Where to begin….just write….edit later….who would of ever thought that I would end up in Cairo of all places all because of it being -30F in Minnesota back in January of 2009 and my lovely wife JoAnn.
“That’s it! I’ve had it! I’m out of here if I have to hitch hike!” I said. I had grown accustomed to spending winters in south Florida where some of my family still lives. No work in Minnesota for me as the owner of a construction company during the winter. She had assured me that I wouldn’t need much money if I would just stay around in the winters. She would take care of it all. Um hmm…right. “Well, you had better start looking for a job for me where it’s warm” she said. “I don’t have time because I’m working” Ok, I can do that. Where to move? Florida, nope, been there done that. Texas? NO WAY! Arizona? I’d lived there as well. Nope, the only place we could both agree on was California. No work for me there with the state of the economy and little work for her as a teacher. Would have meant a 60% decrease in our standard of living too. What to do? Wait! Why are we limiting ourselves to the US? Hey! That’s a great idea! How do we find a teaching job outside the US? Well, being a veteran and an air force brat, I knew that all military bases had American schools. Eventually, we found out about a hiring fair for American International schools at the University of Northern Iowa. Wait, we only have 3 days to get all the cover letters, resumes, photos, letters of recommendation, etc. together to be on time for this thing. Holy cow! And so the mad 6 month dash to Cairo began.
Rewind to the beginning of January of 2009. I get a call from “Book Across the Bay”, the 2nd largest cross country ski marathon on the north American continent and a fundraiser for local charities in northern Wisconsin. They want my band, Michael Quinn and the Bourbon Kings” to perform at their event which takes place on Valentine’s day this year which happens to be our 2 year anniversary of meeting ( yes we met on Valentine’s day). Me:“Honey, do you want to take this gig? It’s Valentine’s day and our anniversary.” JoAnn: “Only if you get down on one knee and tell everyone in the audience you love me he he” Little did she know that not only would I get down on one knee but, it would be to propose to her but, this was only after 6 weeks of being the guy who proposed to her in the van on the way back from the UNI conference as far as everyone else knew. I kept the upcoming proposal secret from everyone including my band members! No one knew when I stopped in the middle of “Lay Down Sally”, a song by Eric Clapton, in front of 6000 somewhat perturbed revelers that it was to ask for her hand in marriage. Although, once they realized it was a proposal on stage, everyone exploded in applause.
As we prepared for the upcoming UNI Overseas Placement Service for Educators I asked JoAnn “Where would you like to relocate honey?” As we looked through the list of 180 schools in nearly as many countries she says “Egypt”. “Egypt!?!” What!? I shouted. Why!? “I would just love that!” she says. “Why not Costa Rica or New Zealand” I ask. Nope, Egypt she says. Ah well, we probably won’t get hired by them anyway I thought. She had three offers and I was actually offered a construction project manager job at a school in India. Guess which one was the best?
So, we had to decide within three hours whether we were going to accept the position, get married, sell all our stuff, and move halfway around the globe. Wow.
I started by selling my business which was basically selling $10,000 worth of tools for $1000 in March of 2009 followed by extraneous music gear including my drum set and PA in April or May. I shed only a few tears over this. Being a contractor was nearly always a thankless job. My employees were always “underpaid and overworked” and most of my clients couldn’t tell the difference between a good job and a bad job. A few bigger items were sold along the way as or departure date of August 1st, 2009 loomed large. Balancing what we needed to keep, as we were still living in our apt., and what we could “pre sell” before our upcoming “Moving to Egypt! Everything must go!” garage sale the 2nd to last weekend in July , was proving somewhat difficult. We did manage and, in fact, the garage sale was a huge success! We had only a little 10’x10’ square of junk left on the front lawn with a “FREE!” sign when we left to take our last load to JoAnn’s mothers’ house in Wisconsin on Monday. The only things we hadn’t sold were the Toyota Sienna van and my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe guitar amplifier. Someone had plugged a speaker cable into my guitar amp at my Wedding/CD release party (more on that in a moment ;) and blown the circuits clear off the board! $350 and a couple weeks to fix! It was just what I needed at this point…. However, a couple of friends have been kind enough to sell them for us while we’re abroad.
So, as soon as we had accepted the position in Egypt I immediately started researching what we would need to bring, how would life be there, etc. It was about 3 months of 6-8 hours a day on the internet.
I am type 1 diabetic and knowing whether or not I would be able to get my needed medical supplies there was a HUGE issue. It was nearly impossible to get a straight answer from anyone including the US embassy. It took me about 3 months of wrangling to finally get it straightened out. What I garnered was that I needed to keep a 3 month supply on hand at all times because while they have both kinds of insulin on hand in Egypt, sometimes they run out for 30-90 days! Not good. So next, the battle with MY American insurance company to get a 90 day vacation override. Another 3 months of wrangling to get the supplies I needed but, thanks to one wonderful woman at Target pharmacy, we got it done.
We were also bringing our cat, Puddin’ head, with us so, there were many hoops we had to jump through. Various vaccinations, stool samples, blood tests, and a micro chip were required. Or so we thought. As it turns out, once we got to Egypt we walked right through customs and they didn’t even glance at her which was good because in all the chaos leading up to our departure date we had missed the rabies vaccination deadline by three days. They were more concerned about whether we had H1N1. I think it was just a way for the USDA to get some money out of us.
JoAnn and I had also been seeing a “travel doctor”. A vast array of vaccinations and a trunk full of medicines to take with us “just in case”. JoAnn was terrified of needles and fainted at the first visit. This terrified me because she actually started having mild convulsions and I thought it was an allergic reaction to one of the vaccines. Scary but, I learned something new about my wife and it was demanded that for the rest of the vaccinations she be horizontal.
Did I mention that I still had a record to finish as well as a wedding and CD release party to plan by June 1st? Uffda! My sophomore effort was to be a 20 song double record. No time for that now. “Whiskey Rebellion” actually ended up containing 13 songs. Numerologically speaking, very lucky I think. The 13th song was actually being finished up the 1st week of June and we still had the mastering to do! We ended up just getting the press releases out in time for the deadlines but, I was only able to put 11 of the 13 songs on the CD that went out to the press because the last two were still being mastered. When your back’s against the wall, you improvise.
We ended up having the CD release party as part of our wedding reception. Why not kill 2 birds with one stone? We had already rented The Ritz Theater in NE Minneapolis for our wedding ceremony. The reception started with my friend Damian D. DJing a set, followed by the “Whiskey Rebellion” set, and finally a group of my musician friends had graciously agreed to perform a set of JoAnn’s favorite ‘80’s covers.
The wedding ceremony was beautiful! Thank you to Kathy Peterson (JoAnn’s mother), Mary Downs-Gilbert (my mother), and Pastor Christine Ruth for: renting the theater, purchasing the wonderful middle-eastern food, and giving a wonderful ceremony/reading respectively. There were more than a few comments about Pastor Ruth’s wonderful sermon.
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