We're Leaving on a Jet Plane

Blog Post About January 2021

The morning we were leaving, we got up early to get PCR tests. Everyone was a real trooper except me. One of my children has a video of it, but of course, I will spare you, and it will remain hidden.

Several friends came to pray over us and say goodbye as we were loading the car. For the things that wouldn't fit (see one of the items in this post), a sweet friend mailed them to us.

We made it to the airport with zero positive Covid tests and said our last goodbye to Kylie from the same. time zone.

Keira always has some crazy "arrival eyes."

And when I finally had access to my texts again, we had a sweet text from Kylie ;)

After arriving, we settled in a hotel and Doug got our car from a friend who had been taking care of it. 

After getting some sleep, Doug ran some much-needed errands. 

One of those errands was scheduling for the "generator man" to come and hook our house up to the neighborhood generator.

We went to see the house we had rented 7 months early. It was Keira's first time to see it and mine and Karis' second.

The man that kept our car had some guys clean the house for us before we got there, but unfortunately, they didn't do the most thorough job.

While Doug was unlocking the door for us to go inside, I saw this plug in the outside porch area.

Guess we aren't supposed to use it :)

Thankfully, city power was on, so we had lights. 

You can see where we ran our fingers over the wall in all of the dust the cleaners had left behind.

The "generator man" was late. We waited for TWO hours (cleaning in the meantime), but he never came.

January 14, 2021

The next day, Doug graciously hired the cleaners we've had for our other houses, and they did a fan-tab-u-lous job!

They bring about 12 guys and clean from the roof all the way out the front door.

Yes, they literally mop their way out to the street!!

January 15, 2021

Some dear friends of ours invited us to live with them until we could actually get in our house. The hotel was expensive, so we took them up on their offer. Karis went to live with two single girls, and the other 4 of us moved in with our friends.

This is our luggage as we are leaving the hotel.

Two days later, Doug and I went to a "cabinet" store to order our cabinets. You knew that most houses come without cabinets, right?

Doug had already met the man on a previous day at the house to take measurements.

This is what our cabinets looked like on the man's computer when we finished.

Is this what we got?  No

Did we get them within a month?  No

The saga continues...

The Second Coming (of family)

Blog Post about Summer 2020

Doug, Kylie, and Caleb were left behind to finish things up after the lightning-fast move. 

Doug had to take our air condition units off the wall at our old house and put them in storage. 

He hired a crane to take the water tanks off our roof and move them over to our new house. 

Then Doug had to get permission from our new landlord to put a western toilet in our new house and turn the bathroom door around because the door swung inward over the squatty area.  The landlord really wasn't excited about it, but he agreed to it.

In the meantime, Doug was watching the news. He was waiting for commercial flights to start up again, but instead, things seemed to be getting worse.

So he booked flights on a charter to get them out on June 28, 2020.

And guess what?  

On the city's instagram post the day they were boarding the plane, these were the posts:

"NEW ROUND OF LOCKDOWN IS EXPECTED TO IMPOSE FROM TOMORROW."

"LOCKDOWN FROM 6:00AM - 0:00AM TILL JULY 4"

"PHARMACIES, SUPERMARKETS, GROCERIES, AND BAKERIES WILL REMAIN OPEN DURING LOCKDOWN DAYS. 

LOCKDOWN PERIOD: JULY 29 - JULY 4. 

LOCKDOWN HOURS: 6:00AM - 00:00AM 18 HOURS"

Coincidence?  I think not :)

So, while they were boarding, I was watching more instagram posts come through and feeling so thankful.

The next day said, "AIRPORTS THROUGHOUT OUR REGION WILL REMAIN CLOSED TO COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS UNTIL JULY 15th."

I'm so thankful that Doug felt led to buy tickets and get out, because realistically, commercial flights did NOT come back on July 15th, and it would have been a long time until he found one. The charter flight just happened to be the best option.

On the day they left, the Covid numbers in our region read:

Total confirmed cases 5,533

Total recovered: 1,634

Total deaths: 180

Total active cases: 3,719

I am more than aware these numbers pale in comparison to what was going on in America. I was keeping track of the numbers there, too, and this screenshot from May 30, 2020, was one month before we flew back.

 

We found it, Now let's Move!

There were no commercial flights arriving or departing from our country, but occasionally a charter flight would come available. When one did, Doug booked Karis, Keira, and me on it. We were going to leave June 21, 2020, so we could get Karis back in time to quarantine for two weeks before she went to ballet camp. And since the chartered flights were more expensive, only half of us flew, while Doug waited to see if the airport would open up and he could get something cheaper for the rest of them.

Two days before we left, on June 19, 2020, we found a rental that fit what we needed!

 

Perfect timing, too, because on June 20, 2020, Doug had already hired movers to come and get our belongings to take to storage.

We still went with this plan because we knew the new rental would need to be cleaned before we moved into it, and since we were going to be in America for about 6 months, we didn't want to clean it and have it sit and collect dust while we were gone.

You've heard the term, "It takes a village?"

Well, we took the village and we used them.

A friend who had been stuck in our country for quite a few months because of Covid offered to be at our house while the movers wrapped and packed everything into the truck.

Then I was on the other end of the truck, at the storage house. 

I showed the men the three rooms we were allowed to move into, and I made sure they stacked things well.

So instead of a stacking job looking like this, I would kindly ask someone to make it look like

this.  And so on.

Then, another friend was with me to translate. The movers spoke a language that I do not know.

In the meantime, our first friend stayed at the original house for most of the day while the truck went back and forth.

