A Cuppa Cosy Heads International – Vacation Time

Good morning! I figured I would give you a chatty little update on how our move is going (the real how our move is going, not a fluffy sugar coated answer). I know that I have been getting a lot of advice and I want to share what I’ve found to be helpful in the hopes that it may help someone else.

First off, I want to clarify some things.

1. We are moving due to my husbands job. My tidbits go between specifics relating to that and general information that is good to know.
2. Currently in our move process we are on vacation at our In Laws. We planned about a 3-4 week vacation in between the move to see our family before heading out of the country.

Our timeline has been about a span of 8 months (ish) from the earliest time we got an inkling that we could be moving overseas until now. It started with a phone call and an email. My recommendation to anyone out there who is potentially moving out of the country is to bank on enough time. Sure, you can move at the drop of the hat and make it work, but having a good amount of time on our side has been a big help.

We started with medical. Getting checked out by doctors, verifying if we needed any shots or tests done that are specific to where we are going (there weren’t) and getting any prescriptions updated. This is always the best place to start because if there is anything that you do end up needing to do, you have plenty of time to do it.

Once our medical stuff was done and we were cleared to go (meaning we got approval through his work to move, and got their paperwork), came the process of setting up our actual work. This is the bulk of the move process and it means A LOT. There is so much to sort through, to figure out, to plan for.

I made immediate use of Social Media. Getting into contact with folks that we knew who had lived overseas, joining Facebook groups for the area we are heading, talking to people who had just recently made this type of move. In some ways it became overwhelming (as there is just so much information from so many different sources), but it was a big help. In fact, because of Social Media we know exactly what we are going into in terms of housing.

I highly recommend that you do the same when you are moving somewhere you are unfamiliar with. Social media can be very effective when you are trying to figure out what exactly you are moving to. With that being said, also be aware that what you are finding (or being told) may not apply to your specific situation. Also, people will bring their own bias into what they are saying. Just keep an open mind while you are taking advantage of this.

Among all of the things that we needed to account for, the actual moving and shipping of our house hold goods, car, and personal belongings has been the easiest part of our move (ironically enough).

**At this point I’ll further clarify that my husband is in the military and most of the shipping, plane travel, and such has been organized by them. We handle the actual company and day hours, but they do more of that portion of it. If you would like to me to do a post specifically dedicated to that and organizing all of that, please let me know. **

We slowly (over a period of 3 months or so) worked through our home; getting rid of/selling what we didn’t want or couldn’t take, determining what would stay behind in storage, what would actually go with us. In a way it is hard to do this as we don’t know what our space will look like in our new home, but we’ve just decided to take 90% of our belongings with us.

We checked the guidelines for our packed and carry on luggage and found out the standard answer- each person can have two checked baggage (more is extra cost) as well as the standard one carry on and a personal bag. For our family, we were allotted 8 bags total (plus any carry ons).

I think the hardest point of the move was the Holiday’s. We were in kind of a holding cycle where it was too far out to pack anything, but we had finished what we needed to do prior to movers coming. It was one of those times where you feel like you need to be doing something, you want to be doing something, you are ready for the move, BUT there isn’t anything you can do. This was a period of a few weeks and honestly was probably the worst few weeks of the move itself (as of now, I can’t tell you what the next few months will be like). I got really short tempered during this time and was just ready for everything to start happening. It felt like we were just waiting and waiting.

I don’t know if these types of updates really help, or provide any insight in any way, but I want to have them for my own reflection and memories. I’ll do a couple more updates as we go along as well.