The air freight left yesterday afternoon, and is slowly en route to our place in Washington, D.C. Turns out we got screwed out of about 1/3 of our total weight allowance, because the shippers didn't know what they were doing. Bummer - but I got everything that I felt I needed.
The sea shipment gets packed up tomorrow, and this will be a different kind of stress. My weight limit is 18,000 pounds, which I will come nowhere near meeting. So I have no stress about leaving anything behind - that was the fear yesterday with the air freight. The stress tomorrow centers around control. Being a bit of a Control Freak, it drives me crazy that 12 men will swarm my little house tomorrow and pack things wherever they see fit. I've got things packed and washed and sorted, and sitting in very organized piles. The holiday decorations are in a pile. The toys are in a corner. The baby gear is in a clump. My stress level at this point lies primarily in wondering how much those 12 men will care about my little piles.
Because this move is very different from your typical change of house. In your typical change of house, everything piles into a van for a few days. Then you unload it all in the new house. You've got lots of boxes to unpack and damage to inspect, but you're back in control of your possessions again. Easy as that. That is not how this move will work.
When our shipment leaves our house tomorrow, it will move to the port of Shekou and sit there until it can clear customs. Once it has permission to leave China, it will move onto a boat piled high with other containers, and sit in the bay until that boat is full enough to sail. Then it'll make its way slowly across the world to a warehouse in Maryland. My things will sit inside their boxes, inside their crates, inside that warehouse, inside of Maryland until we leave the United States. Once we pack up to go to the next post, wherever that may be, we will give the all clear for each of our boxes to leave Maryland, hop back through U.S. customs and head off on another boat toward another country. Probably about 2 months after we arrive in our new home, the stuff that currently surrounds me will arrive.
Here's where it gets tricky.
Should my container fall off of the boat, should that warehouse catch on fire, or should a few of my boxes be grabbed by pirates en route to that next post (all entirely possible), I need to be able to make an insurance claim. I'll need to be able to tell someone exactly what I lost, and how much money they should give me for it. More than that - I'll really want to document what was lost with a well completed packing list. The packing list serves as proof of what I own.
So tomorrow, my mother and Annika and I may frantically tail 12 men as they pack things into random boxes, doing our best to label them accurately. I do have a complete inventory of our household items (bet very few of my readers can say that!), but I still feel the need for that documentation on the packing list.
This is what's keeping me awake right now. Once it all leaves my house tomorrow night, I expect to crash, and hope to sleep for a long time.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Air Shipment - Moving day #1
The air shipment gets packed today, and the living room has been entirely disassembled. The girls packed their lunches in plastic bags today, and we're each wearing whatever sat on top of our bags. I feel pretty confident that we can fit in everything we want - a few dishes, a few books, a few blankets, a few toys, and a lot of clothes to fill our little apartment in D.C. for the next year. May have to jettison the bikes, but I believe that all other things are go.
Thank goodness Nana and Poppa have been here for the last week - they will stay until next week. How would I have packed the house, and managed the kids and the kitchen at the same time? Dave's last day with Uncle H-- will be Friday. What a disaster this week would have been!
Thank goodness Nana and Poppa have been here for the last week - they will stay until next week. How would I have packed the house, and managed the kids and the kitchen at the same time? Dave's last day with Uncle H-- will be Friday. What a disaster this week would have been!
Monday, March 07, 2011
Moving Right Along
All is moving according to schedule, and thank goodness. After a relaxing weekend in Hong Kong with the parents (where we stepped off the bus right into this protest), we came back to jump right into a busy packing week. We're dealing with customs and with things going three different directions, and so today I'm tearing apart the house to prepare to packers to arrive tomorrow.
Dave finishes work on Friday, just as the last shippers leave the house. We'll fly out next week, after a crazy week of camping out in the house, eating off of paper plates, closing out bank accounts and seeing friends for the last time. A good-bye party in each classroom, and then we'll be off.
So far, Sophia is showing quite a few signs of struggling but everyone else seems happy and well-adjusted. We'll see how a broken down house effects them. But as it means they'll all be sleeping in our bed for a while, I doubt anyone will mind too much.
Dave finishes work on Friday, just as the last shippers leave the house. We'll fly out next week, after a crazy week of camping out in the house, eating off of paper plates, closing out bank accounts and seeing friends for the last time. A good-bye party in each classroom, and then we'll be off.
