Our Exit Strategy

While the Bush Administration and the Military Industrial Complex wrangles with "the Liberals" over an exit strategy for Iraq, K and I have come up with ours for leaving England/Europe. It is called Project: Repatriation. You'll notice that the title of our blog has changed to thus.

We concocted this plan late last year. I say "we" but it was really K who came up with it. We had decided that we definitely were going to move back to the US soon after her PhD graduation (this Fall). It was a real mind-f*ck to contemplate the subject. Where do we move back to? How do we apply for jobs from here? How do we bring our stuff back over? How do we tie up loose ends here? Just too many factors to make sense of. That's when K had the brilliant idea: use Florida as an intermediate step/launch-pad.

It would go something like this. Move to my parents' house in South Florida initially for a couple of months of re-acclimating to American life and getting our feet under us. Basically, staying there for the holidays and then move "somewhere" yet-to-be-determined in the beginning of 2009. We would get rid of all the stuff here that we don't want to keep and ship the rest to the Florida address. It should arrive by the time we are ready to move "somewhere". K's e-Employment plus our savings from earning Pounds Sterling will be enough to cover the basics for a couple of months. We will sell the BMW which should cover the cost of shipping our belongings with a bit left over. The deposit from our UK apartment will be put towards a new computer and other necessities. Additionally, we have been "feathering our nest" by purchasing household items on Amazon.com (taking advantage of the exchange rate and free shipping). This structured, meticulous strategy should allow us to maintain our current quality of life without going into major debt like we did when we moved to Europe. Less like starting from scratch!

During our re-acclimation period in Florida, we will apply for jobs in various places we would like to live (more about that in a future post) and possibly take up some part-time employment, but mostly, we will be relaxing a bit and helping my mom fix stuff around the house. And, hey, I might try to write a book about these 5 years in Europe/England using this blog as a basis.

We're looking forward to repatriation, but we will definitely have a wistful departure. It's been a great adventure. K has utmost confidence in this process and doesn't seem to have any fear about it. I'm a bit frightened, though. This is going to be a major change and a shock to the system and it means I will be pulling myself out of the momentum of my job here and sort of starting again. It would be great if I could transplant my job to the US. And I've always considered myself European, so it will be hard for me to leave. Having said that, I feel just as much of a pull to go back to the US (slightly different reasons than K, though). We just don't see ourselves living in Europe, certainly not England, for the rest of our lives. The main reason is family. As I said before, we're just tired of being so far away from everyone. And, man, are we tired of trans-Atlantic flights!

But tonight we're going to revel in our Europeaness and watch The Eurovision Song Contest!

Countdown: 178 Days, 15 Hours, 41 Minutes