"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." -- Yogi Berra Just when you think life is starting to get really interesting, it throws you an unexpected and exciting curve ball. A number of weeks ago, Mark leaned over to me and asked, "You wouldn't want to move to London, would you?" There was a position in his company in an office abroad that he thought he would be ideal for. My immediate gut reaction was along the lines of, "Hell yes!" So he applied. Well, now it's official! Mark and I will be moving to London! This will happen in a few months and it will be for at least two years. This is news I've been dying to share. For weeks now, nothing was at all officially official. It was a possibility out there, dangling in front of us. Now it is reality. We have a lot to think about and plan for. We've had lots of talks lately about the logistics in the "if we do go" scenario: we will be taking Greenbean (although her vet has been slow on the uptake of all the info I fed to him, she can't go until 6 months pass from her blood test), we plan on keeping our house here, my brother Steve will live in it with most of our house "stuff" left behind, all of the vehicles will be sold, the sailboat, the kayaks. Those sorts of things... we're already mentally packing up the house. During a late night walk around our little neighborhood, we were mulling over the reality of what the next few months are going to entail. Since we don't know for sure the timeline of what's going to happen, there's a lot we need to accomplish in the few months between now and then. We're starting to make mental checklists of improvements we need to make on the house before someone else will be living in it and compiling the list of items to sell. This will be a good impetus for us, a sort of whole sale house cleaning, we have too many toys and too much stuff. Regardless of what the out come was going to be, it would still be a good idea to do these things even if we were to stay. It's a little funny too, when we think about our combined traveling abroad experience. I spent six weeks in Costa Rica for a graduate field course in tropical ecology and Mark two weeks in Japan for work. I have lived in Pittsburgh my entire life, most of my extended family lives in Allegheny County and similarly for Mark with Johnstown. To think that the first major move we make... is to another country. The only thing that makes me a little sad with this move is that I finally feel like I've put myself on the right path with graduate school and a potential relevant and interesting job (with the DCNR) on the horizon. I was excited to be a part of a program with a heavy focus on local flora and fauna. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do there. Advice to ex-pat trailing spouses include: get lots of hobbies or volunteer. Perhaps volunteering at a museum abroad is in my future. This is an opportunity of a lifetime that we can't pass up. I will drop everything, follow Mark and become an ex-pat and travel and see as much of Europe as possible adding many new chapters to our adventures together (And continue blogging from across the pond!) Eeee! We're moving to London!!