are a costly kid accessory and in no way count as kids themselves.)
Tick tock, tick tock. Time is starting to speed up. One more month of school and many, many goodbyes in the next few weeks as the exodus has begun. Packers are coming already, cars have been shipped and the first departures took place this week. More will join them as people try to get out ahead of the summer rush, to get settled at various duty stations in the US and get their household goods delivered on the other end before schools start up in August. Now there’s even less reason for us to rush with a furnished house waiting for us in Abu Dhabi. We’ll arrive with our pile of suitcases carrying the things we can’t live without and everything else will arrive whenever the slow boat gets there.
Inshallah, 9 weeks to go!
For Kristy: Our address is not actually BXX, it’s B(something else). I know you were wondering. 😉
