March 1, 2012 - Checklist

Since moving to Tanzania almost one month ago, Kristoffer has accomplished a lot.  With a little prep work done by yours truly, but really mostly on his own, he has managed to:

ü Find a great new house

ü Import our truck of furniture and everything else from Kenya to Tanzania

ü Unpack the truck full of stuff into our great new house

ü Buy a car

ü Enroll Grace in a Danish-speaking pre-school

ü Help Rose (our housekeeper from Nairobi) get settled

ü Start working at his great new job with the World Bank

ü Research grocery store prices to prepare me for the fact that we will no longer be eating cheese.  Ever.  Or almost ever.  Like maybe for our wedding anniversary we’ll splurge and buy 100 grams for $19.

ü Scope out the “yacht club”

ü Find the best Italian restaurant (where do they get their cheese?!) 

And maybe he has done even more than that!  He has been a great scout for our family, and now that the toughest part is over the rest of us will join him.  We will leave for the airport at 5:30 pm on Friday and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, expect to walk through the front door of our great new house approximately 32 hours later. 

I swore that I would NEVER travel internationally with two little ones by myself, but that was logistically and financially impossible for this trip.  The best we could arrange is for me to fly a third of the way by myself with the kiddos (overnight…pray they sleep…pray they sleep…pray they sleep…pray they sleep) and meet up with Kristoffer in London.  Then we will all travel to our new home together (via Nairobi…which will be kind of weird).

I think that I am as prepared as possible, and will do my best to keep everyone calm, cool and collected.  With a little help from the iPad, TSA (sheesh, of course I have a pacemaker on top of two little ones), British Airways staff (with whom we don’t have a great track record BUT we’ve never flown business class before so we think that they are supposed to be much nicer to us this time) and all of the nice business people who will be THRILLED to see me and my cherubs in their cabin of the plane this time around…we will make it to London with no drama at all and will be very, very, very happily reunited with Kristoffer/Far.

All things considered, I think our transition so far has gone as well as possible, with great thanks to our families in Denmark and the US, and especially to my parents for letting us take over their home for over 2 months.  But alas, it is time to leave their retirement community and get on with a life of our own. 

I know the challenges will be new and different (have you heard about the price of cheese over there?!  Ok…sporadic electricity and HELL-like heat and malaria will also be tough…) but I am ready to meet them.  And Kristoffer keeps assuring me that once we adjust to the challenges, we are really going to enjoy living in Tanzania. There is a lot of excitement here (Grace is just bursting!) mixed with nerves and a little bit of fear, to be fair. 

So wish us luck.  Pray to the Travel Gods and whomever else you can think of for the smoothest 32-hours-of-international-travel-with-small-children imaginable.  And I will check-in from the other side whenever I manage to find Internet access (not yet at our great new house).

The next time I blog, our Life in Transition will finally be Life in Dar. I hope you’ll keep reading!

LMW


p.s. I also managed to ship off 285 cubic feet of our stuff from my parents' basement to Dar so that we will actually have 95% of our belongings all together in one place.  I am really excited to open all of our wedding gifts again in 8-10 more weeks!