Asian Beginnings

becky    Uncategorized    

The last three months of our lives are sort of a blur of activity at this point. We spent the last week of July traveling, most of August in training and traveling, September was spent saying good-byes, tying up everything in the US, and packing and preparing for our move that started on October 2.  We spent the first week of October as a family to give ourselves some time to reset before heading on to Asia and we arrived here just after midnight on October 10, a little over two weeks ago.   We started driving towards the end of our first week and have sort of figured out driving from the right side of the car on the left side of the street, though the rules of the road are different (have you ever seen a green light specifically for u-turns?), so that makes it all the more interesting and difficult.
Our brains are constantly being strained and taxed even by simple things like signage.  One of the things we learned in training was that cross-cultural life comes with a lot of stress, some of which is not even initially obvious. It’s taxing to the brain to see signage in another language.  In a given stretch of road we are likely to see signage is 5-6 different languages that are almost all comprised of different characters/letters.  It’s no wonder we need so much extra sleep right now (another thing we learned in training-cross cultural learning requires extra sleep) and that it’s difficult to make even simple decisions like where to eat a meal because our brains are so stretched.  In addition to that we’re trying to process our new surroundings, having to convert currency in our minds so we know how much we’re spending or convert kilometers into miles so we have a better idea how far it is to get somewhere.  A trip to the store to buy four things is not as simple when all of this gets factored in.
Our favorite restaurants so far are a couple Indian places that are close by.  Benjamin has yet to refuse anything that’s been put in front of him and Samuel has been doing pretty well, too. Samuel is just enough older than Benjamin that the move is hitting him harder and he remembers more and so he misses more people and things.  We think that finding a place we can call home will make a big difference for our whole family.  We’ve pretty much lived out of suitcases for over a month now and that gets old after a while, especially when we’ve had to move those suitcases multiple times in that stretch.  Thankfully the place we’re in now we’ll be able to stay in until we get a house here, which we’re optimistic will be end of next week if things go well tomorrow when we meet with our real estate agent and the owner of a house we’re looking at renting.
All in all we’re doing about as well as could be expected at this stage. We’re eager to get more established here with a house/car/phones/etc., but know that it will all come in time and at least have a place to stay, a car to drive, and temporary phones to use until then.   Feel free to email us, connect with us on Facebook, etc. We want to know how life is with you and always appreciate people taking time to drop us a note.  It makes everything that is familiar seem a little less distant.

We’re here!

toffer    Uncategorized    

Well, there isn’t a lot of time to share everything right now, but since it’s been so long since our last online update I thought I’d share a little about how things are going.

At this point we are getting within hours of the one-week mark for being in our new Asian country. It was about as you would expect with 2 small children and a variety of bags that are supposed to tie us over until our shipment arrives with the rest of our belongings.

Saying goodbye was hard, not only because there were so many but if felt like they kept on going for a long time. We’re now starting to say hello to our new culture, coworkers, and way of life.

Right now we have a temporary place to stay while we are finding a new place to call home. We hope to have that worked out soon and move in as soon as is feasible. The boys have been dragged around to a lot of places and miss somewhere of their own where they can be themselves.

For all of us we’ve been sampling some of the tastes of Asia while occasionally stopping somewhere familiar to eat a meal that seems a little more like we’re used to.

Getting around is a little easier now that we have a car to use while we find something permanent to buy. It’s been interesting/strange/terrifying/confusing to not only learn how to drive in a new area with its own peculiarities and rules but to be doing it while driving on the “other” side of the road. Becky and I have been getting in some practice and are starting to feel a little more confident.

On the work end of things I’m mixing a little bit of training in with settling the family. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to help at home and work as I have the chance to.

There is a lot more to say and we’ll be updating a little more frequently soon. The adjustment continues and the stress of making heads and tails of things when not all of the signs are in English can take it’s toll. Even with the stress we are excited to be here and to see what God is going to be doing with our family as we begin to serve.