So I've been pondering what made getting the house unpacked so long here and I have some theories....thought I would share them so you all wouldn't think I've just been sitting on the chaise lounge drinking fruity drinks all day....lol.
So I just looked back and when I finished unpacking in Tbilisi and posted the house tour blog was about one month after our first shipment of household goods arrived and I commented on how it seemed to take forever....lol. Little did I know that would be so quick. Here in Suva, we got into our permanent housing mid march and the first of our household goods arrived a few days later. The last of our household goods arrived three weeks later. I just posted the house tour blog which was three months after our first shipment of household goods....so here goes my thinking out loud and compare/contrast (mainly verbalize stuff to make myself feel better).
So in Tbilisi, we moved into our permanent housing upon arrival, so we had time when we had no household goods to move furniture around to our liking. In Suva, we moved into our permanent housing with our UAB days before our first shipment of household goods arrived. Once we decided we wanted to do some furniture swapping that took several weeks due to the head warehouse person being on leave (which in return put organizing on hold, if we didn't get something we were requesting or they couldn't take what we were requesting to send back we'd have to possibly do more purging or figure out another place to store art supplies....in the end there was only one request that wasn't fulfilled).
Looking at housing in general, we had a big house in Tbilisi with a ton of storage (even larger than the house we had back in Charleston). So it was relatively easy to unpack and stow things 'quickly'. Here in Suva, there is a small price for paradise....get it...small....we have much smaller house. While the house is plenty big for what we need, when unpacking I had to assess is this something we truly need/want or can we donate/yard sale it? If it was something we needed/wanted, due to the long transport time followed by fumigation, everything had a lovely odor and had to be washed. Therefore, instead of unpack and stow, I had to unpack, debate, wash, dry, and finally stow.
Finally, timing and weather. When we arrived in Tbilisi, winter had just begun and it was cold, gray, and snowy! We also received our household goods within our first month of arrival, so I didn't really know anyone yet and it was easy to stay inside and unpack. When we arrived in Suva, it was the middle of summer, we were in temporary housing for two months before we moved and started receiving things. In that two months, I had signed up for a weekly French class, joined several women's associations, became one of the Year 6 parent reps (aka room mom...but with middle school less work), joined a book club, started to make some friends, Mason had gotten a part in the school production which the last month had a lot of late/weekend rehearsals I had to shuttle him back and forth to, and both kids seemed to take turns being sick. In fact one week, we made it to Friday and I did a happy dance that neither kid had stayed home sick from school that week. Also, as I hinted at here, a simple task such as getting groceries for the week can take a whole day with stops at multiple stores to get a fraction of what you had hoped to purchase. So life in general slowed me down (as it should).
Now that I have vented....I think I shall make myself a fresh pineapple smoothie and go enjoy it out on that chaise lounge by the pool....I earned it!
So we've super busy since I've actually sat down and done a real blog post, but since it I appears I have had something bite my toe and I need to keep it elevated here I am, giving up my award in the middle of award season.....sigh!
We moved into our final house the second week of March (that ended up being several weeks delayed due to TC Winston, but it's all good now...well worth the wait). The third week of March our consumables/supplemental HHE arrived from the US (initially these were suppose to be delivered the day after we moved in, but were delayed due to spiders being spotted when the container containing our crates was opened. The entire container need to be fumigated/sealed for a day and then aired out for a day before delivery). After unpacking, I earned my 'mommy of the year' award and got someones new Christmas bike put together....
Now, if it could stop raining nearly every weekend, we could head down to the sea wall and practice riding without training wheels!
We went to an Easter Party put on by the US Embassy and the American Women's Association (also known as the AWA....I've joined...I'll talk about them again). Someone was super excited for the egg hunt.
Disregard the stalker like focus of Mason, somebody is in middle school now. Mom can't be getting too close taking pictures of him admitting to having fun....
During the 4th week of March, all the paperwork was finished up and we got to drive our car on the wrong side (to us) of the road on Tuesday. The following Friday (being Holy Friday and all) was the kids first school holiday and the beginning of their first term break! The term break was a good length, a little over two weeks. Long enough for the kids to get bored but short enough that they didn't really get out of the swing of being in school.
