As I’ve been planning our move/transition, I’ve been waiting to find out our budget for housing, thinking that we’d be able to locate something now, put a hold on it and then upon landing in August, move in and get settled. I just had a reality check today as I realized we won’t be able to do anything until we return and have residence visas.
As we leave here our diplomatic IDs and passports will be cancelled and when we come back we’ll have to arrive on tourist visas. We won’t be able to rent a house until we have those converted to residence visas, which has been known to take a couple of weeks or longer. That means I won’t come back and go into a house, but rather into a hotel, without a car, since we can’t register a car until we have residence visas and IDs, and wait, I won’t have any of my stuff? What do I do with all of the things that I don’t need this summer (school uniforms, work clothes, sports gear), but will need when we return? I guess it’s time to find a few friends who don’t mind several bags of things taking up space in their houses this summer.
Our property will stay in storage, the pets will have to stay in the kennel for a third month (at least — $$$) and we will once again be living out of suitcases for the foreseeable future. sigh. That’s not how I was imagining it at all . . .