[L] Hello friends! We are finally here in our new place... It's been quite a journey. The past 3-4 weeks have been CRAZY! But alas, we have arrived. As Shakespeare writes in Romeo and Juliet, "Parting is such sweet sorrow." The "parting" part was definitely hard. Though we looked forward to the journey ahead, leaving friends and family in a place we called "home" for so long was a difficult process. We miss all of you guys so much already. We especially want to thank those of you who came to help us move in our last days... We couldn't have moved out without your help. It was a humbling experience for us... realizing that we could NOT have done it by ourselves (even though we thought we could--yeah right!). Who knew one (and we have two) could hoard so much stuff after only a few years!
On the last night before we turned in our keys, we took one last look around our apartment to make sure we didn't leave anything (and that everything has been cleaned out). While walking through our apartment one last time, suddenly another wave of nostalgia hits us. Like a camcorder, flashbacks of memories came back to us and we can't believe that we are now leaving it all behind... turning in the key was definitely a hard thing to do. We wished we had more time to say our "good-byes" and our "farewells"...but we found ourselves scrambling with barely enough time to move, clean our apartment, and pack.
So now, we have finally arrived to a new world after a long journey. Everything takes 2-3 times as long to do here, especially since we are new to the language and culture. Just writing this entry took a LONG time as we had a difficult time with the internet connection, phasing in and out... Even just finding our way back to our place was difficult...let's just say getting "lost" and "disoriented" happens with every activity that we needed to do... even with the mundane and ordinary tasks....like to going to the store.
We'll try to share our daily adventures here... but we'll save that for the next entry as we are exhausted in doing just ordinary task and figuring our way around here. We are just thankful we are in one piece -- the buses here stop for no one. The bigger vehicles rule over smaller vehicles, and in turn, bikers rule over the pedestrians. Maybe we'll go get bikes soon this week! Then, maybe we'll be one-up from being pedestrians.
