Staggering

I'm not going to lie.
Leaving was hard.
Leaving is hard.

It is hard to wrap your mind around moving to a new place, in a new part of the world.
We don't know anyone here. It is very unfamiliar.
It is a bit scary.

Mostly, though, I miss the familiar.
I miss my family and my friends whom I used to see on a daily or weekly basis, and I'll now only see on a yearly or bi-yearly basis.

As we were preparing to head this way, Blake and I discussed that we should stagger our goodbyes. We should try to not say "Goodbye!" to more than one person/place/thing per day. It would surely be less overwhelming this way.

First, my sister came. She came to visit three weeks before we left, and we said goodbye.
My brother and sister-in-law came the following weekend.
Samantha and Easton attended their final day of school on the Monday after my brother headed home. 
All of our possessions (aside from what we were taking with us on the airplane) were packed and trucked off the Wednesday and Thursday before we left.
On that Friday night, we had a "Seeing Off" party with our closest friends and neighbors.
Sunday, we said goodbye to Whiskey, Blake's sister, and our nephew, Lincoln. 
Two days before our flight, Monday, I dropped my Jeep off and had a final meet up with Kristin and Claire.
The day before our flight, Tuesday, we left Georgetown, and said goodbye to Blake's mom and dad.
On Wednesday, the day of our flight, we left behind our neighborhood and our home.

We are here, and we are fine.
I am baffled by the overwhelming sense of peace that I possess, and with each item that we check off of our list, I feel more and more confident with where we are and what we are doing.

Don't get me wrong. We are still slightly overwhelmed... Neither Blake nor I have done anything remotely close to this. Our families have never moved overseas, and no one in my family has ever ventured very far from the United States (other than the Caribbean). We are blindly moving through the process with the help that has been provided to us by Blake's company, and we are increasingly grateful for that guidance.

This is an amazing adventure.
I am really glad, however, that we staggered the goodbyes.