Packing up Villa 212

Our last trip to Bangalore was a whirlwind of activities, mostly involving getting our home packed up and, when the packers were gone for the day, having good times with friends there. The following pictures show some of the chaos, but believe me, there was much more than what this shows. For 3 days (that is after the many days of organizing on our part), we watched the packers box up our life, until what remained were 2 large rooms filled with stacked boxes. Then we watched everything get loaded into 2 trucks, which would eventually go to a container to be shipped by sea, and one small shipment by air. (Now my bigger job here in MN is to ready our home for all these things... just looking at the last 2 pictures helps to motivate me for that! Most of these things didn't come from our house in MN, but were purchased in India!)

It's hard to put into words how it felt watching our house being emptied after a year filled with great memories in that amazing place, but I hope that the contents of the boxes (not to mention our 23,000 pictures!!!) will help to hold those memories dear, 8,000 miles away... Leaving the house totally empty, locking the door for the last time, saying good-byes to wonderful friends, and driving out of Palm Meadows one final time was heart-breaking for me, knowing that we had reached the end of our once-in-a-lifetime experience.


the packers beginning to box everything up in the livingroom



the packers lined up for a photo at the end of day #2



what used to be the dining room



the livingroom stack

A day of London Sights

Brian and I finally made it back to India to pack up our house and wrap everything up with the international assignment. All went well, and I'll blog more about that later, but I wanted to add a few pictures from our day of sight-seeing in London. We stayed with friends that we had met in Bangalore, and enjoyed seeing both the countryside around London and the main sights within the city. Now we are back home, with our life abroad only a memory now...


Heather and Brian inside the London Eye



Heather with the Thames River and Big Ben in the background



Heather on the bridge looking back at the London Eye



Brian standing in front of the Tower Bridge (which we learned isn't the actual London Bridge)