A Place to Call Home

Myles has been working very hard, trying to find a place to live for our family while we are in Gdansk. This has been quite a task that we were not expecting to have to do on our own. The people at Fulbright had told him that there would be someone at the University to help with housing. The people at the University were unaware and unprepared to help us with that.

So Myles scoured ads online, translated them from Polish to English, found real estate agents, created emails in Polish (thank goodness for google translate!) and found us a little house to rent! It is 1200 square feet. We've seen pictures and it looks really cute. It is obviously new, certainly not a communist type house.

Myles signed a letter of intent yesterday and as of September 1st, it is ours until June 30th. Our address is in 80 Gdansk, Poland. If you want our actual street address, email me. I have no idea how to pronounce the street name. Myles will get there on the 9th.

Meanwhile, the phone company turned our home phone off on Monday, July 20th. Myles had scheduled it to be turned off on September 20th. It was quite a hassle to get it turned back on but looks like we're back in business for now!

I have the office painted and cleared out. Wow, we had a lot of junk! My next projects are to paint our master bathroom, clear out our closet and then tackle our bedroom for painting. To me these are the hardest rooms so it will be huge to get these done! Our renters are arriving in KC this weekend. They are needing a notarized lease so they can start their children in our neighborhood school on Tuesday, July 28th. So that piece will be completed.

This week we are getting little pictures taken of all of us for our Visas that we need in Poland. Myles and I are also getting international driver's licenses. I have been surprised that they only cost $15 and seem very easy to get. Good for us but I wonder if that's good overall. Oh, well!

Step by Step

Things are getting done, slowly but surely! Of six physicals needed, two are completed. There is a lot of specific paperwork that has to be sent directly from the physician's office to the State Department verifying that all of us are in good health. Myles and Natalie are done and their paperwork has been sent. Natalie had her appointment today and had to have four shots! She would have had to have two of those for school anyway because of recent changes in recommendations from the AMA. Ben has his appointment tomorrow, Trey's is next week and Abbie's is the week after next. I asked about flu shots and our doctor told me that they should be arriving in the office at the end of August. So I will call and get us on the list to get those before we go.

Myles talked to the phone company today to see if we could just 'suspend' our phone numbers till we get back. There was a significant charge for that per month, so we decided that there was really no point in doing that. So when we get back we will get a whole new batch of phone numbers. I wonder how we will feel about re-setting up the land line when we get back after not having one in Poland. I have been hesitant to give up the land line in the past. This will be a good test for me. Our land line here gets disconnected on September 20th and our cell phones on September 27th. We will get cell service in Poland and I wonder if I will ever use it to call anyone but Myles...?

I am getting rid of stuff like crazy. I had a sewing machine with a cabinet that I got from a friend a few years ago. It sat in our office upstairs and I never even plugged it in. I posted it on www.kcfreecycle.org yesterday and a lady came and picked it up today! I'm glad to have it gone. My dining room table is filled with treasures I have found throughout the house that are leaving one way or another!

There is still much to do but we are inching closer every day.

Ginger is Moving to Tennessee

One of the things we have been trying to figure out before we make our big move to Poland is what to do with the dog and the cat. The cat is going to live with a friend of ours while we are gone and we will get her back when we return.

We have decided that Ginger (the dog) should be put up for adoption. I contacted a daschund rescue group in hopes of finding a good home for her. Ginger is half wire haired daschund and half shih tzu.

In a very short amount of time I received a response from a lady in Memphis, Tennessee, who would like to adopt her. She already has one daschund/shih tzu mix and is excited to have another. This lady has a brother who is an over the road truck driver and he comes through Kansas City once a week. She wanted to take Ginger tomorrow, July 7th. I explained to her that the kids would like to keep her for another month since we are not moving till September. She thought that would be no problem so we are keeping her until the first week in August. Then we will meet her brother somewhere in KC and he will take Ginger to her new home. Her new owner is also going to keep us updated on how Ginger is doing and send us pictures of her in her new home.

This is hard for the kids but they all agree that it is best for Ginger and that she is going to a great new home. Myles was asking the kids how long they thought it would be before Ginger was barking with a southern accent! The lady who is taking her sure has one, so it probably won't be long!

Math on the Baseball Field

Last evening Ben (our 14 year old), had a baseball game. He had told us that Aquinas High School was playing a game right after his on an adjacent field. Ben is getting ready to start high school there and LOVES baseball so we said we would stay and watch part of that game. As our family was sitting there, we learned that the team playing was a group of sophomores, a great example for Ben to watch since they are only one year older than him. We started chatting with some of the parents there. It was so nice to meet a few Aquinas families.

One lady who was watching her son said that she was a math teacher at Aquinas and asked about what class Ben was taking for math. It turns out that she will be his math teacher! I could not believe my ears. It has been on my mind that I need to contact all his teachers and let them know what our family is doing this year. Math had been my biggest concern. It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to tell her our situation and get to know her and to be able to introduce Ben to her. She said she has not had this sort of situation come up before, but she said that it sounds like a fabulous experience and that she is happy to work with us to keep Ben up to date while we teach him ourselves in Poland.

It was a perfect summer night at the ball field, and we enjoyed watching the beginning of the Aquinas game, and I'll always be amazed that Ben's new math teacher happens to have a kid on that team and we just happened to choose to stay to see part of that game...just a coincidence? It sure doesn't seem like one!

And Myles bought his plane ticket yesterday. He is leaving the US on September 8, 2009. So we will have 19 days here without him before we head over ourselves.