LearningToFly.me

As I sat to write an update, I was effortlessly thrown into my reliable shame-spiral over the delay of this post. This endearing process is typically reserved only for those of you lucky enough to have worked with me and the love of my life who said “I do” three years ago. You said it. I heard it. There were witnesses, kid.

It’s a slow burn this shame-spiral, but once I’m over myself, well, game on. I’m filling you in on this moment not for your pity, but rather to share a moment of enlightenment I experienced as a result of moving abroad.  It’s a symptom of throwing yourself completely out of your comfort zone, but I’m getting to the good stuff, I promise.

In grad school, we studied the theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which suggests that we humans need to have our most basic level of needs met first, such as food, water, air, and shelter, before we are motivated to achieve our next and greatest level of awesomeness. (I’m paraphrasing a bit.) As such, I’m going to chalk up 50% of this delayed post to good old fashioned laziness, but the other 50% will land solidly in the camp proving his theory that I needed to meet some basic needs before I felt truly motivated to write. My basic needs of food, water and air have all been met, though the quality of this air is debatable. So the last basic need box to check: shelter, or more specifically a home.

You see, Dom and I have been living out of a suitcase since exactly November 4. Election Day. And in my defense, I’m pretty sure I’ve done more in the same time frame than than some of our elected officials in Congress. I digress. My point, and subtle plea for your forgiveness, is that this bird who is learning to fly really needs a nest. And we found one!

But first let me tell you how we got here. It was by the grace of a mighty God and the truly charitable acts of family and friends that we made it to Hong Kong with all of our luggage. From our last post you recall we were subleasing our apartment to a wonderful gentleman from Ohio, so while we could keep the major items of our apartment in tact (sofa, bed, dresser, etc.), we needed to divide our personal belongings into things we were taking with us to Hong Kong and things that would remain in storage. We did this in approximately 2.5 days. Here’s why:

After our trip to Hong Kong in November, we headed for the greatest state in the Union to celebrate Thanksgiving and it was wonderful. So much food and so many new babies to hug. Keep up the great work family! I stayed in Toledo with my family for an extra week and Dom traveled for work. We met back up in Boston in early December and started packing. We made good (not great) progress before we both got sick, Dom more so than me. I had a common cold, but Dom settled into bronchitis. He coughed and worked while I stared aimlessly at my closet.

Oh man, if hours were dollars, the amount of time I stared at that closet would buy me a flight back to the US. I was overwhelmed with our apartment and didn’t know where to begin. So I did what every type A girl would do… I turned to excel and made a to-do list that would make my Deloitte colleagues proud. Now we’re cooking with fire. Oh, wait! Time to fly back to Ohio for the Christmas holiday.

January 1st we are back in Boston and our flight is January 4th. We can do this! But first let’s buy some firewood because my sentimental husband would like to have one more fire in our apartment before we move. I love him. I really do.

At this point, the fire is roaring and Dom is as stubborn as he is unhealthy. I am shoving, zipping, and folding our 700sqft apartment into every bag I can find. I run out to grab us dinner, but by this point I’ve packed my winter coats and clothes so I pull together anything I can find and start to layer. I was runway-ready.

It’s Saturday morning, exactly 24 hours before our flight departs to HK, and my sweetheart tells me he is going to go to Urgent Care at MGH because he is really sick and has a cough that could probably get us stopped at immigration. I think to myself “Remember when your mom, my mom, and the homeless man on the street suggested you see a doctor?!” He heads out and I put my game face on. I pack and Dom comes home with meds and his trusty cough, but he is back!

We spend the next 12 hours packing and re-packing. This experience taught me two things: Dom is a masterful packer. I am a slob. Like any couple (or just us) we divided the labor by ownership and started packing, or in my case shoving. By 10 p.m., Dom practically had his bags color-coded and mine looked like a garbage heap. I smiled at my boo and asked if he had any room for some of my important items in his luggage. We had “cleansing” of what I thought was important and Dom engineered my junk into a home. This took hours.

Our place was now split into luggage going to Hong Kong and boxes going to storage. By storage I mean the home of our charitable friends Kaitlyn and Liam who may have regretted their generous offer to store our stuff. Kaitlyn was my first boss in Boston and Liam is the lucky man who married well. 🙂 These two are so dear to us and their generosity has no limits. While their 2.5 year old and 7 month old were down for a nap, Liam drove into the city and picked up our goods to store in their home. What a blessing!

We spent the early morning hours readying our apartment for our new tenant and around 3:00 a.m., Dom convinced me it was time to take our 12 bags and one massive bin down our death stairs. Fun fact about this bin… it’s Dom’s from his first move to China. I swore we would never need it and hated keeping that hideous thing in our apartment for seemingly no future need. Foot in mouth. We start our journey downward. Keep in mind, our neighbors below us just had a baby and all I worried about was waking up that little nugget by the sound of a 50lb bag plowing me down the stairs. We made it down and caught a few hours of sleep before our flight. Two Uber SUVs full of our lives, took us to the airport and we checked into our flight.

It’s 7:00 a.m. and Fitbit tells me we have logged more than 7,000 steps and 22 floors. What Fitbit failed to measure was the number of times Dom had to re-pack my luggage to make it fit in the security line. I’m the worst. Nonetheless, we fly to Chicago and pop some bubbly in the lounge to toast to our new adventure and for making it this far!

After sitting on the tarmac for 2 hours and we finally take off for our 15 hour flight to HK. By the way, we realized on the plane that it was the first time we had every flown to Asia together. We are an economical pair, so typically I’ll fly to meet Dom wherever work takes him. We arrive in Hong Kong and to our surprise so did all of our luggage! It’s now 9:00pm in HK and we loaded our life into 2 separate cabs to our hotel and went straight to bed.

So we are officially in Hong Kong and it took a village. Our friends in HK have continued to go above and beyond in helping us get settled and we are so very grateful.  We move into our place in mid-February and couldn’t be more excited, but more on that in another post. Probably next year. Just kidding.