Joy and Luke about to embark!

My first blog entry begins 9 days before our departure from Austin, Texas to Quito, Ecuador, where we’ll be living for 2 years. With barely a week to go, we’ve done a lot but have a lot left to do. Who’d’ve thought that there was so much to do simply to move to another country and out of the house where you’ve been living for the last 13 years (while getting it ready to rent)?

In Quito I’ll be teaching 6th grade math and science at Academia Cotopaxi, apparently a prestigious international school (K-12) who got duped into hiring me based on a conspiracy involving my friends, current and former bosses, a word processor, and Skype, the amazing tool for talking (and videoconferencing) computer to computer for free. How long will I be able to maintain the deception that I belong there?

Part of what’s so much work about moving out is that Joy (my wonderful wife of 13 years –though she’s really much older than that) and I both seem bent on rebuilding our house from the ground up. We installed a new water heater, had electricians completely redo the electrical system in the house, put in all new interior doors, hinges and knobs, cut down one tree (OK, that’s still on the to-do list), planted another tree, trimmed the big ash, touched up lots of paint and washed all the windows (including the acrobatics seen to the left). What was I doing while Joy was doing all of this, you ask? Don’t ask. Mostly farting around on the computer, working with my friend Daniel, trying to get Linux and Windows set up as a dual-boot on our new laptop, because that sounded like a really cool thing to do. Oh yeah, and burning all our CDs to mp3 for the trip. So you see, I was busy doing important things too. What will all this change bring? Which way will the toilet water spin? More soon.