Back home again.....

Well, after more than a month away, we returned to a long list of things we needed to do.  Prior to leaving we had established free Gmail accounts because we knew would not be able to use our cable company’s email when we unsubscribed.  We took the opportunity on this trip to begin training our friends and clients to use the Gmail accounts.  We had also set up free Skype accounts and traded contact information with clients, family and close friends.

Needless to say, client issues didn’t stop just because we were focused 24/7 on becoming English teachers.  Legal documents, financial projections and emergency consultations were needed as always but we soon ran into a snag.  Our Gmail and Skype arrangements were available and worked as advertised but the problem is this: Spain time is 8 or 9 hours ahead of Arizona time depending upon the time of year leaving a narrow and undesirable window of time to communicate by voice or video with your clients when you are teaching until 9pm and clients don’t want to wait until weekends.  We were beginning to realize that maybe we just couldn’t take our current jobs with us when we were traveling.

We both had plenty of fires to put out and in addition, while we were gone, two very large packages had arrived for us from the Peace Corps.  Our medical packages had arrived along with our nomination to serve beginning in September in North Africa (Morocco had the only business consultant programs in that region).  Pleasantly surprised at the idea of serving in Morocco we opened the packages and were immediately overwhelmed by the sheer volume of comprehensive and seemingly repetitive information required.

We were going to need to obtain medical records from as long as 30 years ago, schedule appointments with multiple physicians and dentists, obtain labwork, vaccine boosters, x-rays, MRIs, colonoscopies; the list went on forever and although there is a small amount of reimbursement available from the Peace Corps for this, it was still going to be expensive. 

Additionally, we noticed that the Peace Corps required you to bring two pair of eyeglasses which for me was problematic because I had regular lenses for driving and normal activities, bifocals for reading and working and very expensive prescription sunglasses.  Mike really did not want to haul six pairs of glasses around the world.  The holidays were coming up, business travel was required and he had an appointment to see an ophthalmologist about Lasik surgery.

By Thanksgiving we had everything business related back under control and it was time to deal with a series of domestic matters.  We had to evaluate what we wanted to do with the house (sell or rent), how much stuff to put in storage and what to sell, what to do with our vehicles and how to complete our medical package for the Peace Corps.  After our visit to the ophthalmologist to learn about Lasik we decided that this was a good step to take in the simplification process of our lives.

It was wonderful to be back among friends and to share the holiday with our family.  We also found ourselves missing the people we had just spent a very intense month with in Granada.  Both friends and family soon realized that we had fallen in love with Spain in general and Granada in particular and we were learning how important Facebook was going to be for us.

A quick word about Facebook:  The younger generation tends to live their lives online and very publicly and this held, and still holds, no interest for us.  Sharing interesting experiences, mostly through photos, is why we use Facebook because it is a forum in which we can share with our selected family and friends in an efficient manner; basically update everybody at once.  You have a certain amount of control with whom you share and communication can be public or private. 

Facebook is also a way to stay in touch with new or old friends who are a long way away and we have found ourselves frustrated in the effort to stay in touch with our friends that don’t use Facebook because it is significantly more difficult.  Also, quality access to the internet is not guaranteed and can sometimes be sporadic while traveling.  We had seen how the young, European and Australian contingent of our TEFL group used a combination of cheap cell phones, Skype and Facebook to stay in touch, we were gradually learning.

Then it was time for Mike to have Lasik surgery and our world came to a screeching halt.