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The Wonderful Unknown, pt. 2

Our possessions "BrExited" our flat on Thursday. This past month, I've been obsessed with getting everything packed away and organized, knowing that 23 June would arrive sooner than I wanted it. 

I thought when we moved over to Aberdeen, packing was difficult. We were faced with trying to pack our entire lives into two suitcases a piece (and those were mercifully larger suitcases because my father-in-law booked our tickets and we got baggage 'upgrades'). What were we going to need for two years? What could I take to make this strange country 'home'? But happily, everything else was going in a storage facility- so we weren't actively getting rid of those trinkets and baubles that make a house feel homey.

This time around we have the same two suitcases. Fortunately we also had the means to ship stuff back (read: we are mostly shipping my books home...), but what we leave behind here is being left behind. We aren't coming back to reclaim it at some point. It's just gone. The difficult part, though, is thinking that by leaving things, I won't remember this.

Moving to Aberdeen was a great unknown. We had no idea what to expect. How can you? Academia is stressful and isolating, moving to a different country is stressful and isolating. But this unknown was wonderful. Even in the great stress of living abroad, I would do it all over again (although for Jack's sake, we would probably do it someplace a bit warmer).

Now Houston is the great unknown. We're returning, but we're returning as different people than we were two years ago. And we're returning to a life that has continued moving on for the past two years. When are we returned that first Christmas, I was sad because so much had changed even in three months. It's naive to assume, especially in Houston and at our age, that life wouldn't change. It just makes it scary because I also don't know what we're getting ourselves back into  on 22 July.

It finally hit me today that we have less than a month left here. Our friends are throwing us a going-away Whiskey Friday (it's a post-graduate Divinity thing) on Friday. We'll celebrate my 31st birthday on Saturday. I'll leave on the 5th for Basel and the Bonhoeffer Olympics (International Bonhoeffer Congress). I return and my dad visits on the 15th- and a week later we'll be back in Texas. It's not enough time and it's infinitely too much time. 

So I'm happy and anxious, and ready for the next journey to start (and to have a dryer!! I'm so excited about having a dryer and a full-size refrigerator!!). We're also moving into our new house on July 23rd if anyone wants to pop by to say hello or help me unpack the kitchen--

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