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If you want to go straight to the Epilogue, you may do so now!
...
We ended the 1900s in the Bahamas. We got up ridiculously early in the morning on 28 December to get picked up and taken to the airport from where we flew to Atlanta, then to Nassau and finally to Marsh Harbour on the island of Abaco.
Of course it wasn't as simple as that. We had about an hour or so stop in Nassau before taking a BahamasAir island-hopper. BahamasAir is a government airline and they have been having industrial problems. On this particular day they were having a go-slow. Given that the unofficial motto of BahamasAir is "If you have the time, Fly BahamasAir", they have to get very slow before anyone would notice a difference. We boarded the plane about forty-five minutes late and then, when we had taxied out to the runway, we sat there for another forty-five minutes, sweltering in the little DASH-8. Eventually the pilot came on the intercom and said that he didn't have permission to take off and, if he didn't get it soon, he wouldn't be able to go at all because of the airport restrictions which don't allow landings after sunset.
Fortunately, about five minutes after that announcement, we started taxi-ing for take off. Welcome to the Bahamas!
Hans and Petra were to meet us at the airport but weather had been closing in so they had hightailed it back to Man-of-War Cay in their runabout, Kosmos. They left a message with a taxi driver saying that they had waited, weren't sure that we'd actually get in that day and had gone back to the island, give them a call on the UHF radio and they'd pick us up from the ferry once we got to Man-of-War Cay. We had a stressful half hour wondering whether we would be in time to get the last ferry while trying to get someone to raise Hans and Petra on UHF.
Eventually it all worked out. We got on the right ferry and the captain was able to get a message through that we were inbound. Sure enough, when we got to the island, we were met by the Mosbergs who got us to our little abode for the week. Because of the relatively remote location (the island is a few miles long at most, how remote can you get?), we were ferried out to the property on Kosmos. As it was very dark by this time, this entailed a lot of yelling in German. (Das biggen gebuoyfunken!! Nein, nein, DAS funkengejibervatzit. Ach, sprecken zie lichtensteinenhousen. Var iss der rockensinkenbotten?) Fortunately none of us speak German but we suspect that there were some words in there that they don't teach you in high school. (Like "lichtensteinenhousen", for example.)
A little vignette from the air plane trip. We don't normally watch Frasier (a spin off from Cheers, for anyone who doesn't know) but they had an episode playing as part of the in-flight entertainment. We weren't paying much attention until we noticed that Taltarni was glued to the screen. There was a scene in which they had an office Christmas party and a number of the guests were wearing Santa hats and, as we watched, someone dressed as Santa came into Frasier's broadcast booth where he was just signing off for the day (he's an on-air psychologist). The Santa struck a pose and ripped off her (yes, her) hat and beard. Underneath was a long-haired blond. Once she ripped off the rest of the costume, it became apparent that she was also well endowed (suitably covered by a skimpy bikini).
Taltarni was staring open-mouthed at this, her only comment being a rather surprised: "That's not Santa!"
On our first full day on the island we got our golf cart. They have only a couple of small pickups on the island and, apart from that, the only forms of locomotion are golf cart, boat, walking and swimming. We explored a little and spent some time on the beach. The remainder of our time on the island was spent lying on the beach (mostly Kajsa), playing in the water (mostly Kalle and Taltarni), snorkelling (mostly Tim), fishing (mostly Kalle and Tim) and going over to other islands on Kosmos.
We spent New Year's Eve at a party at the house of a "merry widow". That is probably not a fair description of her but she apparently married into wealth and her husband got ill while they were building their fabulous house, dying not long after it was completed (as far as we can work it out, details may not be exact). This was probably the weirdest New Year's Eve party we have been to, if not the weirdest party, period.
We were invited along as guests of Hans and Petra and we asked to bring food that was representative of our countries. Petra made some Barbarian (oops, Bavarian) potato salad and we barbecued a roast (which came out quite well, considering). We sat around and talked to some of the locals and some of the not-so-locals until about 11pm when there was a floor show.
This floor show was a bunch of largely impromptu acts performed by other party goers. There were a group of girls and one very embarrassed looking teenage chap who performed some Eurotrash songs (in the same style as Kylie "Lipsync" Minogue). There was the fabulous "Snowflake in the Bahamas", performed by someone from Utah. There was "So, how much to you know about Minnesota, yaaah?" which included a performance piece on ice fishing, you betcha. Then there was a variation of the landing of the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock, except that Plymouth Rock was somehow magically transported to the Bahamas where an immigrations official wouldn't let the Pilgrims land, mon.
