The Next Adventure

Welcome, adventurous reader, as this week we shape up and ship out. Yes, we've moved out of Palo Alto and are now spending the weekend in San Francisco before leaving the US for good.

This week involved boredom interspersed with periods of great panic and stress, as we tried to get everything tied up before we leave. Last week I reported on lots of shenanigans at the bank. On this blog we pride ourselves on not repeating, er, ourselves, but this weeks' bank shenanigans outshone last weeks', and it was tempting to give you a second helping of that gut-wrenching story. Instead, let me just give some parting advice to anyone that might be thinking about coming to the US to live for a few years: find yourself a bank that understands that there are other countries in the world, and that sometimes you will need to send money there. It'll just be easier if you do.

So Friday rolled around, and our removers arrived in good time. They set to work quickly, diving in and packing our stuff, wrapping the big and fragile items in loads of paper and plastic. Eventually we were left with a house that looked a bit like an art installation, with just cardboard cubes for company.

It took surprisingly little time to load this stuff up onto a truck, then sign the 9 different pieces of paper, before taking one last look at the house and moving on to the next adventure.

The first stop on the next adventure is San Francisco. It's the usual weather for SF - overcast and threatening drizzle - but we have a few things planned for the weekend as we begin our voyage/holiday home.

It's too early to reflect on the American Adventure as a whole, but right now we're feeling happy to have had such an amazing experience over the last three-and-a-half years, and grateful to everyone we've met that has been so kind along the way. That global pandemic definitely wasn't in our plans, and changed the experience to a large extent, but we still managed to do pretty much everything we wanted to, as well as enjoying a lot of things we didn't even know existed. We were so, so lucky to land and live in a fantastic location and house which ended up doubling as my workplace for the best part of 3 years, and doing so admirably well.

So, on to the next adventure! I'll be trying to document our trip home via the blog, and once we get there I'm sure I'll be regaling you all with tales of British bureaucracy and how everything's better in America, honest.