And so it begins!

Today is Monday, February 15, 2015.  After months of training, Derek is a diplomat. This Thursday, February 19, 2015 at 8:20 pm, we will be leaving Dulles International Airport to fly to Dhaka Bangladesh where we will begin a sure to be exciting new chapter in our lives. Can I just say that growing up in Bakersfield California, this is not an announcement I ever considered I would be making?

Our friends and family have been through this journey with us from the beginning and for that I thank you all. From the moment Derek received the first email inviting him to Washington D.C. for an interview until this moment, time has crept along at an agonizingly slow pace, each minute VERY slowly dissolving into the next, merging into hours, days, weeks and months as we have prepared for this move.

We have hit every possible obstacle from financial hardships ($8,000 for a new roof), to illness, to injuries. I should add a special thank you to my physical therapist, Cody, for keeping me in one piece for the past several months!

Derek’s preparation involved six months of intensive training with the State Department. Procedures, policies, programs, culminating in training for counter threat driving, hand to hand combat, weapons training, counter terrorism, hostage scenarios, operational first aid (good news, Derek can now mend your sucking chest wound and apply a special operations speed tourniquet) and he’s just in information management!

My contribution was to stay behind in Nebraska preparing our house for sale and getting our belongings ready for shipment. Climbing Mt. Everest would have been easier! I could go on…forever…it was a long arduous process and NOT exciting, so let’s skip through all that and move on to today.

Today we started the final sprint to the finish. What goes in our suitcases? What goes in our UAB (unaccompanied air baggage)? What gets left behind with our good friends the Spells. Did we forget the dog? How do you say “Where’s the bathroom” in Bangali? (I have not learned this phrase yet because apparently the word for bathroom is like 37 letters long and I can't pronounce it)!  Is Chumleigh’s health certificate in order? Sadly the answer to that one is NO! We have to get a new one tomorrow!

What can I tell you about where we’re going? It’s going to be amazing!!! I’ve already posted a lot of facts and figures. We will see and experience things we never have. I will take pictures! Lots of them! I can also tell you that political tension has escalated since we initially received our assignment. Hartal (“peaceful” strikes) are being held weekly. There have been some incidents; molotov cocktails and IED’s. The current situation is that we cannot travel through the city outside the diplomatic enclave, and within the enclave we can only travel in vehicles with the windows rolled up. No walking, bicycles, rickshaws (yes, really) or public transportation. When we arrive at the airport, we will be transported in an armored vehicle to the enclave. Will you be mad if I say I’m kind of excited?? Our hopes are that the current tensions will resolve soon.

And so it begins. From this point on, this blog will be about our lives with the State Department and all the trouble we get into (strike that…all the experiences we will have) when Derek isn’t at work! For the next two years we will be assigned to Dhaka but our travels will take us to other places as well. I could explode with the anticipation!

And then it was all gone!

Wow. So this is it. I’m sitting in the basement on the red sectional sofa that we are leaving behind for Colt and Michelle. The movers just left and the house is now devoid of 98% of our personal belongings. As I stood looking into the “Pub” (the room with the fireplace and wet bar) a part of me strained to feel sadness and yet all I could feel was excitement that this new adventure is really beginning and gratitude to this wonderful old house for giving us shelter for 13 years. 

Don’t get me wrong. I have great sadness at leaving friends and family. I have splendid memories of gatherings here. This has been a fun house. We have held our Christmas party here every year for the past thirteen years, we’ve had three wedding receptions here (and only one was a family member), we’ve had countless barbeques and girls nights and family home evenings…but as I look around the now empty rooms I am filled only with beautiful memories of our time in Nebraska. I am not filled with sadness. I think that when you leave something that was wonderful, you can leave with happiness because there are no regrets. We leave with happiness for what we had here. Being here in Nebraska was supposed to happen, but I think we can leave here happy because it has been so clear to us that this is what is supposed to happen now. This is Derek’s and my time!

Derek called on FaceTime a while ago and I showed him around the empty house and he showed me his graduation certificate from the Foreign Service Institute Training program. His graduation was today. I wish I could have been there, but I was busy doing this part.

Next week he has ‘crash bang training’. This is the counter threat class where he will be learning defensive driving, controlled skids, driving backward, jumping curbs, evasion and well…other stuff…

Ummm…if you happen to know my mother-in-law it might be best if you don’t mention this to her!

I am so excited that our son and his family are buying the house. It makes me happy that this house will still be in the family. I think it will make the transition easier for the grandkids. I am excited that they will also be able to make happy memories here. This is a friendly house, with a beautiful, warm personality. It has invited and welcomed so many. Sometimes I feel that it was the houses choice as much as ours to be constantly filled…but not in a creepy, horror movie kind of a way; more in a loving welcoming way.:-)

From here on things get exciting. The last three months have been a challenge. I’ve had injuries, illness, surgery. Financial challenges, emotional ones. Boy have there been emotional ones. Colt and Michelle have been around me a lot since moving into the house and they can attest to the fact that I will start crying if you so much as say thank you to me. Heck, I don’t even need a reason to start crying. And it’s so weird, because I’m happy!