Finally the New Millennium came and went. There was a noticeable lack of any Apocalypse so we finished off our champagne, went home to rescue the babysitter and went back to our little shack.
To call our accommodation a shack is fair but doesn't really give it justice. The fact that it was a shack was a positive aspect. It was set on the crest of the hill between the beach to the east (a minute to walk to the water, at most) and the jetty down to the west (a little further). On top there was a crow's nest from which you could look out over most of the island and spy other islands in the distance (like the one on which Hopetown is located).
The outside of the building was painted white but on the inside it was all dark stained wood. Most of the windows were unpaned, basically they were shutters over holes in the wall. You could leave them open at night and listen to waves crashing on the beach. There was just the one bedroom, the kids slept in the lounge/living/dining room and there was a tiny but well equipped kitchen. There was also a quite civilised bathroom/toilet. We also had two covered balconies, one to the east, one to the west. On top of all this, we were close to only one inhabited house and apart from that it seemed like we had the whole place to ourselves.
It was such a great feeling to have true security. When you have your house locked up with an alarm set and the windows are locked, you don't have true security. You can get a feeling that you are trapped inside, hidden away from a hostile environment. This was not the case on Man-of-War. There was no point locking the doors when we left the house, you could easily get inside with a screwdriver. But you didn't need to lock up. They have no crime on the island. Everyone knows everyone (a problem if you are living there permanently, but nice if you are there for just part of the year). Anyway, we lay there at night with all the doors and windows open and just thought, this is great!
We left the island on 6 Jan, after feeling totally relaxed for nine days. Stress has a tendancy to deluge you swiftly however. As soon as we left the island we started thinking about the fact that we now had a little more than two weeks before we would leave the US.
It didn't help that the FAA had a computer glitch that day and the whole north-east corridor was shut down for about four hours. This delayed our plane into Nassau and we missed our connection in Atlanta. Luckily, we were able to get onto the next plane and all in all we were only about an hour late into Washington.
The kids went back to school the next day. After doing some more stuff preparing for the removal in the morning, we spent the afternoon preparing for Thailand. We went to see Anna and the King at the movies. This is a great film made all the more special by the fact that, in part at least, it was filmed on location in Thailand. We were a little worried when we heard people speaking in Thai. It sounds difficult. Oh well, we have nine months to learn it.
We sat there blubbering like idiots during one part of the movie (Kajsa more so than Tim, Tim just had a couple of chin quivers ... well, maybe a little more than that, but only in a manly way). Taltarni has recently got into the habit of calling herself Monkey Girl. Tim called her that one day on Man-of-War and she liked it. To be completely accurate, Taltarni is actually a ballerina monkey girl, Hanna is a princess monkey girl and Kajsa is the monkey queen. Tim is only responsible for Taltarni being a Monkey Girl.
(Kalle gets a little irate with this, saying "We don't call people names in this family." Tim tends to respond with - Trouble with that is that you don't make the rules in this family ... Chocolate Face.)
Back to the movie. There is a scene in which the King's favourite daughter has caught cholera and is dying. Anna (played by Jodie Foster) asks whether anything can be done for her and is told that naturally something can be done "Listen, they are chanting for her soul to be sent peacefully on its way." The little girl is about Taltarni's age and has a lot of familiar characteristics (at one point she is shown spinning around in a ball dress at one stage, just like Taltarni does whenever she has a long dress on - usually singing Police Nabbadab [Felice Navidad]).
When the princess introduced herself to Anna, she called herself "Monkey Girl". So, later in the movie, when she was lying there dying and her family was standing there stoically, fighting back the tears because they believed that her soul needed to be content or it might be trapped in this world, it was just a little too close to home. Given that we tend to be a little sentimental anyway, we momentarily lost our composure.
It will be an interesting experience to see the movie again in a year, when we might understand what is going on without subtitles.
On Saturday we had a combined Swedish School in the Basement farewell/julgrans plundring. The julgrans plundring is where the Christmas tree is stripped naked, dragged outside and ceremoniously danced around. Then copious amounts of glögg are consumed. People started arriving at around 12:15 and the last left close to ten hours later. It was a good day.
While this went on, Tim managed to sell the BMW (someone saw an ad on the internet, came to take a test drive and gave us a deposit on the spot) and we got an expression of interest in the Buick. This certainly removed some of the stress from our lives. In the evening, while we still had a handful of people in the house, Tim disappeared to go to a little gathering of people from his class at Swedish School. It was a good turnout and he even got prizes! (Some pseudo US currency, a bottle of Sonoma wine and, as a token of US culture, a World Wrestling Federation action figure - the "Real Sweat" Stone Cold Steve Austin.)
