Where the heck have we been??

Well, in January we had a major hard drive failure on one of our computers, which happened to the be the one which held all our website files. It took us until now to get the data recovered and get back to our regular update. This was kind of a mixed blessing anyway, since we've been very busy in the past few months.

January saw the visit of our friends Kirk and Lesli with their kids Oliver and Nicola. It was wonderful to reconnect with friends from our "other" life, and give them a chance to see with their own eyes what is often so difficult to describe. They arrived just before Bangladesh declared a state of emergency and the Embassy restricted all personnel to their homes for a night. While it was a bit dramatic, it ended up being a nice and quiet time to visit the country.

By the time February rolled around, our impending departure was really starting to seem real. We arranged our departure date and flights, started the check-out process, and did lots of last minute shopping for things we might need at our next post. We also received our housing assignment for Paris, and were very pleased with how the place looked in pictures, as well as with its location. We may even have enough room to host visitors!

March was our final month, and things just got more frantic as the time sped on. Around the middle of the month we began the packout process, so that for the final ten days or so in country, we were living out of the same suitcases we would be using during the entire five-week home leave period. Our wonderfully decorated house was back to the bare white walls look of March 2005.

After two years and a month, we finally left Dhaka at 1:30 am on March 30th, headed to Hong Kong; from there to Tokyo, then to Honolulu, then to Maui, where we are at this moment - spending the first couple weeks of our home leave with Adham's parents. It's wonderful to be in such a perfect environment, though we are also looking forward to catching up with all our friends in California shortly. We will post pictures from the last few months in the next week or so, so check back again soon!