Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

We are exactly a month away from leaving and I have been thinking a lot about our move. So hard to imagine what our life will be like there. I can imagine what our jobs might be like (because we have had them here), I can slightly imagine what our home might be like (because we had one here), I can kind of imagine shopping for food and things at the market (because I have done that here). But all the in-betweens are really hard to imagine. The city of Tegucigalpa? Never been there - can't imagine it. Having to communicate in Spanish with someone who does not know English? I haven't done that in 12 years - a little nervous about that one. How we get around the city? I have always had a car and the freedoms that a car brings.

SO... where does that leave me? It leaves me feeling really nostalgic about all the comforts I am enjoying here. Bear with me, but I am going to brainstorm a list here of all the things I love about Sebastopol, in no particular order...

1. Farmer's Market on Sunday morning - Javier's goat cheese, Hector's honey, torpedo onions, kale, peaches, Paul's smoked salmon, heirloom tomatoes

2. Living within walking distance from one set of grandparents and a 10 minutes drive to another grandpa

3. My dog, Milo

4. Going to the market for a quick shopping trip and having it take a half hour because I keep running into people I know

5. My colorful neighborhood - Maureen's purple house, Rick's chili van, kids flying down the hill on a skate board, roller blades, or bicycle

6. Our great community of friends

7. The sound of a red tail hawk

8. My Friend Joe's

9. The smell of rose geranium in my garden

10. Lagunitas IPA

Feel free to add to the list, I am sure I left out a lot.

I guess my reason for getting all these things out of my head is to acknowledge them for the important and great things that they are and then realize that all of these things will have substitutes in Tegucigalpa. Of course, grandparents, great friends or a dog can never be replaced, but all those other in-betweens can. I'm sure we'll find a new favorite restaurant, place for coffee, new smells and sounds. But for now, I can only appreciate these things now and savor every last one of them before we go.

Preparation Update

We are quickly ramping up our preparation for our departure to Tegus. Our plan is to take the summer off and travel and visit family during June and July before we leave the country at the end of July. We have to be out of our house by June first and we are spending most of our time doing the odd house repairs and maintenance that we have been neglecting to do. It is sort of funny that we are motivated to do all this work to our house and we are not even going to be living there.

Garage sales are such an amazing event. We had our first one a couple of weeks ago and it was crazy! It seems like the entire community comes out to these events. We figured that our sale was especially good because we are not just selling the stuff we do not want anymore but we are selling cool stuff that still like.

Having a garage sale has reminded us how cluttered our lives had become. For some reason we tend to accumulate stuff in our society, stuff that we don't actually need. Children tend to exaggerate the stuff accumulation. All that stuff creates a clutter problem and the clutter tends to take over. It is nice to get a leg up on all that clutter. I am imagining that our lives in Honduras will be simpler on many levels and hopefully less cluttered!

Next job: Paint the picket fence!

First Follower!

This post is in honor of our first Blogger follower. Kevin, thank you for following us in our adventures. I hope that over time we garner more followers (hopefully the posts will get more interesting as well). Kevin, the prize of course is free room and board for your first visit, redeemable sometime in the future in Tegucigalpa (must be present to redeem). We will be giving out lots of prizes for people who follow our blog. The prizes will all be pretty glamorous!

Space Junk

It looks like it has finally happened, there was a serious space collision on Tuesday.  Apparently two satellites crashed and have spread 10,000 pieces of space junk in orbit... According to the serious math guys the two satellites hit each other at something like 42,000 miles per hour.  I have no idea what 42,000 miles per hour is!  I like the idea of space junk, not sure why but there is something reassuring about the idea that there is a layer of junk protecting us from some sort of alien attack, "no we can't mess with the earthlings they have a protective shield of high velocity death chunks whizzing at over 42,000 miles per hour... better go mess with another planet."

Your gonna move where?

Hello, We are moving to Honduras!  It is six months away and we are already selling our stuff!  We are going to be working at a private school in the capital called Tegucigalpa.

When we tell most people about moving to Tegucigalpa many people immediately ask us. Why?  That gets us thinking about why... the answer to the why changes across time.  Why you are going to do something changes as you get closer to actually doing something.  It has been fun being able to answer the same question with different responses over the past couple of months as our reasons and motivations have become more clarified and have matured over time.

This whole thing came about one afternoon when Jennie met some friends who had been educators in Costa Rica, they loved it and needless to say we were excited and wanted to learn more.  I liked the idea but I was pretty skeptical. I was just doubtful that we would find a school that met our needs and would have jobs for both of us... I guess I was sort of the nay sayer.

Well Jennie wrote  a dream list, with the types of things that we wanted.  Then she put the list up in our bedroom.  I have never been an advocate of this type of planning, but I have to say that it was the list that actually ended up confirming that this move was right for us.  In some way each item from the list was present in our lives when we made the decision to move to Tegucigalpa.

First Post

This blog will be a source of information of our friends and family who want to keep up with our family adventure in Tegucigalpa.  Our plan is to post information about what it is like for us to move to Honduras.  Thank you for checking out our blog and we hope that you like following up on how we are doing in this next part of our lives.