Almy and Tauhid’s Blog

Back from Phoenix.. wow that place is too hot for me. I thought it would be like Antelope Valley, with it’s dry desert heat. But no, it was 110 degrees F AND HUMID. The downtown didn’t impress me.

At the airport, I stopped by at the chapel to pray Dhuhr and Ashr, read some books and rest. There I met a guy from San Jose who was also there to pray. After talking for a while I found out that his wife has a lot of daycare experience. I was interested and asked to exchange contact info, because I hoped that my wife could learn something from his wife. We had the same views on some stuff, for example we both only eat halal meat unless in dire circumstances. Then we parted ways. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s quite lonely here in the apartment since Almy and Amira are in Indonesia. I guess I’ll continue writing blog entries to I get rid of that lonely feeling. Speaking of the apartment, at first I was going to choose an apartment that was only 3 miles away from my office. However, my apartment locator advised against it, since it’s too close to the refinery. I’m glad I took her advice because I don’t want my family to go through that kind of environment daily. We visited 3 different apartment complex’ and settled on the second one, which is the closest to my office, 20 miles away, near Clear Lake, TX..Amira seemed to like to apartment just fine..

Two days later, the movers came by with all our belongings..

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31 May 08, 2 am

We checked out of the hotel, got in the Dodge truck we rented for moving, and drove to LAX. As I drove away from the gate, I quietly said a goodbye to my home of the last 4 years. Almy and Amira fell asleep along the way. Highway 14 seemed really quiet at that hour. After only 90 minutes we dropped off the car at the Westin LAX Hotel and boarded the shuttle to the airport.

The usual humdrum of checking-in felt routine.. with a small realization in my heart that I’m finally leaving California for good. Amira was wide awake at this moment. The timing was perfect, we arrived at the gate around 5 am, where we ate breakfast, prayed Subuh/Fajr before boarding the 6am flight.
We arrived at Hobby Airport around 2pm. After securing yet another rental car, it was finally time to put that $400 GPS to work. I punched in La Quinta Seabrook and off we went. Only later on I realized that the GPS couldn’t account for highway constructions and detours, so I had to figure out an alternate way of getting there.

45 minutes later, we arrived exhausted, yet glad that the journey was over. It was ~4pm in Seabrook, TX. Amira was wide awake (since she slept all through the trip) and started playing around with my cheapo noise-cancellation headphones.