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Up, down, up, down, up, down . . . I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round heading nowhere. Josh got the official offer/salary package last night and he texted me that it looked good and the numbers were around what we said we needed. Time to celebrate, right? Since housing leases here are contracted by the year, with full payment in advance, he sent an email to confirm that the amount they allocated to housing could be paid up-front.

This morning he got an email reply with. “No, sorry. We don’t do that.” And as to his further inquiry about temporary housing while we wait for our visas to be processed (since we can’t rent a place until we are legal residents), he got a short, “There are no relocation costs associated with this contract” reply. Um, that’s not going to work.

It seems insane that a company would go through all the work of hiring someone to work overseas and not take into account the necessary expenses to get that person and/or family there. We have decided that we are both unable and unwilling to fund those expenses ourselves since it’s as much about the principle as it is about the money.

It’s possible (and even likely) that since they don’t have other overseas hires in this department that HR is completely uninformed and when Josh’s future boss gets involved, that she’ll be able to turn it around. But if not, we’re willing to walk away and start the job search over again at square one. 

As if we weren’t stressed enough with all of this going on, the UAE government waited until Monday mid-day to announce that they were going to call a holiday on Thursday and then it took another day for the embassy to decide that they were going to be closed so we had to shift Josh’s retirement ceremony at the last minute to tomorrow. I was hoping that we’d be able to celebrate the ending of this career with the added bonus of having the next one lined up, but we’ll continue to trust that God has something in mind that we can’t understand right now.

One of the reasons that I do have peace in spite of all this uncertainty is because of how we’ve seen God work in the past. If you’ve been reading my blog from the beginning you remember all of my posts anticipating our move to Egypt, all the preparation, the early days of exploring, and then– our sudden evacuation after only 2 months. Our car hadn’t even arrived yet. I could not understand why we had spent 3 years preparing and planning and doing language training to have it taken away. It didn’t make sense, it didn’t seem fair, and I didn’t see how God could make anything better out of it.

And yet, he did. Over and over again these past 7 years I have noted to myself, “If we had stayed in Egypt you wouldn’t be here right now.” I keep reminding myself that out of something terrible came all this good. Being evacuated set off a string of fortunate events (though I didn’t see them all as fortunate at that time) that led to connections in Oman and Bahrain that have kept our Middle Eastern adventure continuing long past the 12 months that we were promised. I thought it was leading us to a career here after Josh’s retirement. But maybe not. If it ends now, I’ll be sad, but confident that better things are on their way.

In the middle of everything else, my baby boy moved on to High School. Crazy. 8th grade graduation was last night and it was a short and sweet ceremony (yay!) that ended in time for everyone to break the Ramadan fast. It’s kind of crazy how everything here revolves around the Ramadan fasting schedule. All the concerts, graduations, and the entire school day is all adjusted to accommodate the fasting population, even though they are in the minority.

The new 9th grader

Camille and her best friend from school and the neighborhood.

Not much else to say since we’re still in the waiting game. We should know something about the job today or tomorrow, but how many times have I said that already?!

I can’t even think of a catchy title for today. I’m almost happy to go back to work tomorrow so I can get a break from sorting and cleaning for a few hours. It’s been a long, but productive weekend. Today we cleared out the storage room in our house and got rid of almost all of it. We kept the ski clothes, but shed the jogging stroller/bike trailer and the camping gear that has seen better days. Josh promised the boys that when (if) we go camping here, we’ll replace whatever we actually need. It feels great to get rid of so much stuff — but how and why do we keep accumulating it?! I am happy that the movers aren’t coming until Friday. It gives me more time to pack and sort the house into areas that should make unpacking easier. I’m hoping to avoid boxes of shoes mixed with pillows and lampshades packed with kitchen knives this time (never a good mix).

One more week of school! Either 4 or 5 days — we still don’t know when the holiday will begin and the school has published plan A and B schedules so we can function either way. Josh has reserved the space for his retirement ceremony for both Wed and Thursday and will pick up the cake on Wednesday so we can be prepared for either day. It’s so normal for here that we just have to laugh and roll with it.

Meanwhile, it’s Saturday and we still don’t have the official job offer on paper (it was supposed to arrive by Friday at the latest). Of course an email was sent from the office on Friday night that said, “I don’t want to wake you up, so do you want me to email it to you? Call me and let me know.” Um, YEAH. You think? Stop being a donkey and get on with it. It’s not like we’ve been waiting for this for almost 6 weeks . . . since it’s the weekend now, maybe Monday? I feel like the job offer needs its own countdown, but we’re well past overtime and have moved into sudden death territory. (On the plus side, none of this is related to the people he will be working with, it’s solely an HR issue.)

Sorting through our important papers file I found this stash of old passport photos. This crew looks like it’s up to no good!

