With the prospect of Mike
going blind now firmly behind us and both of us working hard to get back into
decent physical shape to minimize any future health issues, it was time for
some hard evaluation.
We had learned that we
did like being on the ground in another place and a different culture. We had learned that the Charles Schwab
checking account worked exactly as advertised and was perfect for us. We had learned how to use Gmail and Facebook
in ways that suited us. We had learned
that we absolutely hated flying long distances and we had realized we
would now never be content without some significant exposure to other people
and cultures in our lives.
The Peace Corps seemed
like a perfect way to begin that process of living at least part of our lives
outside the United States. We continued
to work on all the medical forms, made appointments for doctors, dentists,
lab-work, diagnostic procedures and continued to move that process forward. We had made the decision when we went to Spain for the TEFL course that we would live in the residencia, a far different environment than we had
ever used for vacations (we had been of the 4 and 5 star resort and golf course
mentality). While it was a new experience for us it was also a rewarding one the we thoroughly enjoyed.
Our new perspective was that
the Peace Corps would really take us back to our roots and help us learn to
live very simply and frugally. We
started to realize that our perspective on the entire world and how we would
live in it had changed. Gone was the
desire for more stuff or to recreate our American lifestyle and in its place
was an insatiable curiosity about other people, places and cultures and a
desire to not only see them but to live and experience life with them.
Suddenly it was time to seriously
start getting rid of stuff. We did not
know exactly what the future would look like but we knew that we had some
significant changes to make. The house
had to go, being a long distance land lord just did not have any appeal to
us. Getting it on the market became a priority for the summer.
First and most important
we had taken the time over the holidays to explain to our two daughters what we
were thinking. They actually both
thought the Peace Corps was a really cool idea and they were very happy for
us. They had mixed emotions when we told
them we had decided to sell the house and that these could be the last holidays
we celebrated in this house we had lived in for 17 years. Then the really big thing….here are your
sticky notes, go through the house, pretend we died, and mark anything you want
to keep: books, furniture, artwork,
kitchen supplies, everything. Difficult
for them, easy for us!
We actually figured that
we would need some kind of small storage unit for the things we would want to
keep, thinking that we would need some furniture and maybe a few boxes of
things to get restarted with when we came back to the States. Assuming that we would leave for the Peace
Corps sometime in the next 18 months as planned, we would be getting through sometime
in 2014, and who knew what we would want to do at that point.
Then the real work began,
with more learning, like how to use Ebay and Craig’s list, how to figure out
what you should try to get for stuff you haven’t seen for 10 years, and what charities you want to give things to
that you either can’t or don’t want to sell.
We also had to learn how
to manage what we were calling our “leave behind” budget. A storage unit, life insurance policies, property
taxes, and all the other little things that we would still need to pay for even
if we were living somewhere else.
Learning new ways of
dealing with each other was no small task either. Never, in our entire married life had we
spent so much time together. We needed
to work as hard on making our relationship work for both of us as we did on all
the other stuff. Two very strong
personalities making tough decisions in the midst of very high stress can take
a toll on any relationship and yet for us in many ways it seemed to help bring
us together. We began to see that even
if we came to the answers from very different perspectives, we kept coming to
the same answers.
The idea now was to get
the house on the market so hopefully it would sell by the end of
the year. Once the house sold we would
become apartment dwellers, renting until time to leave for the Peace Corps
assignment, whatever and whenever that might be.
The idea of continuing to travel after our
assignment just kept getting stronger.
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