Sunday 29 April 2018

Final Days

This morning was our final Sunday at our ward. Our last Sunday in an English speaking ward until around August! The person who said the opening prayer said it in Spanish and of course we understood nothing. I leaned over to Nathan and said: "This is gonna be us for the next few months... not understanding a thing". He was optimistic and said: "We will understand them". Umm, acca-scuse me? Is there something you want to tell me? Can you secretly speak Italian? 



Our car was sold over a week ago. We had to walk everywhere... complaints aplenty (ok, mainly by me) but preparation for what is to come! Thankfully we hired a car for the last few days to get us to Church and get us to visit family then to the airport with minimum disturbance to our family member's lives.

Our apartment is 99% cleaned! 99.9% of our belongings are gone. The only things remaining are our final linens we are sleeping on. We are eating our remaining food which is scarce and well, pretty unhealthy. Our medication is stocked up (realities, guys) and we are ready to gooo. This final month has been the longest month in history!

We have said 99% of our goodbyes, leaving only family as our final 1% before we leave (...except my brother who decided to have some work thing away just when we were to say our goodbyes to him. I think he's just too upset at the prospect of saying bye to me... I just know it... :p)


Our final night in our apartment is tonight - our final night hearing traffic noise all through the night. Tomorrow will be a welcomed sleep in; the last Dr's appointment; closure of our internet account; and because hiccups happen along the way, we have two packages we are waiting on to be delivered tomorrow so... tomorrow is also our final day waiting for mail (which may possibly be spent watching Avengers again... maybe, perhaps); possibly our final swim in the pool and/or spa; final walk up and down the dreaded 3 flights of stairs (even though we know it's realistically 6 flights); return of our apartment keys.

Tomorrow night, our final night, will be spent in suburbia with my brother's family (minus my brother) which will then be our final 5am wake up calls from those damn Aussie birds and that damn non-daylight saving sunshine. Our final day will be spent with Nathan's family where the Dunn boys will most likely talk about cars (they've been doing that a lot lately); we'll charge every battery we need to and get our cheap flight pillows ready!

Then our first stop (after 14 hours of probably more complaints from old people with sore joints and rounder figures)... Abu Dhabi!

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TIP #1: When leaving a country where you are renting and to ensure bond return, just hire a bond cleaner if you can afford it. Just suck it up and do it! It's more expensive, yes, but it buys you peace of mind that everything is done properly and even better, if you hire a cleaner that guarantees their work is done even after you've left if the landlords are super fussy, then you don't have to worry about it as you're on your flight out of there. Bonus - you don't have to worry about cleaning anything! Of course, if you have a litter of teenagers that you can boss instruct kindly to clean all the things on your bond cleaning list, then go for gold! I don't have that luxury... I have a 10 year old that seems allergic to cleaning products and even complains about emptying dishwashers!! Oh what a hard life...

TIP #2: When we decided to move to Australia as "phase 1" of our overseas trip, to make sure we didn't tie ourselves down too much and not progress with our plan, we rented a furnished apartment so we had nothing to have to worry about selling before we left (minus our car and other very little things) and it made things a lot easier to leave behind. No need for garage sales (my nemesis) or trailer hire or visits to the dump. And we still have beds to sleep on and plates to eat off right until we leave!




2 comments:

  1. Regarding tip #1. Get the cleaner. The teenagers will not be bossed around and you'll end up having to do it yourselves again. Get the cleaner!! haha

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  2. In Hadrian's defense - I think emptying the dishwasher is the WORST.

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