Well, here we are - the training starts tomorrow, Monday March 8th, and we're now getting setttled into our new home in Arlington.

The past month has been dizzyingly busy, as we have dealt with moving out of our apartment in Oakland, shipping our stuff to DC and to storage, finding a new home for our cat, finding a place to live for ourselves near the training site, and learning as much as we can about what our lives will be like over the next few months.

We were very happy to find a home for our cat Shashi, with the downstairs neighbors who just moved into our building in Oakland. They're both teachers, and were hoping to get a cat anyway, so things worked out all the way around on that score.

We were also relieved to find a home for ourselves in Arlington - at least for the first couple months. The price of the apartment just happens to match the maximum State Department per diem for the first two months (what a coincidence!), so we will have to move to a less expensive place by May 1st. In a lot of ways it seems like the standard corporate apartment, but the amenities that convinced us were the proximity to a children's play area, as well as to enough basic shops to mean that we wouldn't have to drive everywhere.

And speaking of driving, we decided at the very last minute that we WOULD be taking along our car to DC (it's being shipped on a truck, so we don't have to worry about clocking up more miles on the odometer), since it would offer some convenience and flexibility early on that will be quite valuable for us. For example, Crystal and Tasman will be attending a parent-child play group one day a week in an area that's not very convenient to public transportation, starting the first day of Adham's training. Should be similar to what they have been doing in Berkeley for a number of months now, which has been really enjoyable for both of them.

We've also started corresponding and sharing experiences with others in Adham's upcoming training, and it's gratifying to see the variety of great people who are on board.