“Are you ready?” That
is the one question everyone has been asking whenever Ryan or I tell them about
our move to South Asia. I don’t know
about you, but can anyone every truly be ready for a complete life flip like a move
to South Asia with kiddos? We have been
prepping for this move for, I don’t know, maybe 6 solid months now and the one
thing I have figured out is, no matter how much prep we do, I don’t think we
will EVER be truly ready to move to South Asia.
It’s only a year – yes. A year is
a short amount of time and I already know that the time is going to practically
give us whiplash for how fast it’s going to fly. But just because it is going to fly fast and
be awesome doesn’t make us any more “ready” than if we knew nothing
at all and were going for an indefinite period of time.
What exactly does make one “ready” to move to South Asia,
you might ask? Well, there were a lot of
little steps that we had to start taking many months ago in order to start
preparing. I’d say after Christmas is
when we really kicked it into gear. The
first step was making sure we all had our blue civilian passports. Ryan already had his squared away, since he
has traveled out of the country many times before. But this was a first for the rest of us. Even I never had a passport, because the most
I had ever been out of the country was to go to Canada – and that was before
they started making everyone provide a passport to get in and out. Back when we used to go, you pretty much just
had to tell them where you were headed and for how long. Le sigh.
‘Dem’s was the days. Anyway,
Kiddo and I had received our passports in the mail earlier in the year. We had planned to try a military flight
abroad for our Spring Break vacation last year and so, thus had submitted the
applications last January. When we went
to submit the applications, however, they couldn’t file Little Boy’s because we
didn’t have his correct birth certificate.
Go figure. Thus began the winding
road of all the hoops we would have to jump through in order to get this train
in motion. We cancelled our overseas
plans at that time, went for a Southern road trip instead and put off Little Boy’s
passport until later.
This past January, we began submitting the paperwork for our
brown offical government passports. We need
these in order to travel officially, particularly to Sri Lanka where we will be
living. We also needed these in order to
apply for our long term visas through Ryan’s school, NPS. Normally, I would be the one keeping up with
all of the paperwork, applications, deadlines and steps. I love that kind of stuff. Unfortunately for Ryan, since this is his
school, job and schtick, he has pretty much borne the brunt of these
tasks. So, on top of his endless amounts
of school work and time in actual class, he had to find time to fill out these
forms and make appointments to submit them.
It was definitely frustrating and challenging at times, but he made it
all work and always pulled it off in time.
Aside from passports and visas, there was also a myriad medical boxes that we all had to check in order to be ready to set off on this
journey. This was definitely my
department. The kids and I had to have
physicals and check-ups, dental clearances and overseas vaccinations. This was a job in and of itself, having to
set up the appointments around school, nap times, various out of town
excursions we took along the way and visitors we had coming into town to see us
before we left. Kiddo had her first
ever dental checkup, which went way better than I anticipated. Little Boy also had to have a kind of checkup,
even though, at
the time, he only had about one and a half teeth to speak of. This didn't stop him from being pretty excited about the new tooth brush, which I think just equated to something new and fun for him to stick in his mouth. I, on the other hand, had many more hoops to jump
through in this department. Having
gotten braces on last February, I also had to tack on orthodontic check-ups and
adjustments to this time line. I was
trying to straighten my teeth out in a lot shorter time span than the
orthodontist had figured. On top of
that, I have the worst hybrid of my parents’ teeth and needed a bunch of dental
work in addition to everything else. A
couple of crowns, plus all of the ins and outs at the orthodontist it takes in
order to get that work done in the first place.
Medical and dental appointments started to take over our lives.This isn’t even to speak of the vaccinations. Now, fortunately, we didn’t need TOO many. The kids already had a few of theirs taken care of simply by normal vaccination requirements. Hepatitis A
and B were already underway or finished. So, all they needed was Typhoid and Japanese
Encephalitis.
Typhoid is a one-time deal, but Japanese Encephalitis had two rounds,
which had to be administered at least 28 days apart. During my physical I had some blood work done
to see what I needed – I didn’t have a record of the shots I had during my
school days. Any record of that is LONG
gone. Turns out, I needed Hepatitis A,
plus the 2 others. The kids were very
simple to take care of – the clinic where they are seen for their checkups is
run by the Army and the school that Ryan goes to, so they took care of
everything. My shots, on the other hand
were not quite so simple. There is no
military hospital or health clinic for military dependents in Monterey – which
seems odd, since there are 2 military schools and LOTS of dependents there –
but, there you have it. Getting pregnant
with Little Boy was the first medical attention I needed while in Monterey, so I
really only saw my OB, who was up in Santa Cruz about 45 minutes away. I had Little Boy via VBAC (vaginal birth after
Cesarean), a procedure they do not support in the local hospitals. Since I was determined to have a VBAC this
time around, I had to find a hospital who would support that and so I did – in
Santa Cruz. Since having Little Boy, I
still have not needed any medical attention other than OB checkups, so I just
had that doctor do my physical and prescribe my vaccinations. This all sounds pretty simple, but once you
add in Tricare and Army Health Clinic style red tape it begins to get pretty
messy. Needless to say, it took many weeks,
phone calls, appointments, trips to Santa Cruz and orchestration of other
details in order for me to get my 4 vaccinations. If you could have seen our family calendar
for Feburary, March and April you would have shivered at the number of
scheduled events. 
So, passports, visas, medical, dental and vaccinations. Is that all you ask? NOOOO, that is not all! We also had to find temporary homes for all 3
of our cats! Believe me when I tell you
that this unexpectedly became a bigger hassle than almost all of the rest of
it. Two of our cats went to my mother in
New York. For that, we had to fly them
from Monterey to Albany where they would set up shop with my mother for the
next year. I managed to book them on a flight for the same night Ryan was also flying back East to attend a funeral for our friend, Brian. I dropped him off in San Jose first, then continued on to San Francisco with the two cats. This all happened, by the way, in the middle of when our movers were packing up our house. When it rains it pours, as they say. I came to find out that the airline lost their
reservation. So, when I arrived at San Francisco Airport's Cargo Bay at 10 o’clock at night, 2 hours
from my house, with my 2 cats in carriers with all of their paperwork, shot
records, et al, I was a little miffed to find this out. They were about to close the cargo bay for
the night with nothing but a shrug of the shoulders and a "sorry, better luck next time." But, before surrendering I was able to get
customer service on the line and the lovely Deena from American Airlines saved
the day and my ass and got them on the flight they were meant to be on. Thank you Deena.
Our other cat, Solomon (aka Buddy) went to stay with my girl
Melissa in San Diego. Buddy seemed like
the least likely candidate for issues, even though he is 15 years old. We had spent quite a bit of time getting him
squared away medically and all seemed well, especially since he is a laid back
cat who has loved only food, petting and sleep since the day we met him. Then, about 2 weeks after he arrived in San
Diego, we came to find out that he had Type 2 Diabetes (which, of course, did not show up
in the vet visits we had paid over the previous year) and needed a full range
of medical care in order to get him stabilized and squared away. My poor friend Meli took on that task, God
bless her, because of the huge spot in her heart she has for that darn cat,
despite the fact that she was in the middle of her own move. She and her new husband had just purchased their first house and were in the process of closing and moving when this all took place.
She did all of this, on top of running her own business as an
Esthetician and attending school to be a Holistic Health Practitioner. She’s a saint and I’m grateful for her
patience and friendship. But this
definitely added a lot of stress and strife to the tail end of our pack out in
Monterey. Which is To Be Continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment