99 Things List – Another Update and a Few Random Thoughts

Wow…!

It’s been quite an emotional couple of days for me and my family: a farewell breakfast with my German-speaking friends, my daughter’s last day of school which included lots of tears and many emotional good-byes from classmates and her teacher, a beautiful mountain wedding followed by an even more teary good-bye from our American family. What can I say? This is a really really hard time for all of us. But we are hanging in there – somehow. We are taking one day at a time, one good-bye at a time while trying to continue living our normal life. As long as we can. Knowing too well that all of this is an unavoidable part of the repatriation process.

While trying to live life as normal as possible and not thinking about what lies ahead of us, I’ve continually checked items off of my „99 Things I Want to Do Before I Move Back to Germany“-List (here is the link to part 1 and part 2 of the list). I’ve accomplished quite a few things since my last update in March. Well, it’s now or never, right?

In the last couple of weeks I visited the MLK Memorial in Atlanta, went to a Lookouts game and the Chattanooga Brewing Company, vacationed at a beach in Florida, and flew to Germany for a Look & See-trip (more about this here, here and here).

I also learned how to cook delicious Ramen at the Sweet & Savory Classroom in Chattanooga, I successfully swung the baseball bat at a batting cage and conquered my fear of heights on the Vordach zip-line in Cashiers, North Carolina! Yeah!

What else? Emily Lester did an amazing job taking our family photos and portrait pictures in downtown Chattanooga:

And just this Memorial Day Weekend we went to an unforgettable mountain wedding in the Blue Ridge Mountains:

I’m also in the process of putting together the „My Friends“-book for my kids, hosted a Social Media workshop for the German expat women and try to spend as much time as possible on our back porch.

Still on my 99-Things-I-Want-To-Do-Before-I-Move-Back-To-Germany-list are: taking lots of pictures for my #thisismyChattanooga-Instagram-challenge, meeting Local Milk, rafting, stock up on English books for the kids and myself, organize documents and binders, see the Riverbend fireworks, swim in the Pacific Ocean. And there are also a few new ones:

61. be on a podcast (which just happened today! More about my interview for The Culture Guy in a couple of weeks.)

62. start working with a coach

63. enjoy my hydrangeas on a daily basis

64. buy a new pair of tennis shoes (these or these?)

65. de-stock my pantry

66. get a new passport for my daughter – Atlanta, here we come one more time!

67. transcribe and edit an expat interview

68. get a ticket to the Blogst conference in Hamburg, Germany, in November

69. sell appliances, lamps, electrical items

70. take pictures of my favorite corners in our house

71. enjoy the weather and go to the pool

72. blog less, talk and hug more

73. write moving cards

74. organize good-bye-party

75. set-up my daughter’s Kindle

76. start packing

77. allow myself to cry randomly throughout the day

78. have a burger at Shake Shack in Atlanta

79. take pictures of our empty house

80. add songs to my Five Years in Chattanooga-playlist on Spotify

81.-99. to be continued – maybe, maybe not.

I’ll try and keep you up-to-date on our moving-back-journey here on the blog, at least for a couple more weeks. In July, I’m most likely to take a blogging break, but might post regular updates on Instagram and my Facebook page. We’ll see…