OUR "OLD" HOME / MOVING OUT

The moving began today. We have been working on it for a while of course, but today all of the things that we have decided to ship to Africa have been wrapped up and packed.  We have an empty house! So all of our things are sitting on a truck somewhere ready to be put in a container, and from there they will start their slow crawl via sea then ground to us in Rwanda. This moving to Africa thing is officially starting to settle in, one gulp at a time.

Our new home and school

So as promised, here are some pictures of our new home and the Belgian school.  Keep in mind that we are having the house repainted on the inside. Wow,  pretty bad.  You should see the paint job in person!  Painting aside though, we looked at a lot of homes and this one seemed right. Some were bigger, had larger yards, and more scenic views, but they just were not right for us for one reason or another.  We looked at this house early on in our house hunting ventures and kept coming back to it when discussing what we wanted.  I will post more pictures of the house once we have settled in.

As far as schools, there were actually more options than we initially thought there would be. We looked around a lot, but we both felt pretty strongly that L'Ecole Belge was the one. Between the staff, parents and most importantly, kids...we felt that this is where our kids would fit best. We talked to a lot of parents and staff and this seems to be the place. There were a few schools in town that were Anglophile, but we thought it would be a missed opportunity to place tham in an English speaking environment. We hope that Ava and Ian will soon excel at French! I need them to translate for me.

Well, let's give this a go

As most of you know, we will be moving our family to Rwanda in early July.  Jaime has taken a job there with CARE, and we our very excited about the move!  There also seems to be a lot of opportunity in the coffee world for me, so I could not be more thrilled.  We (Jaime and I) went on a short trip to Kigali in May to find housing and schools for Ava and Ian. We found a house and we enrolled the kids in the Belgian school.  They will start in September, and we will spend the summer exploring our new surroundings.  I will post pictures of our house and the school soon.   I also promised that I would get a blog about our travels off the ground...

So, as promised. Here is... something.  A test posting of sorts.  I/We will probably post more pictures than anything here, but I will do my best to keep everyone up to date with actual posts as well. So without further ado, here is to our family and our new adventure!

Much love,

Eric

P.S.  In the photo above are some kids I saw in the "country" when I visited with Jaime.    Not sure what they thought of me, but they did smile when I put the camera down.