The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

Unbelievably, we’re back!!! We only told 3 people that we were returning early, our friends Ron & Dario, who picked us up, and my brother who needed to make sure our money was available so we have been surprising loads of people!

Our flight home was pretty good overall, certaily much better than the 32hours of flight time it took last time we flew home from South Africa! We flew 12hrs from Cape Town to Frankfurt on a brand new South African airways flight….fantastic. There were on demand movies at each seat, good food & wine, and a camera on the tail so we could see take off and see the plane throughout the entire flight. Very cool. Upon arrival in Frankfurt we took a cab to our hotel for an overnight. Even though it was a little bit of a pain to bring all of our bags to the hotel it was certainly nice to have a bed to sleep in and 12hrs to be off the flight. A couple of good German beers and some sausage and we slept great, although what a huge difference in peoples attitude and friendliness now that we’re back in the Western world.

Wed., we flew from Frankfurt to Portland, the flight wasn’t full so Jim and I spread out a bit which made it more comfortable. Not as new of a plane but still a very nice flight. Upon arrival it was truly great to see Ron & Dario and they went all out for us…the made our room into a little B&B and assembled all of the things we’d missed on our trip like French press coffee and bagels and even bought us pj’s… love those boys!

Thu. we drove down to Salem and completely shocked Jim’s parents…they were expecting us to call that night and instead we showed up at the house..it was priceless! I made them dinner and the next night we drove back to Portland to see Ken & Wendy and I made Jim’s favorite, sour cream chicken enchiladas and our friends Krista & Guy came over too…it was wonderful to see everyone after so long.

The first week back Jim went up to Canada for the week with Ken, who is working up there and Wendy and I have been bumming around, painting the interior of the house, etc. I got to see my brother, his wife and their adorable kids and stopped by my old work. Unfortunately, doesn’t look like I’ll be going back there with the current economy but we’ll see what happens in the future! It was good to see the old gang and so far we have dinner plans for 5 nights next week, RIGHT back into the social circle for sure!

It’s now 8 July and we’ve been back for almost 1 month. We are still finding it unbelievably difficult to get adjusted to life back in the USA. There is just too MUCH of everything! Too many choices, too big of food portions, too many people, etc. We now know exactly what we’d been told about how hard it is to assimilate back into your original life- it truly is much more of a culture shock than leaving! One thing that we’d sort of forgotten about is how many Americans are grossly overweight, not just a little bit but REALLY overweight. We haven’t seen that in so long it’s still a bit shocking to the system.

We have seen pretty much all of our good friends since we’ve been back and had a fantastic “surprise” party that Ken & Wendy planned for us. No big surprise but there were around 35people able to attend(amazing in itself since it was over 4th of July weekend) and we had a blast. Wendy & I pretty much got the house all painted and it looked gorgeous and even though the weather was a bit threatening the rain held off until around midnight so all was good.  We’ve managed to get out on the boat a couple of times and still have a few more social engagements to attend…ha ha, ever the social bunnies!

This week did see the departure of our dear friends Vicki & Darin and their kids Logan & Samantha and we’ll miss them terribly. Vicki was transferred to South Carolina and it’s a wonderful opportunity for them but we’re awfully sad to see them leaving. We helped them out as much as possible with getting everything packed up and ready to go so, sad as it is, we are very glad we got back in time to see them a few times before they’re outta here.

Now, the dreaded task of job hunting. As nice as it is to come home to lower home prices, the economy is still pretty much in the crapper and jobs are a bit harder to come by. Not that there are not jobs out there, after spending the last 8months living in 3rd countries we truly aren’t feeling sorry for a society of people living in $400,000 houses and driving SUVs while complaining about the economy. There is certainly a huge slowdown, although I , personally, am not sure if it’s really a recession, but there are jobs out there. Not necessarily “career” jobs but we can get a job if we want! We just got a resume program and are getting our resumes all up to date…quite a challenge for me as I haven’t had to look for a job for 11 years!!! OUCH.

But, what can we say….we are feeling incredibly restless and have got major itchy feet. What will the next few months hold? Well, you’ll all just have to wait and see but, in the meantime, we promise to get photos up on the blog soon! Still living the dream, Love, Jim & Rhonda

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