When we left our home and moved halfway across the globe, we expected to feel unsettled for a while. We knew there would be a transition phase that would take some time. During the orientation for our new jobs, we were shown a graph that looked like a sine wave and told, “This shows the ups and downs you’ll likely go through in the first year overseas.” The first year!?! Knowing we’d feel unsettled for a year was a little, well… unsettling.
Today was one of those pivotal experiences where we reached a +1 on the sine wave.(Sorry, Jim is a math teacher so once in a while I have to get mathy. Learn more about sine – and all kinds of math – by visiting Jim’s Youtube channel here.)
Jim and I walked to the nearby cafe for a quick after-work-coffee-date. When we were leaving, a truck pulled up near us. Two men exited the truck and walked towards us. They showed us an invoice and asked us for directions. We immediately responded, “No. Sorry. We don’t know where that is.” We are finally able to get ourselves around the country without relying on Google Maps 100% of the time, but telling someone else how to get around? No.
As the men glanced down at the paper with looks of bewilderment, we asked to see it one more time. Hey! Wait!! We looked at the business name and excitedly gushed, “Yes! We DO know where that is!!”
Not only did we know where they were headed, but we were able to give them accurate directions to get there. As the men smiled broadly and thanked us profusely, Jim and I looked at each other and had the same thought…
We are settled!
As exciting as this realization was for us, I did wonder why the men didn’t just check Google Maps.
The New Griswolds 