Happy Hungary-versary!

One year ago, we woke up to our first morning in Budapest. It was rainy and cold, and we had to find our way to the location of house number one to begin filming House Hunters. We didn't know how addresses worked here (zip code and city are listed first), so the address we plugged into the GPS was actually a city, not a street. There was traffic, we were late, we were lost. Ugh. Eventually, we found where we were supposed to be. We had a long day of filming and thus began our life in Budapest.

Now a year has passed! So hard to believe. How different our life is today from that first day!  We still can't really speak the language (and sometimes make really unfortunate mistakes....as will come in another post) and there are moments that are super frustrating.  But, now they are just that - moments. Not days and weeks as it was in the beginning.

We are thankful for the ways God has opened our eyes to the world that is out here. We are thankful for the ways he has challenged us to reevaluate our American worldview. We are thankful for the ways He has protected us here and provided for us in every situation.  We are thankful for new friends. We are thankful that, though life in Hungary is different, it is now normal.  It is home.

As Iron Sharpens Iron...

There's a verse in the Bible that says, "as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another".  I am so thankful for friends that go out of their way just to stop in and reconnect.  Matt is a friend of mine from my home town.  He is a year or two younger than me, but we still did a few things together growing up.  After House Hunters aired, he contacted me and let me know he and his family would be in Europe and they might take the opportunity to come to Budapest if we could work it out.  As mentioned on the show, mi casa es su casa.  We're glad to host guests so we extended the invitation.

It did work out.  I had never met his wife or 2 kids, but we had a great time over the weekend.  I was so thankful for the company as Carey and our kids are in Houston catching up with family and friends.  Even more than good company though, they were an encouragement to me.  The very first morning they were here, Matt and I were up before the others.  We just sat at the table enjoying a cup of coffee and talking through things.  The amazing thing about Christians is that we can quickly reconnect by simply talking about things that are important to both of us -- namely God and Jesus.  Those conversations set the stage for the rest of the weekend, which I also enjoyed.

We didn't do anything fancy as his kids are still young and needed naps.  But we did go to the castle district, church, and also to visit the Jewish Quarter here in Budapest.  Of course, no trip to Budapest is complete without a kurstokalacs (amazing bread cylinder with cinnamon and sugar on it) and a few scoops of ice cream at our favorite cukraszda, Daubner.  

I am so glad they came to visit.  My only regret is that my family was not here to enjoy them also.

Matt, Eva, Adam and Samuel -- thanks for visiting me!

House Hunters International Budapest

Time to provide some thoughts back on the show.

• It was a lot of fun to do, surprisingly.  This was Carey's deal and neither of us really thought it would happen, but they kept emailing back and forth and finally we signed up.  We're glad we did.
• We're told they film about 100 minutes for every 1 minute that makes it on the show.  So for the 21 minute show, they likely filmed 2100 minutes (35 hours)!  That feels about right as we filmed 1.5 days in Houston and 4 days in Budapest.
• We did not get to see it before it aired.  If so, we might have asked that they change a few things, which is probably why they don't let us see it before it airs!
• The rock star house had carpet from Michael Jackson's villa in the master bedroom. We're surprised they didn't mention that on the show!  The owner of that house was present during filming. Larry asked him to play the drums for us and he said he only plays for money. They played pool together instead.
• We are very excited to have a DVD documenting our adventures.  Cade especially will not remember much of his time in Budapest, but we can prove he was here! 
• We are extremely thankful that they kept adoption as part of the story.  We love our agency, New Life, and highly recommend them to others!  Their education is the reason why we believe in open adoption!
• We also love our families and apologize greatly that they did not make the final cut.  You would have been there if we were editing it!
• Our Texas-sized needs have changed.  While we've got the home, we'll certainly enjoy it, but it's been refreshing to see how "needs" are so different here.  
• It's really scary how many people watch this show!
• We are serious about having guests... if the guest room is open and we know you or you come recommended from someone we know, you're welcome to it!

Autographs on Request

Many of you have asked and we promised we would tell you when we knew...

We haven't seen it yet...

But we're (sort-of) excited to announce our television premiere. Of course, it could be preempted by the end of the world, but we're pretty confident that that won't happen this Saturday.

We're very interested to see how naive we were (and still are) about what to expect. We also suspect we'll find that our "oversized ideals" have changed from when we filmed. Perhaps we'll have a blog post about that after the show airs...

Needless to say, we're happy here and are thankful that this is where God has us for this season of our lives. We still miss our friends and families in the USA. Thankfully, we have met some great friends here and some of our family has already visited or has plans to visit soon.

