The Oregon Trail

We left Qatar on June 1st in the wee hours of the morning. We were eager to eat Mexican food, drink buckets of Dr. Pepper, and wander aimlessly through super American places like Wal-Mart. I was excited about wearing shorts and possibly tank tops without worrying about conservative Gulf Arabs staring in judgement at my white pasty skin.

After hours of flying, we finally arrived in fields of green. Our homeland had been flooded actually. We were met at the airport by my parents and later met up with M's family for a quick dinner at McAlister's.

We planned to stay at my parents' lake house so we had to plan out our days without wasting any time. We would have less than two weeks to drive from Missouri to Oregon, but also had a lot on our list to accomplish in just about one week:

- renew my driver's license (paper test and driver's test)
- merge all bank accounts (from 5 to 2)
- buy a car
- get car insurance
- tag and title the car
- have a meal or two with friends and families
- get a rental truck or pod or upack to move our stuff
- pack our stuff (this took a whole day!)
- pack the cats and our necessary stuff in our car
- drive to Oregon!
- find a house!
- contact the university and get to work!

As usual, I have had a few panic attacks in the past 25 days - getting out of Qatar, flying home, moving out to Oregon, and finding a home out here. However, things are good. We're sitting on the floor of our 2 bedroom 1 bath home. I am typing away on a new little laptop; it is tiny so I can carry it with me as a bike to work every day! Frankie and Sophia are their usual kitty selves - fighting, snuggling, and creating hours of entertainment for us.

Thank goodness they are with us because we ain't got nothing else! We packed our container on a Thursday, drove to Oregon on Friday and Saturday. We took only what we'd need and told the Upack ABF truck to take their time transporting our stuff as we still had not found housing. We checked into a Motel 6 that allowed cats for three nights. We found our house on the third day, and moved on the fourth day. In all that I still managed to panic.

Things are good though. Our laundry list of stuff to do for settling in the US is getting shorter each day. I'm just not settled mentally - more on that in the next blog post!

Until Next Time,
WW