one country.... now two -- an update

My life used to be about one.... one person - me.  Then my life became about two - me and Partner.  I guess I never really realized it until we made the decision, until he signed the contract, yet before Sunday our lives as individuals and together had really been about one country - the US.  Both of us spent time studying overseas, but going abroad while a student is very different from selling your home, selling off tons of your belongings, packing up your home, placing three quarters of it in storage, shipping one quarter of it overseas, and hopping on a plane bound for a new life in Singapore. We are now of two countries.

Yup.  That's right - we've moved to Singapore.

Things on the blog have been dead quiet for the past few months because there was other writing that needed to get accomplished -- btw, I finished and defended the dissertation (!!!) -- and I until the deal was finalized and announced I had to keep a lid on the whole Singapore thing, which in a space where I write about my life is pretty challenging to do when your entire days are about freaking out over the dissertation that you fear you won't finish or the GIANT move you might be making to a country you've never even visited.

Not being able to write about the move or really talk that much about the move with anyone but Partner meant that I did not really get to process the enormity of our decision to move to a foreign country and give up everything that we've known before we got on the plane Saturday.  Frankly, there also was just not a lot of time - I defended the dissertation 14 days before we moved.  My head needed to be in that space as much as possible so that I could wrap up the project and not die during the two hours in which I was raked over the coals answered questions from my committee members.  I am really excited by the adventure that we are on together and there is no other person with whom I would I would take on such an adventure, but oh man, this is big.

We made it to Singapore on Sunday having lost all of Saturday to travel.  We also pretty much lost all of Friday to cramming our remaning belongings into our storage unit.  That is an episode worthy of a whole post all of its own. Yesterday, Partner and I spent much of the day wandering around the Central Business District so that he would know the lay of the land and how to get from the service apartment in which the company has put us up for the next month to his office. Plus it was really nice for us to do a bit of adventuring together in this new country which will be our home for the next however long.

In the coming days/weeks I will be apartment hunting for us, getting to know a bit more of this place, and complaining about how insanely expensive everything happens to be in this country.  Once we have a place to live and our stuff which is currently sailing the high-seas arrives, then I will get to resume some of my research projects from my life back in Seattle and start looking for work in Singapore.