The Slingbox - a beautiful invention

The start of college football season is upon us....

We find ourselves with a mixed bag of emotions as we are obviously excited to see what a new season will bring for our alma maters, but also a little sad that we are so far away from the action. I had several friends comment leading up to yesterday's first kickoff inquiring how the hell we were going to manage to watch our favorite sport from Ghana. Enter: the Slingbox.

Slingbox makes a few different models so I won't bother posting photos as the models vary significantly in appearance. You hook the box up to your home-based TV (in our case, the TV in the United States) and then you can watch that TV anywhere over an internet connection. Pretty amazing, right?

The best part is that you have access to any features that exist on the home-based TV: DVR, on demand, real live TV, whatever. So we can record series that we love and watch whenever, or get a movie, or watch live sports. The biggest challenge is the time change as a "primetime" TV show on the east coast that would typically start at 8pm would be midnight or 1am here (Note: Ghana does not do Daylight Savings Time so our timezone proximity to the US changes mid year).

We downloaded the SlingPlayer app on our iPad and use that to watch TV, change channels, record shows, etc. While it won't replace the need for having a local cable package here in Ghana, it makes us feel more comfortable to have access to the shows and sports we love. It has been a fantastic addition to our life abroad and ensures that this Fall will be as packed with pigskin as possible!

Photo taken of my iPad broadcasting SEC Network

Thank you, creators of Slingbox, for making sure that my thirst for SEC football analysis is quenched. I am extremely grateful.

The First Few Days as an Expat

We are officially expats (short for expatriates). The term basically encompasses any person who is temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than the country in which they are citizens. We landed in Accra on Sunday evening, cruised through Immigration with our visas and arrived at the baggage claim to find all of our bags neatly grouped waiting for us. There was a driver waiting for us to take us to our temporary housing, which we have provided for us for 30 days while we find our home for the next two years. 

Exiting the airport here is trial by fire, not because of the geography or the culture. We've been here before and knew what to expect. The surprising part is how many people come up to you, take your bags and then demand money or tipping for their "service".... you know, the "service" you didn't request or desire in any way. Suffice to say, we have learned quickly.

Our first few days have been filled with the typical expat tasks: open bank account, obtain new cell phones, explore local mall/shops, and purchase some groceries. Everything moved pretty smoothly and even grocery shopping was a pleasant surprise. 

Some of the takeaways from our first Shoprite experience:

• HOORAY'S 
• full array of vegetables
• multiple kinds of peanut butter
• and incredibly, almond milk... who would have guessed that Accra would have almond milk?!
• WOMP WOMP'S
• couldn't find quinoa at the store
• bananas are quite small and bright green (still unsure if this is normal or they had just come off the truck and not yet ripened)
• JURY STILL OUT 
• avocadoes... they carry them but the bin was empty so we're still not sure how Dan's guac will fair with the local produce
• Vino - mostly Chilean, South African and some Australian wine. We haven't found any American wine so the exploration of new varietals continues.

All in all, our first full day was pretty good. We topped off the evening by meeting some wonderful new friends (if you read my second post regarding our move to Accra, I mentioned a friend that I had met on the Internations website). Meeting them was really quite fun, kind of like reuniting with an old friend even though we had never physically met. We had a great evening together and are so looking forward to many more gatherings over the next couple years.

Tuesday and Wednesday consisted of a lot of apartment hunting but we have not yet made a final decision. Hoping to make a choice soon, so I'll hold out on you until my next post!

The Woes of Packing

Today, I write from sunny Frankfurt, Germany during our layover en route to Accra. This week has been an emotional roller coaster for both of us. Saying goodbye to friends and coworkers, while also looking forward to our new adventures. I'd say about 60% of this week was consumed with packing our belongings... and mind you we both worked all week so that was pretty much every available moment we had.

The challenge with this move was definitely the categorizing of our things. Our apartment in San Francisco was only 827 square feet, surely not large enough to have acquired an overwhelming amount of paraphernalia. While I don't think anyone finds moving easy or enjoyable, it's much smoother to be able to tell movers to pack everything and take it form Point A to Point B... all of it... one place.

Our challenge was a bit more complicated. We had the stuff that we wanted to have immediately which went in "sizable" checked bags. Mostly, Dan's work clothes, a transformer to change voltage, clothes for me, bathroom products, the items we needed until the last possible moment, etc. (See photo below for definition of sizable and thank goodness we are able to expense our baggage fees.)

