It’s a good thing this flight is only an hour long because I don’t know how much stress management I have left in me. In my head, when we land, I’m done, off the clock, finished. That might be a foolish assumption and I’ll be sure to update if it turns out to be a fallacy, but I have been prepping for this move for months and when we hit the ground in Abu Dhabi, we will have moved. It will be behind me. My work completed.
The money I begrudged the pet importer is looking like the best $$ I ever spent. We picked up the animals from the kennel in the morning and dropped them at the cargo terminal at the airport. They were not happy.
It’s going to be a really l o n g day for them.
Thankfully I don’t have to see them again until the importer delivers them to our house sometime later in the evening.
They were not enjoying their ride on the forklift. I’m not sure if they’ll ever fully recover.
Then it was back to the hotel to pick up the kids and all of our luggage. I didn’t ever publish the post about our excess baggage fiasco and trying to mail items to ourselves and the headache involved in stuff management this past week, but I was proud to say that I got it down to 6 suitcases that weighed 55-60 lbs each, 6 carry-on pieces, including a guitar and ukulele, and backpacks for all. A friend who agreed to help haul us to the airport walked in and all he could say was, “Wow.”
We made it out — expired visas and all! (we knew they were past date, but the word on the street was as long as we were within 30 days, it would be fine. Glad that turned out to be true, with only a little extra paperwork).
We checked with the flight attendant to make sure that the animals had made it on board and she said, “Oh yes, I can hear them barking down below!” Oh great. Not only was he barking, but barking enough for 2!
Coming in over Abu Dhabi — not the best first impression, but for the last 2 weeks Bahrain has been covered in a sandy humid haze as well so it didn’t look that pretty from the air either.
Stop watching your screens and look at your new home!
Wow, it’s really brown. It almost makes Bahrain look tropical . . .
Ah, we made it!
I was right. The work was done. Everything after landing went flawlessly. No line at passport control, our luggage was waiting on the carousel, and we all piled into two cars and headed to our new home. At this duty station we were assigned housing, hallelujah. All we had to do was show up with our bags. A friend had even bought groceries and stocked the refrigerator for us.
I haven’t constructed any thoughts about our new house, neighborhood, or life in a different country yet. I’ve been too occupied with unpacking all those suitcases, figuring out where each kid is going to sleep and put their clothes, and running the washing machine (which takes 3 hours for each wash cycle!) non-stop. It’s not hard or stressful, just busywork. Which turns out to be a nice change from the stresses of the unknown of the previous weeks.
We did get to run out to the shopping center behind our house to grab cat litter, pet food, and a few more groceries. Did I mention how thankful I was to have hired the pet importer? While we were getting settled at home, picking up food, and getting SIM cards for our cell phones, the pet importer supervised the process of getting the pets inspected and authorized to enter the country. We landed at 6:30 and the pets didn’t make it to us until after 11:30. If we had been stuck at the airport until almost midnight, waiting on the vet’s approval, this blog post would be a hand-scribbled note on a napkin: “make it stop!”
But the pets are here and getting used to our new home and yard
making themselves comfortable
We’re all trying to settle in.