The Launch

My participation in the home buying purchase was as active as possible from 8,000 miles away. My wife was in Orlando for less than a week to meet her new team and start the process. By keeping me out of it (I didn't even see pictures before we made our first offer), she did an excellent job. One of the unplanned benefits is that our backyard (i.e., our pool area) faces east. I thought the primary benefit of this was that it's shaded in the afternoons which, I'm going to have to guess, can only make the humid summers somewhat more bearable.

While we were at dinner last weekend with our new neighbors, they mentioned that it was unfortunate that the shuttle program had ended because there were perfect views of launches from the back of the houses on our side of the street. I'm sure we could hold a grand debate over the viability of the shuttle program, but just about everyone has to admit; seeing a launch from your house would have been pretty cool.

Earlier tonight that same neighbor texted Lindsay saying there was a planned rocket launch from Cape Canaveral at 7:38pm. Since Lindsay was sitting at another aeronautical landmark, O'Hare International Airport, I decided to look into the eastward sky from the back deck, knowing neither where the rocket may emerge from the horizon nor how large it would look.

Sure enough, shortly after 8:38pm a small fireball appeared directly east out from my patio, slowly climbing up through the night sky. Since we're approximately 40 miles east of the site, it was a relatively small in the context of the entire horizon but still large enough that you weren't going to miss it. I tried to take pictures but was on an AUTO setting and taking them at night while holding the camera. The results weren't pretty and not to be published. Perhaps I'll consult with my trusty photography coach, Colin Howe, and see what I might be able to do for future opportunities (though something tells me it's going to involve the purchase of a rather expensive lens that I'm just not prepared to make at this time).

Chalk this up as one of the unexpected benefits of the move; at some point I'll need to get over to the cape.

Stale Bread

I like a fresh loaf of bread as much as the next guy; however, exactly how long should bread stay soft and fresh? In India, a loaf of bread, which cost Rs. 16 (or about $0.30, I kind of miss those prices) lasted approximately four or five days before becoming completely stale and uneatable. I've realized that here in the states bread seemingly stays fresh forever. I had purchased a new bag of wheat buns to use for dinner tonight. I was surprised that the buns I had purchased over two weeks ago were still eminently usable. I've had pretty much the same experience with the sliced bread I've purchased (and I keep getting suckered into "buy 1 get 1" deals that would be ridiculous if not for the fact that the bread lasts forever).

Maybe it's how it's stored. In India, we stored bread in a ziploc bag on a shelf in a kitchen that was neither heated nor air conditioned. In my new house, we store the bread in a dark pantry seemingly protected from the elements.

The more likely yet completely unproven (because I'm simply too lazy) culprit? They put a lot of preservative and/or additive crap in American food. Actually, I'm not even sure what an additive is but just know that was the line of work Clark Griswold was in. Whether it be bread, produce, or other items, food simply lasts longer here. We knew that coming home and have tried to start buying organic, which I always thought was a little unnecessary. However, if anything might make you a believer, it's knowing that a loaf of bread tastes fresher after a week in my pantry in Orlando than it did coming off the shelf from my neighborhood Need's market in Gurgaon.

Migration Complete?

Yesterday morning I walked out of my home office to grab a quick cup of coffee in the kitchen. When I returned, I was surprised to find two huge birds standing on my driveway staring through my window. Figuring the number of photographs I've taken roughly equals the number of blog posts I've written since moving to Florida, I decided to grab my camera.

After doing a little bit of research, I was stunned to learn that what I figured was some sort of stork or heron was actually a sand hill crane. My experience with the sand hill crane is limited but still likely more than most. I grew up lucky enough to drive to Colorado to go skiing each year. When you drive to the Rocky Mountains from Moline, IL you follow Interstate 80 across Iowa and most of Nebraska. When you drive I-80 during February or March, you're often lucky enough to see thousands of these grand birds migrating.

While the cranes that appeared in my yard aren't those same cranes (apparently, there are only like 5000 of the Floridian sub-species left and from what I can tell they stay in Florida), I decided that one of two things had happened: (1) they appeared as a symbol of my migration south having come to a close and that it was time to stop using lack of time as an excuse for not writing about my repatriation (I mean seriously, we closed on the new house nearly a month ago) or (2) they simply had no better place to be at that time on Monday morning.

