Swan Song

[Note: I started writing this post about a week ago.  Had several paragraphs written, but then I had to shelve it for a while.  When I went back to it later, it was gone.  I blame the software I’m now using to publish to the blog: Windows Live Writer.  It somehow lost or deleted my draft.  Anyway, the following is take 2.]

We have been remiss.  Very, very remiss.  When we left the UK, this blog was supposed to turn into a “repatriation” blog with stories of our trials and tribulations of integrating with American society after a long time away.  Using a newfound perspective, I was going to spend our first year back remarking on the differences between American and European society and sharing our repatriation experience.  It would bring this 5+ year journey to a nice, neat close; ready to publish as a bathroom or coffee-table book (OK, maybe not).

Well, it didn’t quite work out that way.  You see, we kind of just got too busy living the experience to sit down and write about it.  That sounds incredibly self-important, but it’s the truth.  Too, part of it was that I just got a little bit lazy about blogging.  What with looking for a place to live, hunting for jobs, acquiring both, and then getting more and more busy with everything that goes along with those things, I ended up re-prioritizing things a bit.  The closest I have come to blogging is posting updates on Facebook and Twitter.  Eventually, we decided that we would just go ahead and wrap it up early.  Premature closure is better than no closure at all.  That kind of thing.  After all, we’re pretty much repatriated already.  It was easier than we thought it would be!

Sure, when we arrived last November, we were pretty overwhelmed (too much whelm, much too much).  In fact, we were initially in a kind of psychic recovery position.  So much going on.  Drama at home (don’t want to go into the details), new awesome President elected, Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, tons of mail to go through, getting to grips with being back, etc.  It was impossible to concentrate enough to write an email, even less a blog.  A few weeks later, I was able to muster the strength to coalesce a few of the thoughts and emotions into a stream-of-consciousness piece about the arrival.  Then it was time to start concentrating on our move to the opposite corner of the United States.  Look for a job.  Then a place to live.  Then plan our road trip across the country.  We bought a car.  We got mobile phones.  We had a Christmas From Hell (long story).  And then we set off.  Great road trip that put us in Eugene, OR just in time for New Year’s.  But we were so tired that we couldn’t even stay up to midnight, though we did watch some of the East Coast celebrations on TV with Nanny.

After a couple of days catching up with ourselves in Eugene, we headed out to Central Oregon to stay at Kristen’s aunt & uncle’s ranch in Sisters.  We had been invited to stay there for as long as we needed to.  Looking back now, I don’t think we would have recuperated from the stress of November and December (well, probably the stress of all of last year, if we’re honest) if we had not had this opportunity.  Staying out there in the peace and solace of Willows Ranch was just the kind of panacea we needed.  We’re just sad we couldn’t stay longer!  We pretty much were just there for the month of January, a month that saw the most Project: Expatriated blog posts of 2009.  It didn’t take very long for one of us to find a job (me getting hired on an Americorps contract at Portland YouthBuilders) – that was our plan: stay in Sisters until one of us found a job and then we would look for a place to live near that job.

At the end of January, I was hired as a Learning Coordinator at at the Computer Technology site of Portland YouthBuilders and I started a mere week later on February 5th.  The week before that we found an apartment in Milwaukie, OR (just south of the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland) and moved in almost immediately.  I hit the ground running with this job and time has just been FLYING by.  And I just love it.  It has really cemented my aspirations to go into secondary education (high school or middle school).

Kristen had a bit more of a challenge finding a suitable job.  What can I say?  She’s got a more specialized skillset!  She went the networking route (the way most people find a job in Portland, Oregon) and eventually was hired as a Program Manager of the Project Management course at Portland State University’s Professional Development Center.  She loves her job, too.