During all of this, Doug was at the police station in our new neighborhood, registering us to live there. There was a lot of waiting around and moving to different buildings for different pieces of paper. It was almost 4 hours before he ever made it to the storage house.

And our children had taken our need-to-live items (including all of the suitcases that would be going to America) and moved us into a guest house for the time being.

Then, at the end of the day, I took the girls back to the house we were leaving and let them take pictures in their old bedroom they had shared.

Ahhh...now to get all the luggage weight right so we some of us can get on the plane tomorrow.

One Last Time

While we were looking for a house to move into, this is one of the things that Doug inspects. How much amperage does the house hold and what is the condition of the electrical box?

The one in this picture is a fairly new setup; however, the city is going around to houses and blocking the amount of amps they can run at a time, which greatly reduces the amount of cool and heat you can use when you need it.

Oh well, looking for a house will have to wait.

Kylie needed one last hurrah around town.

Kylie, Karis, and Doug went downtown and had fun acting like tourists for one day just taking pictures, buying last minute things from here that Kylie wanted to take with her, and generally, just enjoying the city one last time.

We hated to leave when it looked like it was going to be such a mild summer. 

These are the actual summers you WANT to be here for, but alas...

Moved in and "cold" is a blessing

As I've told you before, there was no working heater wall unit in our new house.  We had some "fixers" come to the house, but they started on the toilet and showers first.



I'm nothing but grateful.

We can wear several layers of clothing to get warm, but it's harder to find ways to get clean.

I drove my teenage girls across town one night so they could get showers at a friend's house, but I think Doug, Keira, Caleb and I went a week without a shower.

We also had butane gas heaters, but you had to be right in front of them to feel them.  The intense cold in the house swallowed up the heat in ways I've never seen before.

However, I didn't hear any complaining.  We were all aware that there were refugees living in tents during this same weather, and we at least had a solid shelter over our heads.

SO...let's look at a blessing of a cold house.

When we moved, we plugged in our refrigerator too soon, so it stopped working.  We had forgotten to let it sit upright for awhile before plugging it in.

Our icebox of a house was the perfect answer!

We left the doors open at first,

And eventually moved it all to the ice cold tile floor.

Our refrigerator was at the repair shop for over a week, and since we didn't get heat for two weeks, our food on the cold tile floor was well taken care of.

The lovely chandelier that came with the house only has two bulbs that work in it, and I think it will always stay that way.  I see no need for Doug to go to the trouble of replacing light bulbs way up there.

But best of all, another reason not to complain, when we look out our kitchen window, we see GREEN.

We are so thankful for this house, warm clothes, blankets, gas heaters, electric heaters, refrigerators, food, electricity, FRIENDS and FAMILY!

Fixer Upper...For Sure

Ready to pack?

Here we go...

When we agreed to rent this new place, the first thing we did was get some of the obvious broken things fixed. 

Funny enough, at the same time, the house we were living in had a little mishap.

With all the rain we had last fall, the ceiling could never really get dry and the layer of plaster over the cinderblock crashed down one day from the third story all the way down to the first floor.  It would have seriously injured someone if they had been below that destruction.

We filled up the trash
outside with all of the debris.

The roof where it fell from

In the new rental, Doug had a half-wall in the kitchen torn down, and the landlord agreed to re-tile Keira’s room where the tile was buckling.  We also hired a painter because there had been a lot of smoking in the house over the years and some of the rooms were interesting colors. 

Where the half-wall used to be

Because all the tile was buckling in Keira's
room, workers tore it out and re-tiled.

Of course, this new tile is different from
any other tile in the house,
but that's sort of normal here.

This is what some of the buckling tile looked like.  This is one of our balconies.
We won't be using it because the protection wall is so short, so we are just
letting the tile "be."

After that, we had the house cleaned from top to bottom (there was a dead bird in this one, too – and a nest built into the wall of the kitchen).  The owners also left a lot of items in the house and pictures on the wall.

As we slowly started moving to the new house, we also had to go pick out material for a new kitchen sink to be built.  The legs were rotting off the kitchen sink that was left in the house. 

New counter-top material

Plastic laminate that will cover the outside of the sink cabinets.

Doug and I took several trips in the car, taking suitcases and boxes full of items, unpacking them against walls in the new house, and then returning to the house with empty suitcases and boxes to pack them again.

Sheets and towels sitting on top of plastic on the floor.

A load ready to be put in the car

No boxes.  Just lots of things laid on top of plastic.

After three weeks over Christmas, moving items when we could, we finally were ready for real movers to come and load our couches, beds, wardrobes, refrigerator, oven, washer, dryer, and water tanks.

Fridge and stove covered

Our bed and wardrobe dismantled to move.

Of course, it was a rainy, dreary day, but we had already booked a lot of people to help, so the show must go on.

A crane was used to remove our water tanks and swamp coolers off the roof.

Doug unhooking pipes and getting soaked and cold.

Then a truck drove all of it to the new rental, and the process started all over again to get it on top of that roof.

The movers' shoes at our new house

I think it's interesting they kept this one piece of furniture together when they had taken apart all the others.

The movers put all of our beds and wardrobes back together within a few hours, and we were able to spend our first night in the house.

THEN...we found out that only one toilet worked, but NO showers worked.  And the three heaters that the owner said worked, did NOT in fact work when the electricity was finally turned on.

It would be another week before we could take a shower in the house and a little bit longer before we got warm.

The problems continued to show themselves as the days went on, but I think we would all say that even though we were cold and dirty for that first week, we are all glad that we made the move.