Getting ready...

Marina-Dalmacija in Zadar, Croatia.  Our first apartment will be near the marina.

You would think that the hardest part of a Fulbright is the proposal stage.   Finding the perfect place, the right people to work with, the honing and refining of the proposal, fighting the internet to submit.  Then, the wait is pretty stressful as well.  Hoping that the proposal makes it through peer review, the anxious wait to hear from the Fulbright Commission, and in my case, the emotional roller coaster of learning of alternate status, then actually receiving an award.

However, I'm telling you that is not the most most stressful and difficult part.  Like every field excursion I have ever been a part of, the "getting ready" is by far the worst part.  In the case of the Fulbright, everything is magnified because the whole family is going, not just me.  Figuring out how to enroll our kids in an online school and how to ship all the materials to Croatia without breaking the bank...  Finding someone willing and able to rent our house and take care of our three cats at the same time on very short notice...  Getting the house ready for whoever might hopefully rent our house (Goodwill is our friend!!)...  Worrying about whether Carol will be able to keep her job...  Finding a place to live in Zadar, Croatia while in the U.S...  Trying to learn a bit of conversational Croatian... All this while the both of us are working (though my schedule is far more flexible).  But, I suspect, like every trip I have done, once on the plane to Zadar, all will be good!  And, the stress will be fair exchange for the experience of a lifetime.

This last weekend we cleaned out the pantry, my closet, my dresser, started on the office, and cleared out part of the attic.  And, we fixed our dryer.  We've already started on cleaning out the garage.  One massive Goodwill donation on Sunday.  As Carol pointed out, maybe we should do this every couple of years as we'd keep the house free of accumulated clutter.

And, we have had success finding someone to rent our home and, with the help of Home In Zagreb, we have found an apartment in Zadar.  First, we'll spend a week in an apartment near Marina Dalmacija, then we will move to our apartment in central Zadar.  Its all very exciting, but we still need to finish up getting the house ready and pack!