17 hours until flight time....

Holy crap!!!!

Other updates:

1. Several of you have heard about the super awesome (and extraordinarily loud) car we are driving this week. First, I must say a HUGE thank you to Roland for letting us borrow his car. Second, I must point out that Roland is a single man. Evidence below:

2. The guys from Graebel came by the house and packed up all of our stuff into one crate in under two hours on Wed. They were awesome!

3. Best news I got all week: the rental company has a cleaning service and will arrange for them to clean our townhouse! Hooray!

4. Been checking the weather in Zurich all week. Looks cold. Snow in the forecast for Friday. Yay???

Pet Update!

After much discussion, hand wringing and crying, we finally decided that it would be best to leave our pets in the states. We'll be living in a smaller place and we plan to travel a lot so we don't think we'll be around to really take care of them (on top of having to spend our life savings to bring them over).

Armand has gone to live with Andre's friend Wendy. We drove him to Raleigh on Tuesday afternoon. He was on his best behavior when he met Wendy and I can tell already that Wendy is going to spoil him rotten. Armand's quality of life just quadrupled.

Kit Kat has gone to live with my very wonderful friend Kim in Knoxville. We drove Kit Kat to Newport, TN yesterday for the handoff. Apparently Kim's husband has been looking for a reason to steal Kit Kat ever since they visited us in Charlotte last summer. I know Kit Kat is better off. In fact, if I pass away and come back as a cat, I definitely want to be one of Kim & Matt's pets!

Sophie, the world's cutest & best behaved dog, is going to live with Andre's parents. Its no secret that Andre's mom has been trying to steal her back ever since we stole her originally!

Team FATCA!

L to R: Yeong Chang, Eoin Fallon, Me, Chun Chu,
Tae-Kyu Park & Jeannette Bucher

Good News! & Advice

Advice:

• If you are ever interested in cancelling a service or subscription within the US and you don't want to listen to the new offers, incentives to stay, blah blah blah - tell them you are moving out of the country! It's fabulous. Everyone is super nice and cancels stuff right away.

Goods News:

• We sold Andre's car!
• We have a buyer for my car and should be able to sell next week when I'm back in town!
• Our flight tickets to Zurich have been booked! Ready or not Switzerland, here we come!
  

Temporary Apartment

Check out our digs for the first 30 days:

Random Thoughts

I seem to be finding a lot funny today but that may be because I woke up at 4am....

#1 - I had to apply for an EIN (employer identification number) today b/c apparently I'm not allowed to use my social security number for identification purposes when moving internationally. While I appreciate the attempts at protecting my privacy, I'm more annoyed that I now have yet another number to keep track of......

#2 - I registered with PwC for tax assistance today. Here's my welcome note: "Welcome to MyTaxes.PwC.com. We know that many people find taxes stressful, and that this process is more complicated when living in a new country. Your employer (or your spouse’s employer) has arranged to have PwC help you with the preparation of your tax returns." Here's the question: should I be nice or totally put these people through their paces when they prepare our return???

#3 - We picked up our visas last week! Hooray! Next stop....book flights! I have to use a company so who knows how long that will take.....

#4 - Realized this weekend that we're planning to move in two weeks - almost fainted cold when "two weeks" processed through my head - YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Making Moves in NYC!

Aside from all the fun stuff we've been doing in NYC, Andre and I are getting all kinds of things checked off our list.

#1 - Global Entry Program (http://www.globalentry.gov/) - Instead of having to drive to Atlanta, we were able to take the subway over to the JFK airport and do our interviews and fingerprints there. Now we just wait on the FBI to run our fingerprints through their system and verify we are not wanted or crazy criminals. Fingers crossed! Global Entry is a program that will allow us to basically skip the customs line whenever we come back to the US. It's a $100 for a five year program. Totally worth it in my opinion....

#2 - VISAs - Also supposed to obtain those through Atlanta, however, my super resourceful husband looked up Swiss Consulates and noted there is a consulate approximately one block from our hotel. He walked right on over, delivered our paperwork and now we can pick up our VISAs on Thursday!

Other NYC activities worth noting:

Friday night - best gluten free food experience ever - Had dinner at an Italian restaurant (http://risotteria.com/) where almost the entire menu was gluten free! They even had gluten free breadsticks!! After that, we headed to Tu-Lu (http://tu-lusbakery.com/) which is an entirely gluten free bakery. I basically bought one of everything they had to offer. :) For those who might be worrying, have no fear, we visited a full of gluten bakery for Andre where he purchased plenty of his own goodies.

Saturday night - Met up with some friends and had dinner at a Thai restaurant which was followed up with Karaoke at MK Karaoke (http://www.mkkaraoke.com/). We had our own private room complete with two microphones, two flat screen t.v.s and two light up tambourines (and possibly an adult beverage or two...). A good time was had by all!

Sunday - Involved several naps and walking around NYC. Details available upon request.