So far, Sophia is showing quite a few signs of struggling but everyone else seems happy and well-adjusted. We'll see how a broken down house effects them. But as it means they'll all be sleeping in our bed for a while, I doubt anyone will mind too much.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Our first destination
Apparently this article was front page of the Washington Post this morning. Although we are not yet traumatically displaced, this is not only the lifestyle we are stepping into but also the Virginia address and school.
Children of diplomats displaced by strife often caught between two worlds
By Kevin Sieff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 3, 2011; 12:57 AM
With each regime that teeters, each uprising that forces a U.S. embassy to be evacuated, more American diplomats, aid workers and their families seek shelter at a nondescript Falls Church apartment complex with a nondescript name: Oakwood. The only hint of its connection to international affairs is the United Nations flag flying overhead.
Most families are there to enroll their children in Northern Virginia's smallest school district, Falls Church, and to wait for the world's uprisings to subside before returning to their foreign postings or deploying to new ones. The surge of recent arrivals began with an exodus from Ivory Coast in January and was followed last month by a group from Egypt - 33 students and their families from Cairo alone. A wave from Libya began landing over the weekend.
During their stays at Oakwood, named for the national corporate housing chain that owns it, children leave each morning for classes at Falls Church schools. Parents take shuttles that run between the complex on North Roosevelt Boulevard and the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters.
"It's like the State Department ghetto," said Rob Rose, a development consultant who left Cairo for Falls Church with his wife, a U.S. Agency for International Development employee, and two daughters.
Such moves are jarring for students who are scrambled out of global hot spots and delivered to this placid corner of suburbia. Oakwood's modern, furnished apartments are part of a complex of four brick buildings sandwiched between a cemetery and a busy street.
"Someone asked me the other day if I speak Egyptian. They ask if we ride to school on camels. I don't think they really understand us," said Hadley Rose, 13, who is in the eighth grade at George Mason High School.
Oakwood has been a landing spot for displaced U.S. diplomats since at least 1998, when about a dozen arrived after the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was bombed. The relationship was formalized in 2006 when the State Department contracted with Oakwood to house diplomats passing through Washington. They pay $5,400 per month for a two-bedroom apartment, and that fee is covered by the government's housing allowance.
Oakwood officials at the apartment complex and corporate headquarters declined to comment.
Falls Church is known in the diplomatic corps for its small, high-achieving schools. With 2,100 students spread across a high school, a middle school and two elementaries, the midyear arrivals get noticed.
"As soon as I saw the images from Egypt, I knew it was only a matter of time," said Lois Berlin, the district's superintendent. "Whenever there's unrest, we expect an influx of students."
The Cairo group arrived after violence in that city's normally quiet diplomatic neighborhood had kept families in their homes for nearly a week. "It didn't seem that bad at first. But then we started hearing gunshots. The tanks started rolling closer," said Liam O'Dowd, a high school junior.
Families watched as police officers who protected their apartment complex disappeared, and they listened for updates on an embassy radio station until the evacuation order arrived.
The students left Cairo American College, the city's preeminent international high school, in the middle of cross country season, a few months before Advanced Placement exams and days before the performance of the semester's musical. Less than a week later, they started classes in Falls Church.
The diplomats' children expected to stay briefly, just long enough to wait out the revolution's fever pitch. But three weeks later, they were still biding time in a school system that feels at once foreign and familiar. Although they're American citizens, this is the first time some have attended school in the United States.
"I'm just ready to go home," said Phoebe Bredin, 17, meaning Cairo. "We lived through the beginning of a revolution, and now we're here waiting in the suburbs. It's weird."
Bredin learned that Hosni Mubarak had stepped down during a college visit to Virginia Tech. When she jumped and squealed in the admissions office, "people looked at me like I was crazy. But this is something I really care about."
Some of these students wear high school athletic uniforms with the word "Cairo" emblazoned on their chests. Some refuse to change their watches from Egyptian time. They get news through friends' Facebook pages, where Egyptian classmates have posted photos from Tahrir Square and exultant messages in Arabic.
"There are a lot of rumors: We could go back next week, or next month, or it could be much longer than that," said Arden Rose, 16. "I just wish we knew for sure."
Falls Church isn't the only school district that has received students fleeing unrest. Fairfax has received 28 students from diplomatic families based in Egypt, and other Virginia districts have enrolled some, prompting the Virginia Department of Education to send a statewide message to school officials about how to handle American students who have returned to the United States, sometimes without parents or housing.
The State Department uses the term "third-culture kid" to describe young people who live the Foreign Service lifestyle - often jolted between postings and hemispheres, not entirely adapting to the cultures of their home nations or adopted ones.
