The decision has been made.

We have not made this decision lightly, we spent a lot of time looking at all of our options and going over the pros and cons of each option. We finally have decided that Abu, Sara and I will be moving to Dhaka Bangladesh at the beginning of October of this year. That leaves us about 150 days to pack up our lives here in Minnesota and travel to the other side of the world. Minneapolis's longitude is -93 ° and Dhaka is 90 ° so we are literally going to the other side of the earth. Minneapolis's latitude is 44° and Dhaka is 24 ° so Dhaka is on the same latitude as the Florida Keys. The weather will be different than Florida because Bangladesh is South of the Himalaya Mountains.

I included a map above for those of you who don't know where Bangladesh is. The simple answer is East of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is in South Asia or the subcontinent. Bangladesh is surrounded on three sides by India and shares a small border with Burma in the South East. Bangladesh is home to the Sundarbans, the worlds largest mangrove forest.  

A short history of Bangladesh:

The subcontinent was ruled by the British from 1858 to 1947. When the British left they decided to break up the area by religion. India was left to the Hindu people and East and West Pakistan were left to the Muslim population. This created problems for many people so house swaps were arranged. The Muslims in India and the Hindus in Pakistan were forced to relocate. The government of Pakistan was set up in West Pakistan. India stood between the East and West. The distance between the two made governing both hard. In 1971 East and West Pakistan fought over the right to rule. East Pakistan won and the government of The Peoples Republic of Bangladesh was born. For the full story: http://www.bangladesh.gov.bd/

The tricky part:

The first hard part was telling my friends and family that we have decided to go. I believe that they understand why we made this choice so I think that that part went pretty well. There are plenty of concerns to address and a lot of unknowns. Another hard part of this is getting ready to go. We have to get the house ready to sell, sell most of our stuff, store a lot of things, keep working as long as possible yet sell our cars before we go... there is so much to plan and organize. 

We are excited for this new chapter in our life and I will keep this blog as we go. 

Until next time...