We had time to play with the GoPro in the pool and figure out the buttons (FYI, you can't use the cool iPhone app underwater...aka kids can't swim with the camera underwater while I sun myself and hit record).
At the end of March the last of our belongings we were waiting on (we do still have things in storage), were set to be delivered. They opened the container and found a spider (they actually emailed us a photo, probably thinking we wouldn't believe that 'excuse' again).....so we had to wait another weekend for the fumigation process. It worked out well. On Mondays, Malika, our housekeeper, is here, so she helped unload boxes as the movers brought them in. OUR KING SIZE BED ARRIVED! Amazingly, in the first crate they opened. I had bought some new bedding (our old sheets/quilt/mattress cover were 8+ years old and that mineral rich Tbilisi water did them in!). They had arrived in our supplemental HHE several weeks earlier and were already washed and ready to go. So while the movers were opening the second crate, I put together the bed and then Malika put the bedding on....so comfortable that first night....too bad it had a musty/'6 months in a container followed by fumigation' odor that lasted a couple days.
Luckily (for me), the last week of the term break we had two back to back tropical depressions followed by Tropical Cyclone Zena (who, though named after a warrior princess, ended up fizzling out as she made landfall)......so it essentially rained non-stop for a week or so. So hanging out inside, playing Barbies, Legos (and whatever toy they were suddenly reunited with) & WiiU while mommy unpacks was perfectly acceptable.
The last weekend of the term break, we ventured out of town on our own for the first time. I booked us a room for a couple nights at the Fiji Hideaway Resort....but that weekend gets a post all to itself, so you will have to wait.....all I will say is that the rain stopped, the sun came out, and one item on my Fiji Bucket list got checked off!
We returned from a much needed weekend away on Monday afternoon, the bus picked the kids up Tuesday morning for the start of term 2, production practice picked right back up (if I forgot to mention it, Mason got a part in the school production....he is loving it!). With the kids gone, now I could really make some progress digging us out of boxes and not having to stop and play snack provider every 15 minutes (or so it seems). Clarissa's class was leading the primary school assembly on Friday, so I did stop unpacking to go to that! This is part of my favorite song they have learned. Mr. Tim is leading the kids in the Bula song about their island in the sun. (Bula is hello in Fijian). Clarissa is in the front row (since their class was leading part of the assembly), second from the right.
The next week I did more unpacking. Clarissa came down with some fever mid-week. Poor thing was running a 101°F (38.5°C) temps, but no other symptoms. I kept her home for two days and she was bored senseless. She was stressing her birthday on Friday....that's all she had been talking about for weeks....she didn't want miss it. Her fever finally broke and she could go to school (so I was last minute baking/decorating cupcakes). That evening, she opened her gifts. Luckily, I had unpacked enough to find the box of the birthday figurines. These were given to me by my Grandmother (Clarissa calls her Bushia) and now I am handing them down to Clarissa. As you can see, she loves them!
Also, on that Friday, I had a chance to do a market tour with the AWA. I've got a lot of yummy looking photos, I will save those for another post. It was nice to have someone point out where things are (I had no clue there was a second floor, even though I had gone several times before), mention the vendors that have the best quality of certain items, explain what some of the local crops are and their nutritional content, and describe ways to prepare these local items. I also scored some awesome mommy points by picking up the birthday girl some fresh flowers at the market. Malika was at the house when I got home and I discovered a hobby of hers is flower arranging. She helped me wash the ants off and put them in the vase (she has since added more greenery from the yard and made a second vase worth of flowers with stuff from our yard). These cost me about $5US!
Disregard the pile of unhung artwork in the back of the above photo....lol! So, we had warned Clarissa we probably wouldn't have the house unpacked enough to have her birthday party on her birthday weekend....but I worked and was able to get the house relatively presentable to have her party last weekend (it was sunny with all activities planned for outside and we just kept two bedroom doors closed)!! I will save that cuteness for another post too....