Did I mention that we are planning on our first trip once we arrive being to New Delhi, India? I am checking off one of my biggest bucket list items! We will go to the Taj Mahal and I will get a picture of me standing right where my father stood sixty years ago. The possibilities for adventure are endless, but you know what? It turns out that is true no matter where you live, every day we all have the opportunity to have incredible adventures. As we leave here, I wish for all of my friends to have new and amazing adventures every day.

We love you all!

A little edification about Dhaka

I've been telling everyone that I'm going to start blogging again, particularly about our upcoming adventures. I thought this might be a good starting point...

For those who have not already heard, we are moving to Dhaka, Bangladesh!!! Derek has taken a position with the State Department, Foreign Service. I am giddy with excitement. Unfortunately many of my friends and family seem to be taking our excitement over moving to an overcrowded third world country as a sign of mental illness. So first, let me assure you that, while I may genuinely seem mentally ill at times, there is no correlation between going to Dhaka and my mental health. This will be a great adventure!

I've had several interesting reactions to our recent announcement, the most common of which is "where IS Bangladesh", followed closely by "WHY"?? FYI...we CHOSE Bangladesh! It was number one on our Bid List (the list of available assignments). Canada was number twelve or out twelve, so you can kind of see what direction we were wanting to take on this.

Another common response is "Really?? Bangladesh??? Well...you'll be in our prayers. (imagine a worried face when people say that). While I always appreciate being in someones prayers, I assure you, we are not moving to a Bangladeshi prison camp. This wasn't a sentence, rather a choice. We will be fine. In fact, we will be moving into the Diplomatic Enclave. This is an exclusive part of the city designated for embassies and their employees. There is 24/7 security. Lots of it. We have our very own marines.

The truth is, we will have domestic help and drivers. I know...don't hate me. You know those massive, run down barios that you see in pictures and on TV? That's not where we'll be living. Bottom line...we won't exactly be roughing it. Okay, I take that back. There isn't a Target for like 9,000 miles, but that's only my idea of roughing it and there's always Target online.

I had an interesting conversation with a telemarketer the other day. She called from a company that I had closed an account with, eager to convince me that I desperately needed to continue their services so I explained to her that we were moving. She assured me that their services were available all over the country. I informed her that we were moving to Bangladesh to which she replied "I'm sure they're available there too"!  Seeing that she wasn't really grasping just where Bangladesh might be, I finally explained to her that it was right next to India to which she replied with surprise "Oh! So NOT in America". Now, I'm not trying to be disparaging. I can give you arguments for why 2+2 doesn't necessarily have to equal four. Math isn't really my thing. By the same token, geography isn't really every ones thing. I had to ask Derek where Nebraska was when he told me we were moving here from England and I'm American!

So in the interest of edification and enlightenment, here is your geography lesson for the day. Bangladesh is a small country surrounded on three sides by India and by Nepal to the north. It is almost the exact square mileage as Iowa. While Iowa boasts a selectively exclusive population of just slightly over 3 million, Bangladesh has a vibrant and bustling population of 159,000,000 I know...that's a lot of digits for a country the size of Iowa. The city of Dhaka, where we will be living is home to around 14,000,000 inhabitants. On a transportation note, it is also home to about a zillion cars and over 400,000 rickshaws. I am also told that Elephants periodically cause traffic jams, hence the need for a personal driver. One might question what the occasional elephant might be doing in the middle of a city that large. One must simply assume that elephants do not have GPS.

The country is 90% Muslim, 9% Hindu, and 1% everything else. We fall into that everything else category. For those who are concerned about the heavy slanting towards Muslim, we are told that it is a country of more moderate Muslims, not the extremist Muslims who so commonly make the news by setting relatives on fire.

It is hot there all the time. The only variation is whether it is hot and dry or hot and wet. During the monsoon season,  which is substantial, up to 70 % of the city can be flooded. They can get up to 100 inches of rainfall during the wet season. So it'll be a little like living in Atlantis!

Dhaka sounds like an amazing city. You might be interested to know that is has been one of the premier cities for textile production for over a thousand years and some of the most gorgeous fabrics in the world can be found there.You know what all that textile stuff means? It means I can buy clothes that get sent to large America retailers for a fraction of the cost! So there!

Dhaka is also called the city of Mosques. I think you can imagine how excited I am as a photographer about that! Unfortunately you can only go inside if you are Muslim, but Hey, I'm Mormon, so I kind of get that;-)

I am told that the people are generally warm and friendly and love to have their pictures taken, so that's another huge win for me!

Anyway, I just thought I'd share a little about this amazing city and country with you! Thank you for your prayers! Those are always appreciated. I'm not stupid, there are always aspects that can be dangerous. Like drinking the water, but I get a little nervous in North Omaha too. It's all about being safe and being smart and being aware of your environment.
We are beyond excited at having this amazing opportunity to go on a long overdue second honeymoon and spend some quality Derek and Leni time while having an opportunity to learn about a whole new culture and to meet new people and make new friends, (while, of course, never forgetting our old friends), so if you ever happen to be passing through Dhaka, give us a call!:-)