So there you have it, I'm going to attempt to do what very few have seemed able to do which is maintain a repatriation themed blog. Maybe "repats" find that others just aren't as interested in the life they come back to than the life they seemingly escaped in the first place. Maybe it's not exotic. If you don't believe me, Google "repatriation blog" (even without the quotes, the pickings are slim; the only currently maintained blog I could find anywhere near the front page was "I Was an Expat Wife"). I could be wrong, but it seems like there's more to repatriating than just hearing that "it's harder to adjust back to your original culture than it was to your adopted culture."

On the bright side, I've got this whole new Florida adventure thing working for me. Well, that and I'm really just writing this to entertain myself and maybe half dozen other people and to, you know, try and improve as a writer.

The Insight Bowl

One of the most disruptive parts of expat life in India was having to wake up early or stay up late to catch a game on Slingbox. Coming home, I thought those days were behind me. Then I checked the start time of my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes' appearance in the Insight Bowl: 10:00pm EST. It's hard to believe that the 11:00am local start time in Bali for last year's Insight Bowl (where yes, those same beloved Hawkeyes played) was actually more convenient.

Regardless, I'm settling in for my first full football game in my upstairs basement (as you're probably aware they don't have basements here in Florida so I've converted the bonus room above my garage into a full scale replica of my basement from  Chicago).

Go Hawks!

Lost and Found

When the worst thing you can say about a move is that you thought you had lost your camera, it's safe to assume that it was a fairly smooth move. Even though the camera would have been insured and would have been replaced, it was a headache of claims and paperwork and questions that I just didn't want to go through.

On the move day from our house in Lake Zurich, Lindsay had set aside her purse, three wrapped books for a Christmas book exchange (all books about India, "White Tiger," "Holy Cow," and "Delhi Bound: A Book for Kids"), and my newly beloved camera that I still probably can't use properly, my D7000. She gave the movers instructions that what was on the dryer wasn't to be boxed. At one point on move day, she grabbed the camera to take some pictures of the process and thought she put it back in the laundry room. That was the last she remembered seeing it.

After the movers had left for the day and as she was leaving for her Christmas party, she realized that the books were gone and quickly came to the conclusion that the camera was gone too. Figuring it had been packed, she shared the bad news. Knowing that there wasn't much we could do and that I'd be reunited with my newly beloved camera in under a week, I somewhat nervously pretended like it wasn't a big deal.

Fast forward to unpacking day. I wasn't sure what was growing faster, the stack of empty unpacked boxes in my driveway or the angst that went along with none of those boxes containing my camera. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the camera had gone missing. At one point during the day, Lindsay really wanted to show me the office which was the first fully unpacked room. I totally thought she had found the camera and I'd see it sitting proudly on the middle of the desk. No camera, and worse yet my disappointed reaction wasn't exactly what a deservedly proud Lindsay had hoped to see. Regardless, at the end of the day, I still had no camera. The only glimmer of hope was the fact that those three wrapped books were also missing.

The next day there were far fewer boxes to get through and my mood grew more sour with each passing box. My job for the day was to finish the garage as Lindsay and her Mom finished a couple different rooms. Not surprisingly, they finished first (I'm not the speediest of movers, especially when it comes to a place as foreign to me as a garage). No camera.

Since I had already pre-opened the boxes in the garage (I took a quick look inside to see if the camera was visible the previous day), I really wasn't expecting much. As I opened the final box (yes, it really was the final box), I moved a clear plastic container with some sort of foreign looking tool (it may have been what some people refer to as a "hammer") and my eye immediately caught three book-shaped objects covered in my wife's signature wrapping paper (yes, she has signature wrapping paper; it's an idea my mother gave her and if you've received a gift from us in the past five years it's been covered in silver paper with white dots, which Lindsay likes for it's versatility at the holidays, for birthdays, for weddings, etc.). The wrapping paper was my first glimmer of hope throughout the entire process. I looked a little closer and nestled between my saws (I didn't even know I had enough saws to nestle around something) was my camera packed in its case.

My mood changed instantly.

The moral of the story, I guess, is to make sure if you have professional movers that you either need to put some sort of flashing sign next to items that they shouldn't move or, better yet, just put the items in your car. In the end, movers will move anything in a house. My in-laws, who have moved a number of times through the years, recounted their favorite story from one of those moves. Someone in the house had made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, took a bite, and set it down. When they got to the new house, neatly wrapped in one of the boxes was a partially eaten sandwich. Movers will move anything.

