goodbye // hello

Our traditional first meal in a new place = sandwich, chips, and a drink. We’re eating on our living room patio b/c it was the warmest/sunniest spot.

last night in our hotel — home for the past 45+ days.

There is a tiny bit of sadness in saying goodbye to our small little hotel room. In some weird way I am going to miss living in a space so small that there is absolutely no privacy because we felt so close here — physically and otherwise. I will miss the laundry, just two doors down, running at all hours of the day (I won’t miss the creepy kid singing ABCs in the laundry room at 2am though). I will miss brewing tea in our coffee maker and drinking them out of styrofoam cups. I will miss the nights of eating store bought cookies or crackers and cheese on our bed/couch (they are one and the same) while flipping through all the Asian cable channels. I will miss the awesome people watching and strange hotel friendships with people that you keep on running into on the elevator or during breakfast or in the lobby. I will miss stealing Sly’s change and sneakily buying Cheetos from the vending machine (Hi, Sly!) and always (ALWAYS!) regretting it. I will miss the view from this side of the mountain and the beacon of light that is the viewing platform at the top of Apsan. I will miss the birds that gather noisily every morning below my window where the bird feeder is located.

Mostly I think I will miss this time because it was the beginning.

It was safe here; comforting. Being in limbo we could still sort of pretend that we were neither here nor there. That maybe were were visitors or tourists just teetering somewhere just on the edge looking into another country that we would one day live in for real. But now we have a real apartment and we will be completely immersed in a foreign non-hotel environment, training wheels finally off. There’s a bit of an “oh crap” moment happening, one that I have felt completely numb to ever since we contemplating moving overseas. Mostly though it’s like being at the top of the roller coaster the moment before it drops a zillion feet and your stomach is slowly lurching up towards your throat: scary and exhilarating at the same time.