I Have A Follower

Ok, it's my husband, but it still was a nice surprise!

I am just beginning the process of getting the house ready for when we leave for Gdansk in September. We will be renting our house to our sweet neighbor's brother for the time we are gone. So I am trying to get things cleared out. Our subdivision is having a garage sale later this week so I am going to try to get rid of some stuff that way. Then the donation people are coming next week and they will get whatever I don't get rid of at the garage sale. The timing is working out pretty well!

Myles was told last night that a significant portion of his books need to leave our home. He does not easily part with books, but they are taking us over!

This week I will be registering as a private home school with the State of Kansas. I get to name it myself and I think I'm going to call it Gartland International Academy of Homeschooling. When am I ever going to get a chance to name a school again?

September 27th, It Is

We are making progress! We have decided that Myles will go over a few days before the orientation to get things set up in Gdansk for us. Then he will go to Warsaw and Poznan from September 16th-27th. We leave KC at 6:00p.m. on the 27th and fly to Chicago. We have a couple hour layover there and take off from Chicago at 9:55p.m. The flight is 9 hours 20 minutes to Warsaw. We will arrive in Warsaw at 2:15p.m. (but it will seem like 7:15a.m. to us). From Warsaw, we have a 90 minute layover and then we have a 3:45p.m. flight (8:45a.m by our clocks) to Gdansk that will take an hour and five minutes. I guess we'll figure out what to do from there! This is an exciting journey!

September 27th?

We are starting to piece together how this is going to happen. Myles needs to be in Warsaw by September 17th for orientation which lasts until the 26th. We are now mulling over travel details. As of this moment it looks like he will be leaving our great state of Kansas on or around September 12th. The rest of us will head over on or around September 27th. Lots to do as we blaze this trail!

We ARE Going

After months and months of waiting for word, we finally learned today that we are in fact going to Poland! Myles has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar position at Gdansk University of Technology in Gdansk, Poland. It is a metro area of about 800,000 people right on the Baltic Sea in far northern Poland.

We found this information out about 2:15 this afternoon. I was running an errand and was talking on my cell phone to my neighbor when Myles beeped in. I had a feeling...and told her I'd call her back. Sure enough this was THE call. We have told the kids and they are excited. We have just started researching the area and it looks absolutely beautiful! This is the extent of the information we have at this point. We have been told to prepare for a deluge of information very shortly!

Passports Have Arrived...

Wow! The kids' passports arrived in the mail today. It only took 10 days. How is it that the State Department can get these done in 10 days and we have been waiting months and months for word on whether or not we are going, specifically where we are going, what we are going to have to do to prepare to go? Oh, well, at least we have the passports now. The kids enjoyed seeing them and I have them locked away safe!

Still Waiting...

We still don't know where we are going to be but we are certain that we are going somewhere. I am needing to look into KS home school curriculums and talk to some people about how to do it. But things have been so busy the past week and I have not had a chance to do it yet. My 14 year old is being confirmed tonight and my sister is flying in from CA to be his sponsor. We have games and practices galore and the end of the school year is quickly approaching. We have talked to our school principal for the younger three, but we have not yet let the high school know what is going on. We need to make an appointment and get up there.

I was looking around this house and I believe this summer I will get rid of lots of junk before we go. Busy!

Are We Really Going?

Since last August we have been waiting to hear news! Our family of six (mom, dad and four kids 14-6) may be spending 10 months in Poland. We received an "unofficial" email on Wednesday, April 22nd that it looks like we are on our way! We don't know specifically where yet, but at this point we were really just wondering "if." We can get to the details later. We have just applied for US Passports for the kids (mom and dad already have one). Applying for passports with kids is an experience! You have to have birth certificates, ss#, photos (Walmart does passport photos for $10) and both mom and dad AND kids have to be present! We were quite the spectacle at the post office after school on Monday! It takes a long time because there is so much documentation that needs to be done on each form. But that part is done and the passports should be arriving at our home in about four weeks.