Mr. (and Mrs.) Luth Finally Go to Orlando

Today was a big day. I finally made it to Orlando. It started early, early enough to make a 6:25am flight from O'Hare. Much to my surprise, waiting for me on the plane was one of the 12 regular readers of Mr. (and Mrs.) Luth Go to India in the world, John Spaight. It's good to have fans. It turns out he had a meeting in Orlando and was turning back for Chicago exactly four hours after landing. My stay is a little more undefined (OK, so technically, I go back in five days, but I do have a one way ticket BACK to Orlando on December 28th).

This week will be a busy one. We close on a new house tomorrow and spend the better part of the week getting unpacked and somewhat settled before heading back to Chicago for the holidays. With all of the moves and transition, I feel like I'm effectively delaying most of the reverse culture shock until after the new year. It's simply been too busy to fuss too much about things like not having drivers and a cook. Though, in a story I'll post shortly, we did find the grocery store a little overwhelming our first morning back.

While I didn't see much of the Orlando area today, we did a drive-by of the new house (the first time I had actually seen it). If first impressions mean anything, it appears as though Lindsay has made a good choice. It's in a quiet part of Oviedo, which from what little driving around we did, appears to be a quiet and nice enough suburb. It's 15 minutes to the office, under ten to places like Target and The Home Depot (which I've heard is a store where you can buy things to fix your home), and roughly five to the grocery store (more important to me than you'd probably think). It's suburbia, but we knew that going in.

A couple additional initial impressions of Orlando: (1) people at the office seem exceedingly nice (without fail, upon entering the elevator after someone today, they all asked what floor I was going to and pushed the button; not a big deal, just something good people do) and (2) it's true what they say, this place is littered with chain restaurants.

It's been a long journey since we started packing bags in India in mid-November. Tomorrow is a big day; I get to actually enter the building which I will soon call home. And while I seem somewhat detached from all the change occurring around me, closing day is one of the more anticipated days of the entire process.

Annoying Me Slowly

I've been back for just over a week and actually arrived in Orlando this morning. Not surprisingly, after a mostly two year hiatus, there are things that are annoying me in my homeland. Here's a quick list of some of those small differences that have annoyed me as I start my slow re-immersion back into American culture:

Voice Mail
In India mobile phones don't have voice mail. So as you might expect based on its lack of existence, no one uses voicemail. As a person that really doesn't like the phone, this is a good thing. Listening to voicemail is excrutiatingly annoying. If you call me, there's this little thing called caller ID. I will see it. If I want to call you back, I will. No need to waste time with the voice mail.

Traffic Jams
India gets (in my opinion) an unjustifiably bad rap for its traffic. It's slow but flows like a river. Drivers are generally courteous and serious accidents (at least within Delhi) are more rare than you'd think. American traffic sucks. I had the misfortune of driving on the inbound Eisenhower "Expressway" at 5pm last Friday evening. It was much more stop than it was go. I think this may have been some sort of karmic punishment for moving from Chicago; perhaps a big "eff you" from the traffic gods. On the bright side, there were no cars on fire (cited more frequently than you would think on Chicago radio). On the not-so-bright side, cities of five million shouldn't have expressways that merge and choke down to one lane. I will not miss Chicago traffic.

Walking
Americans, who drive on the right side of the street, tend to walk down the right side of corridors or sidewalks and walk up the right side of stairs. Indians, who drive on the left side of the street, tend to walk down the left side of corridors or sidewalks and walk up the left side of stairs. I must admit, I had gone local. And it becomes a habit. In my first week back in the American office, I avoided any major collisions and injury; however, I can't even count the number of times I was forced to say "excuse me."

First Floor
I have to admit, I got used to the whole "ground floor is the ground floor" thing and the "first floor is the floor above the ground floor" thing. I know this drives most Americans crazy. I actually like it. It makes counting the number of flights of stairs you need to walk up that much easier (because, you know, it's too complicated to subtract one). I've found myself confused when people tell me something is on the first floor. It hasn't gotten to the point where I've gotten on an elevator from the ground floor and pushed a button to get to the first floor and expected it to move, but it makes me stop and think. And yes, I am lazy enough to take an elevator one floor.

Sports Talk Radio
I never listened to the radio in India. I don't think my life was any less rich because of that. I'd also like to think I have better things to do than listen to people argue about nothing which is, in effect, the idea behind American sports radio.

More to come I'm sure....