How It Came to Pass That We Are Moving to India

From early on in our relationship my husband (Tal) and I have fantasized about living abroad.

Our day dreams run the gamut from brief conversations about  picking up and leaving for a few months on a whim, all the way to elaborate plans which include quitting our jobs, selling all our worldly possessions on Craigslist and traversing the world with just our backpacks and each other.

Those of you who know me know these two things:

1. I rarely do "brief" and I never do "whim". I plan. Then I plan some more. And when you think there can't possibly be anything else left to plan, I make a to-do list. In excel.

2. I love my worldly possessions. A lot. Not as much as I love Tal but it's very, very close.

So, we realized that if our dream was to become a reality we'd need to involve more structure, and more stuff. We were just beginning to outline a schedule and a plot, when fate intervened and our dream crashed right into our laps.

In the first week of March, Tal was asked to join the small division of his company which consults exclusively for non-profit organizations.  For my sweet do-gooder husband, this was a dream come true. Many of the details of the plan were still quite fuzzy, but if he were to accept the offer, this new phase of his career would begin in India, at the end of May.

Given our shared dream of living abroad, this should be an easy decision right? Well... there was a teeeeeeeensy tiiiiiiiiiny problem. The same day Tal received this offer, I was starting a new job. A job I was VERY excited about. A job that was based in New York City. For the next few days I fretted about how I should respond to Tal's offer. Crush his dreams and turn down an opportunity that may not come back around, or sacrifice my own career?

And then, Tal learned the detail that changed our lives.

"Have you heard of a city called Bangalore?" he asked.

"Umm...WHY?!?!" I answered characteristically, by asking another question.

"That's where the project is that they want me to join. IF I join I mean, which of course we will discuss together with the aid of your many pro and con lists, and I will be infinitely patient with you because I am the Husband of all Husbands" he replied. (Verbatim, of course.)

And then I said something eloquent like, "HOLY SHIT BALLS!!!!".  Because, you see, my job has ONE international outpost. And it is in Bangalore, India.

I will give you a moment to digest that.

So that is the story of how we decided to pack up all of our things into a 16 foot POD container and place it in a climate controlled storage facility, say goodbye to all of our wonderful friends in New York City, send our families into nearly fatal shock, and move our lives abroad indefinitely.