Our friends could not believe that we were so busy in NYC.  “Busy? Doing what? You are not going to work; you do not have a house, no cars… What you are doing? I do not understand”…

Here is a sample of our week.

Since we sold the house, we had to update the mailing addresses for our bank, investment, and credit card accounts.  Unfortunately, many financial institutions did not accept the mail forwarding address correctly and truncated the good portion of it. (We use the mail forwarding service from the travelingmailbox.com and I still highly recommend their service).  The follow up calls and several visits in person to the local brunches were required in order to fix the new address issues.  Also, we had to make sure that utilities such as electricity, gas, water, internet, TV, insurances (car & house), and eZ-Pass were terminated and billed properly.  Many of them have not been handled correctly, and we had to spend hours on a phone with the representatives to ensure proper handling.  We thought that we completed that until we needed to make a purchase…

Phones… We decided to drop our Verizon Android locked phones and buy two new unlocked phones that would work at any part of the world.  After numerous hours of research, my husband selected a cute HUAWEI U9200.  It runs Android operating system we are familiar with, it is unlocked, can accept a SIM card from any provider, plus a micro SD card (the storage for photos, music, and other files).  We also decided to replace the old and heavy Lenovo Thinkpad T40 laptop with the new, slim, and powerful Lenovo Ultrabook.

When we lived in our house, any purchase required one Amazon click.  Now, the order was placed and rejected at least 7 times until it was approved.  The billing address and shipping address mismatch between Amazon and credit cards, billing address on credit card was not updated correctly, the fraud department required approval for each transaction, etc.   Guess, how long did it take to resolve all listed above?

But when the “working day” was over, we got out enjoying the rest of the day in the City.  We celebrated our 24^th anniversary of arrival to the US in the Caravan of Dreams, the fancy vegan restaurant in the LES Manhattan,

enjoyed the bottle of Perrier-Jouet Champaign  ( it marked an END and START of the new BELLE EPOQUE in our life, the departure gift from our neighbor), explored the vegan dining options in SoHo, or just walked at night listening musing from local bars and restaurants. 

Our typical morning started with the freshly squeezed “juice of the week”, croissant, and coffee from the local coffee shop. Then a full time workday to resolve outstanding items, book air tickets, arranges visas to …. Russia.

Yes, we are starting our new life by visiting Russia and completing the cycle that was started 24 years ago.