Up to God and Back: Progress?

I feel as if we've made a lot of progress in the last week or so, but in reality, it's all just beginning. The boys passports arrived on Friday and we are nearly complete with our medical clearances. That ended up being way more effort than I expected!!! Since I don't have any records of any of my immunizations, I had to get 5 shots on one occasion! Not fun!!! I also had to have lots of bloodwork, a chest x-ray, and a skin test for TB ... all in all, 7 appointments in the last 10 days. The boys and I still have to go to a special clinic on Monday to get a Typhoid vaccine and then I think we will be ready to submit all the paperwork to apply for Ken's work visa! Yeah!!

More importantly, I bought a Christmas tree this week! :-) We always have a real Christmas tree, but I don't think we will have much luck finding one in the desert or in an Islamic nation. So I shopped on line for a fake Christmas tree to take with us. Christmas in April?! It arrived this past week, but I don't want to open the box and fight to put it back in, so I guess I'll wait and be surprised at Christmas. I hope I like it - all Christmas trees look the same on the internet!!

Ken left last week Sunday for Tokyo, but after just a few hours in the office, he and his boss agreed it made better sense for him to be in Doha. So he scrambled to get his travel plans changed and off he went. Looks like another trip around the globe! He returns this Wednesday, but he will only be here a few days. Then he is off to a training course in North Carolina for a week. At least it will be in the United States!

So I guess I should explain a bit about Ken's job. I think the official title is Business Lead for the Barzan project. He will be responsible for cost and schedule control on the project - engineering, procurement, and construction of a new facility (a duplicate train to the existing facility actually) in Doha, Qatar. The engineering is being done by a company in Tokyo. So he goes to Tokyo to followup on the engineering and to Doha to oversee the construction progress. Barring any delays, construction should be complete in ~2 yrs. When construction is complete, his assignment in Doha comes to an end.

I continue to make slow and steady progress sorting through our house deciding what goes to Doha and what goes to storage. Our townhouse in Doha will be furnished, so we will be sending a lot of our things to storage until we return. Ken was able to email me pictures of our future townhouse, I'll share some here ...

This is the front exterior - carport for 2 cars, small balcony on 2nd floor and a large roof top patio (which would be totally fabulous if it wasn't 110 degrees for 6 months of the year!)