That description feels stale to some of Falls Church's newest students, for whom the amalgamation of cultures at Cairo American College hardly seemed unusual. So what if cross country practice takes place in a dried-up river bed not far from the Nile? So what if they find themselves in U.S. history classes with the grandchildren of Mubarak and Anwar Sadat?
Even though most of the students have adjusted academically - many say the workload in Falls Church is more manageable than in Cairo - their frustrations are mounting.
The seniors in the group are particularly eager to return. In June, they are due to graduate in front of the Pyramids of Giza, dressed in red and white robes. They hope to get their diplomas, grab hold of the limestone - normally off limits - and climb the base of the monuments, posing for photos that might one day decorate college dorm rooms.
"It's something we all look forward to," said Phoebe Bredin, 17, "graduating with all of our friends, in the middle of such an amazing place. I just hope we're back in time."
Children of diplomats displaced by strife often caught between two worlds
By Kevin Sieff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 3, 2011; 12:57 AM
With each regime that teeters, each uprising that forces a U.S. embassy to be evacuated, more American diplomats, aid workers and their families seek shelter at a nondescript Falls Church apartment complex with a nondescript name: Oakwood. The only hint of its connection to international affairs is the United Nations flag flying overhead.
Most families are there to enroll their children in Northern Virginia's smallest school district, Falls Church, and to wait for the world's uprisings to subside before returning to their foreign postings or deploying to new ones. The surge of recent arrivals began with an exodus from Ivory Coast in January and was followed last month by a group from Egypt - 33 students and their families from Cairo alone. A wave from Libya began landing over the weekend.
During their stays at Oakwood, named for the national corporate housing chain that owns it, children leave each morning for classes at Falls Church schools. Parents take shuttles that run between the complex on North Roosevelt Boulevard and the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters.
"It's like the State Department ghetto," said Rob Rose, a development consultant who left Cairo for Falls Church with his wife, a U.S. Agency for International Development employee, and two daughters.
Such moves are jarring for students who are scrambled out of global hot spots and delivered to this placid corner of suburbia. Oakwood's modern, furnished apartments are part of a complex of four brick buildings sandwiched between a cemetery and a busy street.
"Someone asked me the other day if I speak Egyptian. They ask if we ride to school on camels. I don't think they really understand us," said Hadley Rose, 13, who is in the eighth grade at George Mason High School.
Oakwood has been a landing spot for displaced U.S. diplomats since at least 1998, when about a dozen arrived after the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was bombed. The relationship was formalized in 2006 when the State Department contracted with Oakwood to house diplomats passing through Washington. They pay $5,400 per month for a two-bedroom apartment, and that fee is covered by the government's housing allowance.
Oakwood officials at the apartment complex and corporate headquarters declined to comment.
Falls Church is known in the diplomatic corps for its small, high-achieving schools. With 2,100 students spread across a high school, a middle school and two elementaries, the midyear arrivals get noticed.
"As soon as I saw the images from Egypt, I knew it was only a matter of time," said Lois Berlin, the district's superintendent. "Whenever there's unrest, we expect an influx of students."
The Cairo group arrived after violence in that city's normally quiet diplomatic neighborhood had kept families in their homes for nearly a week. "It didn't seem that bad at first. But then we started hearing gunshots. The tanks started rolling closer," said Liam O'Dowd, a high school junior.
Families watched as police officers who protected their apartment complex disappeared, and they listened for updates on an embassy radio station until the evacuation order arrived.
The students left Cairo American College, the city's preeminent international high school, in the middle of cross country season, a few months before Advanced Placement exams and days before the performance of the semester's musical. Less than a week later, they started classes in Falls Church.
The diplomats' children expected to stay briefly, just long enough to wait out the revolution's fever pitch. But three weeks later, they were still biding time in a school system that feels at once foreign and familiar. Although they're American citizens, this is the first time some have attended school in the United States.
"I'm just ready to go home," said Phoebe Bredin, 17, meaning Cairo. "We lived through the beginning of a revolution, and now we're here waiting in the suburbs. It's weird."
Bredin learned that Hosni Mubarak had stepped down during a college visit to Virginia Tech. When she jumped and squealed in the admissions office, "people looked at me like I was crazy. But this is something I really care about."
Some of these students wear high school athletic uniforms with the word "Cairo" emblazoned on their chests. Some refuse to change their watches from Egyptian time. They get news through friends' Facebook pages, where Egyptian classmates have posted photos from Tahrir Square and exultant messages in Arabic.
