This is not a vacation

It was a frustrating week. We had been having trouble with our home phone line for about a week, and I was working with some people to get it resolved. In a nutshell, our home phone bill was not paid for the previous month and it was on soft-disconnect. Because we are new here and the appropriate transfers weren't done, we never received a bill, and frankly, there has been too much going on for us to think about a bill we never saw. While we didn't have a home phone in the US, we do need one here for multiple reasons (which I won't get into). I did not want to go pay a bill that was not ours. A week later, not only was our home phone hard-disconnected, we also lost our Internet connection (same company handles both). The day this happened was the day all of our belongings were delivered. Needless to say, we already had enough to do with unpacking all this stuff, and now there was one more headache to deal with re: phone/internet. I made a few calls the next day from work, figured out how much the bill was, and surprisingly was willing to pay all of it (even the portion that was not ours) just to solve the darn problem! We never had a service disconnected in the US due to non-payment, and here I was having to deal with it by running over to the company during lunch to pay the bill to get it reinstated. UGH! Thankfully, we got a check for the portion that wasn't ours, and I set a calendar reminder for next month in case we still don't get the bill.

On a separate note, our car STILL isn't here! It was picked up in VA on Oct 28 and was supposed to be on a vessel on Nov 15, to arrive in B'dos on Nov 24. I learned on Nov 26 that due to customs paperwork not being ready on time, it missed that vessel and would be on a ship on Dec 2. You will be amused to read that the car was going to go from NJ on Dec 2 to Puerto Rico then St. Thomas and arrive in B'dos on Dec 16. I found out while dealing with aforementioned phone headache that it missed the vessel to St Thomas and it will now arrive in B'dos on Dec 23. It has to be cleared by customs and such, and with the holidays, it will be January when we finally see it (crossing fingers). Meanwhile, we have been paying US$280 per WEEK for a rental car... another UGH!

Unpacking all the boxes of stuff we just had to have with us here is a mixed bag of 'pain in the neck' and 'Xmas came early.' While we are happy to see all kinds of things (our bed, our TV, the baby's stuff, brownie mix, shoes, etc.), I can say without hesitation that unpacking and coming up with a right place for everything is my least favorite/most dreaded part of Foreign Service life. Next time, I am going to hire some help.

We were lost while driving one day, and I mentioned to M what we had done on our previous trips to Caribbean islands (Aruba - honeymoon, St. Maarten/Martin - 5 year anniversary). To this he responded in a very matter-of-fact way, "this is not a vacation." There are lots of perks to living in beautiful B'dos; however, this is not a vacation.