What next?

I had to say a lot of good-byes this past week. Christian drove up the moving truck yesterday with Gabriel to Sacramento where we'll store our stuff until Fall of 2012. Enzo left on Sunday to play with his cousins and to not have to be here when we give so many of his toys away. I'm alone with Maria. The house is completely empty except for my computer, a futon mattress, my suitcase, and a bottle of milk in the fridge. Today we'll meet up with the rest of our clan, as long as the smaller computer we ordered in the mail, the one we can actually take to Brazil, arrives.

As I was cleaning the base boards in the kids' room I couldn't help but feel a wave of emotions. I've moved a lot in my life, as a kid we moved almost every year. It was hard but for some reason this is harder. We've been in this house for 4 years. This is the only house Enzo remembers living in. This is the house where we brought Maria from the hospital to. This is the place where I've felt more at home than any other place I've lived in. 

If you want to live somewhere great come live in Santa Cruz California.

I keep telling myself to get over myself. It's silly I'm so sad considering that we have plans to be back in a year. Besides it's not like we're moving to some awful place. We are, after all, moving to a very beautiful warm coastal town in Bahia Brazil.

Now here comes the questions. Readers have been asking me why we're moving and friends have been asking me when we'll come back and everyone keeps asking me if I'll continue my blog.

So, why are you moving?

We're moving because Christian is a PhD student in Anthropology and he's doing really exciting research about tourism and the environment, public spaces and architecture, and a whole lot of things in between. His research site is Itacare, Bahia Brazil so we're moving to Itacare for a year so he can do his research, so the kids can be fully immersed in Portuguese, and so I can finally learn how to make some good Bahiana food.

Will you really come back to Santa Cruz?

Yes! I think so. The plan is to come back. Christian doesn't necessarily have to write his dissertation from Santa  Cruz but it would be easier if he did and there is no other place I'd rather be (as far as I know).

Will you continue to blog?

I will definitely continue to blog. I am excited to share my adventures with you about Brazil. However, we don't actually leave to go to Brazil until second week in August. Between now and then we're going to do a whole lot of traveling. We have a family reunion to go to in Utah next week. We have friends and family to visit in Washington. I'm finally going to get a taste of Portland, Oregon and visit some friends in the process. Then we're driving down the coast of California, camping along the way, until we hit San Diego where I'll be going to the BlogHer conference, will you be there too? Then we leave for Brazil where we'll visit my family and friends in Sao Paulo and also do some weekend traveling to the beach and also Minas Gerais, one state north of Sao Paulo. In September we move to Itacare. Hopefully we'll be all nice and settled by the middle of September. Realistically though lets call it October. That means that in the next 3 months I'll be in all sorts of places, blogging about my travels. I'm not sure how often I'll post. I'm not that worried though. For one thing I can never stay away too long and for another I figured it's Summer [!] most people are outside more than they are inside which means you'll probably be doing less internet stuffs than usual anyway.

And for all of you who are diving into the moving season and also packing your life away, my condolences. On a scale from 1-10 packing is a definite zero. Good luck on your new adventures, I hope it's a good one.