Monday at some point, I noticed my toe was a little sore. I figured I had stubbed it or something running in the rain. Clarissa's stomach wasn't feeling well, so she stayed home from school yesterday. We decided to have a little spa mani/pedi girl time and I got out the fancy bubbly foot soak.....oops! About an hour or so after that warm water soak, my toe/foot was swelling nicely, getting difficult to walk on, and starting to bruise even. I then attempted to undue that and ice it. After dinner was made, I pretty much sat down, propped it up and didn't get it up again. I took some ibuprofen before bed and could walk again this morning. The swelling had gone down substantially! I still went up to the medical unit at the Embassy to have it checked out (I do have a dive planned for tomorrow...priorities people!) I have full range of motion in my toe (which rules out a break), but he could see the red bump protruding out of my toe. So it is likely a bite or sting of some sort. I just need to monitor it, keep it elevated, continue taking ibuprofen to keep swelling down, and as long as my fins are not too snug I can go diving. So here I am, following orders, elevating my foot (so I can't finish getting the house put together), my fins aren't too snug...therefore tomorrow....I'm going diving! I do promise that soon there will be a post giving you the grand tour of our house!
Before we departed the US for Post, we (ok me) were trying to decide what to do about a tv. The US runs on 110v electrical current. Pretty much every where else runs on 220v. In the US, other than a few specialty stores and online retailers, you cannot find a 220v tv. We did consider just purchasing a 110v tv at Costco or Best Buy and shipping it over and just running it on a transformer, but I received some good advice from someone in the Foreign Service who said to wait until I got to post. So that is what we did.
Once we arrived at Post we were supplied a small tv as part of our Welcome Kit. By small I mean maybe 32" (we had a 50" tv before in our house so anything less than that was small to us). The tv worked and served us well, but we also knew that once our House Hold Effects arrived, the Housing office could take back the tv. Before we arrived in Tbilisi, we had been in contact with some of our new neighbors to find out about stores, etc. in town. We found out there were two "Wal-Mart/Target" style stores here, Goodwill (no not the Goodwill back in the US but a German-based chain) and Carrefour (French-based chain). Both of which sold electronics.
When we arrived I started to check out both stores. Goodwill had a small selection whereas Carrefour had a quite large electronic section.
The above picture is illegal. For some reason stores here have some sort of "no pictures allowed" rule. But you can see from the above Carrefour has a decent selection of TVs (this is just a small fraction of what they carry). Carrefour carried everything from Samsung, to Sony and with all sizes. After doing some comparison, I found a 47" Samsung LED tv that was dual voltage and multi-region for like 800 or so GEL, or roughly $650. Ok, this will work. So when I went to pay for it, I popped down my Diplomatic ID (which entitles us to have the Value Added Tax, or VAT removed from our purchases). All of a sudden, the price dropped to around 740 GEL! Bingo!
We have been extremely happy with the tv. We have our Blue-Ray player, Wii-U and Apple TV connected to it via HDMI. The tv has only 3 HDMI connections, and to get a tv with more would have been quite a bit more money. Sorry, I'm cheap. Only once that I recently recall have I had to remove something in order to connect another device.
A few more things to add. We don't have cable/satellite service. It's not that we can't get it, but all of the packages we can get, the majority of the stations are in Russian/Georgian. While it may be good to help us pick up bits and pieces of the language, we just don't think it's worth it. We use an Apple TV (which you can pick up refurbished from Apple for $75). With pretty good Internet here + VPN we are able to stream quite a bit from the US. Also, the Wii-U has the Amazon Prime app, so we have another means to get movies. Allot of people here use AFN but at this point (because of our good Internet connection) we opted not to spend the money on an AFN dish/decoder. We may get one for our next post if our Internet connection isn't all that great. Also, the tv is connected to a UPS. While electricity is more or less stable here, we do have the occasional brown-out/power loss. Having the UPS just adds another layer of protection to the tv.
Since we are an Apple household (yes I know I have Microsoft certifications but Apple does make things easier) we can connect to say CBS.com and then use AirPlay to stream the content from our iMac to the AppleTV. So Deb and I can still watch our shows, just a day later.
One final thought, if you do purchase a tv, save the box/packing material. Ours is saved in the garage, so we when move next December we can just put the tv right back in to its original packaging and send it on it's way to our next post.