"There are a lot of rumors: We could go back next week, or next month, or it could be much longer than that," said Arden Rose, 16. "I just wish we knew for sure."
Falls Church isn't the only school district that has received students fleeing unrest. Fairfax has received 28 students from diplomatic families based in Egypt, and other Virginia districts have enrolled some, prompting the Virginia Department of Education to send a statewide message to school officials about how to handle American students who have returned to the United States, sometimes without parents or housing.
The State Department uses the term "third-culture kid" to describe young people who live the Foreign Service lifestyle - often jolted between postings and hemispheres, not entirely adapting to the cultures of their home nations or adopted ones.
That description feels stale to some of Falls Church's newest students, for whom the amalgamation of cultures at Cairo American College hardly seemed unusual. So what if cross country practice takes place in a dried-up river bed not far from the Nile? So what if they find themselves in U.S. history classes with the grandchildren of Mubarak and Anwar Sadat?
Even though most of the students have adjusted academically - many say the workload in Falls Church is more manageable than in Cairo - their frustrations are mounting.
The seniors in the group are particularly eager to return. In June, they are due to graduate in front of the Pyramids of Giza, dressed in red and white robes. They hope to get their diplomas, grab hold of the limestone - normally off limits - and climb the base of the monuments, posing for photos that might one day decorate college dorm rooms.
"It's something we all look forward to," said Phoebe Bredin, 17, "graduating with all of our friends, in the middle of such an amazing place. I just hope we're back in time."
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Coming to America
According to the NYTimes:
"With the current law financing federal agencies due to expire on
Friday, the measure — approved on 91-9 vote — postpones a potential
shutdown and gives lawmakers time to negotiate a plan to keep the
government running through Sept. 30. But lawmakers and top aides are
already predicting that at least one more temporary measure will be
required, because the two parties remain divided on how much spending
to cut and on which programs should have their budgets slashed. "It is
hard to believe we've reached the point in Washington where we are
going to fund our United States government two weeks at a time,"
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/us/politics/03congress.html?_r=1&hp
What this means for us is that we are definitely coming home! We have flights and movers arranged, all scheduled to happen before March 18 (the 2 weeks from now Dick Durbin references). Should the government actually shut down, at least we will be stateside when it happens!
Speaking of
** text from an actual conversation this afternoon **
Lynne: ... and then we'll stop by the photo store.
Sophia: Speaking of dinosaurs, Victor pretended to be a T-Rex this afternoon and chased me all around the playground.
Lynne: What fun! But I wasn't speaking of dinosaurs.
Sophia: No. I was.
Lynne: ... and then we'll stop by the photo store.
Sophia: Speaking of dinosaurs, Victor pretended to be a T-Rex this afternoon and chased me all around the playground.
Lynne: What fun! But I wasn't speaking of dinosaurs.
Sophia: No. I was.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
The Great Firewall
The geographic boundaries of China lie within a great firewall, one that keeps many people inside this nation from viewing websites that the Chinese government deems inappropriate. Sometimes what makes it through the firewall surprises me. News stories about Libya and Egypt came through last week, as well as news stories about China's reaction to them, and recent crackdowns on dissidents. In retrospect, maybe the government has an interest in that combination.
Sometimes what does not make the cut surprises me, too. I can not access imdb.com, and I can not always shop at Target.com. Other things are standard, and well publicized. I can not get to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia or Blogger.
And so, those us of with means and with an interest, simply skirt the firewall with a personal VPN. Our VPN is located in Virginia, and although I do not understand the technicalities about this technology, I do know that when I turn on my VPN, most websites believe I am accessing the internet from Virginia rather than from China. I pay $4.95 per month for this privilege. Interestingly, VPNs are legal in China. They don't mind some people accessing the broad spectrum of communication on the world wide web.
Here is where the Great Firewall of China impacts you, dear reader. After I lost my wallet, I canceled my credit cards. This includes the card which GoTrusted billed every month to pay for my VPN. This being the first of the month, my VPN has been canceled. As I've got less than 20 days less under the firewall anyway, I'm just leaving it be. Posts may be a bit less frequent, and posting will be a bit more creative.Dave is posting this for me from Manila, where he has been the past two weeks. An upcoming trip to Hong Kong, and visits to friend's houses will allow more access. Still, if the impending move and the arrival of my parents as house guests were not enough of an excuse, please understand why I may not post often for the next few weeks.
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