Moving back to the US and Texas was a big adventure and we figured it'd be just like moving any other place we'd recently moved. Unfortunately, we didn't realize the enormity of the tasks that were upon us...more on that later.
Warning: The following text is extremely boring and has been written mostly for my own personal recounting of the events. Feel free to scroll down to the photos at the end or move on to the next, hopefully more interesting post :)
I think I took the idea of the move harder than Eric...it has always been my dream to live overseas, and I just didn't want it to end yet! And... because I loved our life in Qatar, our friends, my job and, well, I just didn't want to leave it. I mean, I knew we were leaving Qatar, we were supposed to go any time between when we moved and June. The project Eric was working on was over, we'd attended the dinners, the celebrations and gone through all of the motions that happen when a project is ending but I was still a bit taken back when I found out we were moving to Texas. Whenever you leave a place, there's always that feeling of ....I still didn't get to do everything I'd hoped. After moving as many times as we have, that feeling is still present, but you become (at least I have become) much more accepting of what I can and cannot do. I did all I could, and I am grateful to have had the experience.
Luckily, so many of our friends in Qatar are either native Texans or have lived in Texas (Houston, specifically) and were there to ease our (or my) fears. We were advised on where to live, what to do, which restaurants are the best, etc, etc. After a week of this, I was less nervous and more comforted.
We flew in to IAH after a 17 hour flight, gathered our luggage, got our rental car, and off we go. We headed downtown to our temporary home for the next 2 months. There was a bit of confusion upon our arrival--I mean, why wouldn't there be?! After all, we weren't tired after flying 17 hours...even if we did have a seat that folded down into a bed, and any type of food we desired...ahh, the joys of being repatriated!!
Luckily, we found a nice Canadian man (Houston is a transient city, not too many "native" Houstonians) who was able to help us out and get us into our place. After we dropped off our luggage, we drove through mid-town (area near downtown) and searched for some familiarity, something we could be comforted by. After a bit of a drive, we found a NY pizza joint....ahh, something we can relate to, we thought. We paid for our pizza and headed back to our temporary home. We barely sat down before we gobbled down that pizza in no time, and went to bed with full stomachs and hopes that the jet lag wouldn't be terribly painful.
For us, we've found that going west, (versus going east) is always easier jet-lag wise. Not sure if this is always the case, but it has been for us. So, we went through the next few days, almost jet-lag free (just a little sleepy, not painfully keeping ourselves awake as it's happened going east).
We flew into Houston on a Wednesday (30 March), Thursday AM we'd planned to meet our realtor, Mary. As I mentioned above, we had a lot to do, but no idea how much time it was all going to take. We started looking at homes that day and saw about 5. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be anything we were looking for, at all. After looking around with no luck, Mary drove us back to our temporary home and Eric and I started taking matters into our own hands. We drove around, looking for "for sale" signs and called realtors to get a showing. We looked for possible open house signs and basically scoured quite a few areas of possibility. Luckily, Houston has so many town homes going up and lots for sale (and things are constantly selling, fast) so we had a lot of options.
Eric had to go into work on 1 April so I drove around with Mary a bit more, to search for something viable. By that afternoon, we'd found two places I really liked so Eric and I arranged to go back that evening.
One of the nicest things about being back in the US is being closer to family. Danny, Eric's brother and his girlfriend Megen live in Austin. They drove into Houston Saturday until Sunday with their adorable dog, Huxley. Saturday was the night of the final 4 for March Madness so we got to go out and watch the game. Too bad we didn't get to see it live, as it was in Houston. Before they left, we took them to a few of the places we were looking at buying. It was great to have some more opinions and help.
That following Monday, my mom was due to come into town....thankfully! I needed help!
Since Eric was working all day, I'd asked my mom to come down to help me look for houses. Eric and I figured since we'd only have 60 days in our temporary apartment, and a mortgage takes approximately 30-45 days, we had about 10 days to find a house. No, not stressful at all :) So, in comes Mom M Monday morning! So grateful for her trip down here. She was an amazing help!!! She had the brilliant idea of writing everything down from each place we looked at. After all was said and done we'd looked at 55 houses and climbed more stairs that we even care to remember.
Looking at houses in Houston was obviously a new experience for me and different than my mom's experiences searching for places in NY.
After a 5 days of looking, we realized that:
1. Everything in Houston is a lot nicer for much cheaper than you'd find in NYS (Hudson Valley)
2. Everything IS bigger in Texas
3. Houston is a transitional city and we were going to have to deal with there being lots of different types of things on each street (industrial areas mixed in with houses, not too pretty)
All in all, we had nothing to complain about. The houses were beautiful, it was only a matter of finding an area we liked. By the following Thursday (7 days after our arrival), we'd found a place, put a contract in on it and were on to find the best mortgage rate! Yee Haw!!
To celebrate, we went out to a swanky steak house-Texas style and celebrated with a delicious bottle of wine and filet mignon (mom and Eric)...I enjoyed the yummy sides, garlic mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach and a texas salad-without bacon drippings in the dressing. Eric and I both say we went from the land of no pork, to the land of pork in abundance!
My mom mentioned she'd like to go to see a ball game so we headed to see the Astros play.
We had a great time cheering on the Astros. Such good seats and an awesome stadium.
We also ate some Tex-Mex at Lupe Tortillas--a Houston favorite. There are so many good Tex-Mex places, we really haven't found our favorite yet. This one was cool because it has a sand box outside with bleachers so all the parents can sit and visit while the kids are occupied. Only in Texas, right!?