We hope that this episode will be something special for us. We hope that, in the future, it will help us look back on our time in Budapest with fond memories. We hope that it will give each of you yet another glimpse into our life here in Hungary.

Viszontlátásra (See you soon) from the television...

Bad boys, Bad boys

We didn't know we were auditioning for Cops, but cops have been involved twice already.  That's twice in less than 48 hours. Thankfully, it has been people involved with the move...not us directly.  Pretty humorous!

Let's hope the bad boys theme song doesn't play for us anytime soon!

What a Difference a Few Days Make

Our schedule as of Friday morning.
- Saturday, September 25 - finalize suitcase, air shipment, sea shipment, storage piles
- Sunday, September 26 - House Hunters International films "back" story
- Monday, September 27 - last day in the Houston office
- Tuesday, September 28 - movers come to pack house
- Thursday, September 30 - movers finish packing house
- Friday, October 1 - fly to Hungary

Our schedule as of Friday lunch time
??? Got word that work permit is delayed 1-2 weeks and movers will be canceled and we should not plan to fly out.

Our schedule as of Friday end of day
- Decided to hold off making any changes, "just in case" things somehow can stay on schedule

Our schedule as of Monday 8:15 am
- Just got word work permit came in. Scrambling to get everything back on schedule
- Monday, September 27 - packed up my Houston office and gave keys to my replacement; dear friends came to help us get ready for the movers tomorrow. Sold washer/dryer and refrigerator. Wasted time blogging instead of finishing up inventory list for insurance purposes ; )
- Tuesday, September 28 - movers come to pack house; buyers pick up minivan from us. Go get rental vehicle and check in to hotel
- Thursday, September 30 - movers finish packing house
- Friday, October 1 - finalize transition with replacement at Houston office
- Saturday, October 2 - relax hopefully
- Sunday, October 3 - fly to Budapest

I'm told that this is normal for an ExPat and I should learn to expect delays and unplanned things around every corner. I may be a little too "type A" to accept that.

Still Time!

So, we finally gave up on House Hunters. We have been super busy and haven't had time to do the video at a time when we were all here, awake, and looking presentable. Tonight I finally e-mailed the H.H. producer and apologized that we wouldn't be able to participate due to our quickly approaching departure date. She e-mailed right back and said there is still plenty of time and they can film the day before we leave. I am laughing....I guess they are really interested. We will do our video and see what happens.

(Pre) Move Day

It's getting pretty real! We had our "pre"move consult yesterday. We had no idea we would need to tell him what we are shipping by sea, what we are shipping by air, what we are storing, and what is "history" as he kept referring to it. We'll have a list of all our "history" items up on the blog at some point in the near future in case any of you want to relive history by way of the things we're planning on selling or giving away.

For now, please let us know if you need a vehicle or a house. We have an excellent 2009 Honda Odyssey EXL with GPS and Rear Entertainment. It's got about 22K miles on it. We're also selling our 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab. It has about 137K miles on it. Both are running great.

We've got our first appraisal on our home scheduled for Tuesday. Once both appraisals are back, we will find out what the company will buy our home for. At that point, we know what our price point is where we are indifferent if we sell the home or the company buys it.

We're planning on adding up how much power we need for various appliances so we can go buy all our transformers today.

I also just booked our pets on to our flight. We were hoping to have them shipped separately, but it is cost prohibitive to do that. We save over 3K by putting them on our flight and doing a little work ourselves.

In theory, we'll be landing in Hungary in 2 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes from when I am posting this. How's that for making it real...

(And for those of you wondering, we're super slackers and haven't recorded our casting video yet, despite much prodding from House Hunters International. Maybe today.

Our TV Debut

We are still in talks with House Hunters International. The latest is that we have to make a video so the executives can see us on camera.....we have to talk about moving, about our hobbies (random?), and make it "fun". Should be interesting!

Starting to Prepare

So, here we are a week later. We have made small bits of progress this week - hard to believe there are only a few weeks left! We went by the outlet mall and started buying some fall/winter clothes. I don't even know how to buy cold weather clothes since we have always lived in Texas! We went into the Gap and I randomly bought a little bit for all of us. Kind of fun! Chelsea loved her new sweat suit and couldn't understand why she couldn't wear it home. We went to Sams and bought a bunch of toothpaste and diapers - maybe we can survive on that?

I contacted House Hunters International on HGTV with our story. Surprisingly, they were interested and one of the producers has been e-mailing me all week with questions. They are interested in pursuing the adoption angle and having us share more about open adoption. Not sure if it will work out, but it has been fun talking to them!

Oh, we bought a $5 Hungarian language program at Half Price books - I'm sure that will get us well on our way to speaking Hungarian.