We were to visit Bill and Glenna Hemschrodt on Sunday but Glenna was suffering from the flu so they had to cancel. We spent the day trying to get more stuff done and then went to dinner at Jill and David's. Or rather Tim and Taltarni did. Kalle had been pushing the line all day and finally went too far just as we were walking over. Kajsa stayed at home with him. Tim and Taltarni enjoyed some very nice (take-out) Chinese food and a couple of glasses of red wine, Taltarni abstained on the latter.
For Tim's last day of leave, we treated ourselves to massages. This certainly helped, for about a day until the tension in the muscles came back. But it felt good at the time. This was the last night that we ate a civilised meal together in the house. We were going to be out every night for the rest of the week. (Sunday was scheduled to be in the house but, being our last day, we predicted that we might be too stressed to prepare and eat a proper meal. And there was time for another farewell engagement to come up!)
Ann Potter and Doug Greenlaw invited us out to dinner the next night. We went to the Old Brogue in Great Falls and had a nice relaxed meal. Doug was very impressed with the news that we were going to Thailand. He has been learning Thai as a hobby for a while and they are sure to come visit us. After dinner we went back to their house for port and a couple of games of pool. As usual, Doug won. Kajsa was also on his team but Doug did all the playing. Tim managed to lose a game by pocketing the 8-ball out of sequence, something that Kajsa was very amused about until she did the same in the next game. We went home with marital harmony intact.
Tasha gave us cause for concern the next day. We had arranged for a company to come and clean the windows and the worked said that he'd be finished by the time that Kajsa had to go for a hair appointment. With usual American efficiency, he was still working when the time came for her to leave. As there was a realtor (American for real estate agent) coming to check out the house, Kajsa couldn't leave Tasha inside so she put her out and told the window cleaning guy (who happened to be deaf but could lip-read) not to let Tasha out of the yard.
When Kajsa got back to the house, just before going to pick the kids up from school and take them to AnnaCarin's, she saw a note on the door which said that Tasha had attacked and seriously injured another dog, which was being rushed to the emergency room. Just the sort of thing you need five days before you move out of your house.
Fortunately, the owner of the injured dog was very reasonable (no talk of suing us, even though she is a lawyer) and we sorted it out so that the window cleaning people would pay for the vet bills. Still, it was not a very nice situation. We had visions of horrible legal entanglements and possibly an order for Tasha to be destroyed.
In the middle of this, we went to Jill and David's again. This time we all made it but David wasn't there as he had business commitments in New York. We had some home made fajitas (one of Tim's favourites) and drank the left-over margarita mix that we had had in our freezer for about a year. Eventually Patrick's behaviour deteriorated and, in the midst of a tantrum about ping pong, we made our escape.
On Thursday, Kajsa took Tasha to the vet for final checks prior to her departure the following Tuesday. This was a little bit of a disaster as we were supposed to have had a whole pile of documentation from Quarantine sent to us in December. As of that day, 13 Jan, it still had not arrived. But we had to get Tasha checked on that particular day because the vet who knew what to do for exporting pets to Australia was going away for a week. We were between a rock and a hard place. After ringing around a bit, Tim was able to get the necessary documents from the Quarantine people at the Embassy. Then he faxed them to the vet, just before Kajsa arrived with Tasha. Very tight scheduling!
When the vet had completed the documents and Kajsa had gone home, she noticed that there was a test that did not seem to have been done. ARRRRGGGGG!!! She rang the vet and waited nervously. Eventually she got a time to get the test done. We crossed fingers and hoped that the results would get in before Tasha had to fly.
On the evening of Thursday 13 Jan, one month after we first knew about the possibility of a posting change, we attended Commodore Morton's farewell from the US and also from the Navy, who was returning to Australia to retire. The farewell was held in the Ambassador's Dining Room in the Embassy and was in the form of a Formal Dinner, as close to a Mess Dinner as possible, given the circumstances. Much wine and port was drunk. Tim was Mr Vice as, despite rumours to the contrary, he is not the most junior in the office. That honour went to the resident PWO. Tim was in fact very happy that he was not forced to get up and say something due to the impending departure. Despite that fact that, given that he did not have his "I've been the in Navy a long time" medal on, he was out of rig and was a prime candidate for being required to stand and explain his failings to the assemblage.
At this point the American Adventure, as written in the United States, has come to a close. The short epilogue which follows was written in Australia. It details the activities of the last few days prior to flying out. The Aftermath briefly describes what happened on our return to Australia (with a focus on the effects of having been the States for two and a half years) and contains a few comments on the Adventure from a distance of four months.