I’m beat. This afternoon was all about our move. After church we headed to pick up two beds that we were purchasing. Since 95% of our current furniture is government owned, once we move into a new place we will only have a kitchen island, a dining room table, a coffee table, a Bahraini bench, and our bed. It was just recently that I realized the kids won’t have anything to sleep on in our new flat/villa.

Luckily half of the city of Abu Dhabi is selling off their household goods in anticipation of leaving the country, so it was easy to purchase 2 beds from a teacher at school. Of course getting those beds from her 18th floor apartment to our house was a problem I hadn’t considered. A prospect that Josh and I were seriously beginning to regret around 1pm today.

Our kids are hard workers and resourceful so we brought them along and against all odds our team managed to disassemble both beds and pack the pieces and mattresses into our SUVs in under 90 minutes. Caleb worked on dismantling the smaller bed, Josh and Carter tackled the canopy bed (I know, how did I think that transporting that huge bed was even possible?!), and Camille and I bundled and taped the pieces and hardware so they didn’t get mixed up or lost.

Camille did her share of the heavy lifting too.

On the drive home we were full up to the roof — a selfie from the front seat of the car. Because they were IKEA mattresses, we were able to flex them enough to fit around the bed frames inside the cargo areas of our Pajeros. I was happy to get everything home and unloaded without incident.

Then Josh and I headed back out to pick up a dishwasher that a friend was selling. Not an essential, but the timing worked out and the price was good so we grabbed it while we had the opportunity. One last stop was another friend’s house who just messaged us this morning to say that they were unexpectedly leaving Abu Dhabi (a common theme these days). They had a list of appliances to sell and wanted to know if we were interested?

We had put off buying all of the necessaries, thinking we should wait until we actually have a place to live and see what fits, but again, they are people we know, the timing works out perfectly and they basically have everything we will need to outfit our house: refrigerator, stove, washer/dryer, vacuum, desk, and a few other odds and ends. Even better, they will use them until they leave, store them with a mutual friend over the summer, and we will pick them up as soon as we can put them into our next place.

I had been stressing a bit these past few months as people were selling things and good deals kept passing me by on the local For Sale pages, but once again, God has provided. Ironically I now have everything we need to set up our lives here, but we don’t yet have a signed contract committing us to work here. Again, we’re trusting that God will provide for that as well and as crazy as it may seem, I’m not worried. I’m positive it’s going to work out. But now I need a day off.

I’ve made a bunch of progress on the house in anticipation of the movers coming in 5 days. Except we found out today that they aren’t actually coming in 5 days. The dates that we requested several weeks ago are not available. We aren’t sure whether they were available back when we requested them, but whatever, we can’t go back in time so it means a shift in our plans.

In the win column, we actually have orders and plane tickets home. Sort of. We were all going to fly together on the 19th through London and Josh was going to stay in Los Angeles and work for a few days before flying back to Abu Dhabi to close out our tour while the kids and I continued on to Santa Cruz. This moving date complication was influential in canceling Josh’s plans to go to California. Now the kids and I will fly home on the 20th and Josh will stay in country for 10 more days before meeting us in Southern California to finish up his Marine Corps career (paperwork). Technically I have tickets for the flight on the 19th, but I’m hoping to get them switched to a different airline and fly on the 20th, avoiding a 6 hour layover in Heathrow airport.

What else is up in the air? Josh has his retirement ceremony scheduled for June 14th, but there are rumors that the 14th may be the first day of the Eid holiday. If that’s the case, the embassy is closed for the day and we won’t have the retirement ceremony at all. They asked him if he wanted to pick a backup date and he said, “Nope. This is it.” We’ll either have it or not. It’s perfectly fitting for the way life is here. Inshallah until the end. I don’t think the 14th will be a holiday because (insert moon sightings and Ramadan timing talk that you don’t care about, but gets discussed endlessly) I think the moon sighting will be the evening of the 14th with the first day of Eid as the 15th. We’ll see if I’m right a week from now.

Josh’s future company’s HR is busy doing something (we aren’t sure what) and exasperating his future boss who really wants him to have the offer in hand already so he can sign a contract and formalize their commitment. It’s more funny than stressful at this point especially as other stressors move to the forefront.

Like selling my car. Or transferring it. Or whatever it is that needs to be done in order for us to leave the country. Josh has been busy in paperwork hell trying to figure out the process and get things signed and since we’re with the embassy everything is a bit more complicated. In some countries diplomatic status has perks, but here it’s an extra hoop to jump through every time we need to acquire or cancel a service, travel in and out of the airport, or sell a car.

I have one more day of work this week and then only 5 more days of school (or possibly 4!) until we break for summer. We’re all ready, but we’re also ready to be past this part of moving — the packing, the paperwork, the leaving. We’ll have a different set of challenges on the other side, but it will be nice to be working toward something that’s semi-permanent and indefinite.