Speaking of loving stuff, we just LOVE Portland.  We say that to ourselves on a regular basis.  “I love this town!”  It has EVERYTHING we could possibly want.  Great: food, culture, beer, people, activities, character, bands/music/venues, neighborhoods, and resources.  It’s cosmopolitan, liberal, forward-thinking, cool, and just plain awesome.  And it’s kind of below the radar.  People seem to think it just rains in Oregon and the lumber comes from here.  And to be honest, as hypocritical as this sounds, we like it that way.  We don’t want more people to move here (except for my sister, her fiance, and my mom).  Really.  Don’t.  If that doesn’t convince you, let me just say that it is REALLY HARD to find a job here.  Oregon’s economy is syrupy slow at the best of times.  From what I’ve been told by friends and colleagues here, Kristen and I are INSANELY fortunate to have found the jobs that we did so quickly.  It usually takes up to a year or more to find anything viable.  Not sure what we did to make it happen so easily, but it’s apparently rare.  Who knows what will happen when my Americorps contract runs out?

We really like the place we live.  It’s a great apartment complex/community (Waverley Greens).  We have great neighbors and we are in close proximity to all necessities and within walking distance of Old Town Milwaukie.  It ain’t cool or hip like areas in Portland (not yet anyway), but it’s quiet, affordable, and cozy.  Sort of old school, in a way.  It’s 5.6 miles from my current workplace and about 6 miles from Kristen’s office.  We have a nice little one-bed flat on the ground floor with a sizable back patio, covered parking, amenities, and a communal garden plot.  Things were a bit bare at first, but after a couple of months here, we have made this into a cozy little abode.  A place we intended to stay for at least a year.  [Yeah, I wrote intended.]

This past week (July 20th until now) has been action-packed!  Kristen has been looking at the real estate market in Portland for almost a year.  Checking all the neighborhoods we are interested in for houses.  Just to keep a toe in the water, really.  We haven’t really looked at any in person because we have been operating under the assumption that this is something we will do in a year or two.

We had an impromptu tour of another house several weeks ago just because we walked by and the owner was there.  It was a wonderful little place that we briefly entertained going for, but then changed out minds because we felt we weren’t ready.  Then last Saturday she found a house with a good price tag in a nearby neighborhood and scheduled a viewing.  Just for fun. 

It rocked our world.  Though small, it had EVERYTHING on our wish-list plus a GIANT backyard.  We fell deeply in love with it.  And we enlisted the house listing agent as our realtor.  And we viewed another property with her, just as a contrast.  And we MADE A FRIGGIN’ OFFER on the first house we viewed!  It sounds crazy, but it’s not.  Trust me. 

Well, this past Friday, while my sister was here visiting from Florida, we won the bid.  Kristen had a tense afternoon back and forth on the phone with the listing agent/our realtor.  There was another buyer interested in the house (interested almost as much as us), so we entered into a bit of a bidding war.  A war that we won.  And we still got a great deal on the house.  It’s a place we can see ourselves staying for a LONG time.  But this is all so crazy and sudden that it hasn’t really sunken in yet.  We have a tentative closing date of September 15th.  Both of us are SO looking forward to taking over this house, though we’re not too thrilled with the prospect of moving again as we only got to this apartment in February!  At least a lot of our boxes are still unpacked!  (Yeah, stashed in a couple of closets and in Nanny’s garage).

In our not-too-distant-future, we will be homeowners and we will be able to get a dog, some chickens, a lush garden, and the home we have been craving for so long.  A new adventure begins.

So, without further a-do, we would like to call Project: Expatriation/Expatriated/Repatriation to a successful close.  It’s been an amazing journey.  We hope you have enjoyed following along.

PS – As this new adventure begins to unfold, we will have plenty of things to share, but we are going to do it in a different format.  That of a private Ning social network.  We would like to invite our loyal readers to join our network “The RK Corral” where we will post photos, blog entries, videos, and other goodies on a semi-regular, informal basis.  It’s a private network, so you will need to sign in to view it.  Friends and family will receive an invitation when we are ready to go live with the site.  Otherwise, surf on over to it and submit a request to become a member.  Don’t worry, it’s free and easy to join.