After we outlined the "must-have-right-away's" we moved on to classifying the rest of our items. They had to go into one of the three remaining categories:

• Air Freight (expected arrival 2-4 weeks, not including customs clearance)
• Overseas Freight (expected arrival 7-11 weeks, not including customs clearance)
• Storage in San Francisco (see you in two years)

We decided that the easiest way to accomplish this was to assign each category an area of our apartment and start moving the applicable personal effects to the correct area. This task, while daunting and quite time consuming, actually helped the movers immensely.

Eventually, everything was packed and our little downtown apartment was sad and empty. We only had one small miscommunication with the movers. There was one piece of luggage intended to be checked baggage that was not appropriately located and it was taken as Overseas Freight... so we'll be getting that one a little later than we intended. Oh well. Better late than never.

We will keep you posted as the goodies arrive and hope to have an apartment that feels like our home again by Turkey Time. Off to board our connection to Accra!

The Big Adventure...

As you may know, Dan works for an accounting firm here in San Francisco. We'd been offered an opportunity to live abroad for two years on rotation with his firm. After much deliberation, we agreed to give it a try! We both love to travel and figure that this decision would allow us to experience new places that we likely would not otherwise. So here it is...

We are excited for our new adventure, but getting to this stage in the game was anything but smooth. This opportunity has been on the table for almost a year and we just recently got all of the necessary logistics worked out in order to book our departure date and organize our relocation. Suffice to say that our first experience as expats has been a rocky one but we are not going to let it get us down.

Some of the "lessons learned" that we wanted to pass along (should any of you find yourselves with a similar opportunity):

• Go visit the country before committing to the big move. While this is not a "must", it is "highly recommended"
• The country's consulate in your home country will be your best friend (in our case, the Ghana consulate in Houston has been a life saver. I think I have them on speed dial)
• Remember while packing that you may have differences in voltage and plugs so adapters and transformers will likely be a necessity
• Timely responses to emails and phone calls are generally uncommon in Africa, so be prepared to follow up and try not to get discouraged
• and most importantly, PATIENCE is a VIRTUE (especially when waiting for news)!

My last and probably best recommendation to you: join a website called Internations.org. Think similar to Facebook, but for expats. You sign up and create a profile and then can change your location to where you will be living. There are forums with Q&A, people looking to buy or sell items that may be helpful, apartment hunters, expat gatherings, etc. You can add friends and private message people for assistance. I met a friend on this website who has been in Ghana for a year now and she has been incredibly helpful to us. I so look forward to growing our friendship when I arrive in Ghana.

Only a few days left until we leave the United States for our big adventure! So much to do in such a short time! :)

What's in a blog name?

Generating a name for this little blogging endeavor proved to be a difficult task. I like to think I'm a pretty creative person, but I was having a terrible time coming up with a winner. I needed something that was generic enough to encompass all the topics I'd like to post about but still somewhat specific to me and my personality.

A little back story on how we got here...

My husband and I have been married for just over one year but together for about six years. We met in June 2008 on a study abroad program through Manchester Business School in England. Five weeks later we had visited Prague, Barcelona, Toulouse, Paris, London, Dublin and back to Manchester. Afterwards, we returned to the States, Dan to complete his Master's degree at University of Illinois and me to attempt to put my University of Florida Master's degree to work back in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Fast forward a year and a half of emails, texts, phone calls and frequent flyer miles, I moved to San Francisco to be with Dan. He had started working there six months before and I knew that I would have to be the one to relocate if we wanted to be together long term. In July 2012, we went to Antigua to celebrate our "anniversary" and the first night of the trip, Dan proposed. Almost exactly one year later, we got married at Vintners Inn in Santa Rosa, CA.

Now we're getting to the name of this blog. We asked a good friend to be the officiant, which also allowed us the freedom to pretty much write our entire ceremony from scratch. We wanted the mood to be loose and carefree, so we started off with a light-hearted quote from Dr. Seuss: "We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." The goal for this blog is to document our adventures in life together, some on a day-to-day routine level like recipes, health, fitness, but also on a higher level as we travel and explore new things together. Essentially, I hope to use this as an outlet to record the "growth of our mutual weirdness" and hope you enjoy coming along for the ride.

So there you have it. That is how we came to be here today with this name and these goals. The first post for this blog is now complete. HIGH FIVE!