I Moved to Barbados in the Middle of COVID

Introduction

A few weeks ago, I received some shocking news. On November 2, I was going to be leaving the United States and moving over two thousand miles to Barbados, my parents' home country. Now I love change, and I love Barbados so I was quite excited. However, the deadline was a bit tight. I was, and am, taking five courses, three of them being college level. And while we didn't have a big house, there was a lot of stuff. At the point where I began logging, we had already gotten the bulk of the stuff into the first shipping container, but we still had a lot of things left-back. So with that being my current situation, the challenge began.

DISCLAIMER: What you are about to read is a very accurate description of my moving process less than a week before the actual day. Non-procrastinators may find descriptions of my time-management disturbing or upsetting. Reader discretion advised.

October 28, 2020

I woke up with a jolt. I thought I had gotten up too late and that I would have to rush through the rest of my day. However, it was only 8:30 and good enough for me. I did my devotional and got ready to start the day. The first thing on my agenda: wash my hair. It has been days since it's been properly styled and it's very dry and brittle. After all, I'd spent the past week packing, cleaning, and adjusting to my new braces. But now, I needed to do some self-care and my schoolwork.

After transforming my hair back to its usual hydrated, moisturized state, I proceeded to get to work on my assignments. Or at least I intended to. Instead, I began researching quarantine hotels and food delivery services in Barbados until it was time for me to run some errands which happened to take the rest of the afternoon. I came home, ate dinner, and started packing the last parts of my room. However, after avoiding it all day for no real reason, I got to my schoolwork For Sociology, I had to do a discussion about crime and deviance, and for Medical Terminology I worked on my Anki cards and watched a Crash Course video (it's really really helpful). When I finished that, I finally was able to get to continue packing and record a short clip for my vlog. By this time it was around midnight and I was completely exhausted. Which technically means that it was the morning of the next day.

October 29, 2020

I finally went to bed after 1:30 am, only to be awoken around 8. My sister and I were tasked with organizing the last bits of things downstairs so it could be packed more easily. After going to bed at 1:30 the same day, this was not pleasant news to me, but time was of the essence now. The shipping containers needed to be packed by today since they were being picked up tomorrow. If things didn't get completed today, we wouldn't make it. We would have to reschedule our flights and hotel all while trying to get rid of tons of stuff. With this possibility looming in the back of my mind, I quickly got to work on organizing the things for the shipping container.

Around 11:00, I logged in to work on my follow-up discussion in Sociology. Then I worked on some blog things before heading back downstairs for lunch. After that, I left to run some errands but when I came back, I had a Chemistry class on Zoom and finally wrapped up around 5:30. Then some friends came over and bought some more furniture (yay!) and we resumed packing. I went to bed early (aka, just before midnight) only to wake up at 6 to continue, you guessed it, packing.

October 30, 2020

6:00 am. It wasn't fun anymore. The containers were being shipped in a few hours and the house was not done. It was now a race against time to get everything packed before they were picked up. My entire family was exhausted but we had to keep going. Finally, after several hours of the madness, the containers were picked up and taken away. This really created a sense of finality as now our house was even emptier. But the work was not done. Since we weren't taking everything to Barbados, we still had to get rid of even more stuff. We loaded up the truck and made a delivery to Goodwill and stopped for Chipotle on the way home. We were finally able to go to bed at a decent hour (9:00) and I slept soundly.

October 31, 2020

Saturday. A day of rest and relaxation. I got to sleep in and then we headed to church for the final time. Everyone was very happy to see us and naturally a little sad. I really wanted to be social but I was so tired from the week. Afterward, we had a little get together (outdoors, masks, social distancing) which was very wholesome. We had good food, talked, and it was nice to see familiar faces. After a few hours, we had to say our final goodbyes and head home. Then after sunset, we continued getting rid of more stuff (I'm telling you, it seemed endless). We had to drop some furniture off at a couple of houses and then we could finally go to bed. A unique end to this Halloween for sure.

November 1, 2020

Sunday morning. The most relaxed I'd been all week. There was nothing left to do but clean and make sure my bags were packed. Oh and write this blog post. I got some schoolwork done since it was the deadline and then we ran some errands which included donating some more stuff while the house was getting cleaned. After we came home, we worked on packing our bags and making sure everything was ready. Around 11:30pm, we made some more last minute donations and I finally got to bed around 12:45am, only somewhat ready for the big day.

November 2, 2020

Moving day.

At 4:15am, my alarm went off. After a very restful 3 hours of sleep, I decided to roll over and get 15 more minutes. Unfortunately, it ended up being 30.

At 4:45, I got up for real. The aim was to leave at 5am so the chaos ensued. You never realize how heavy your belongings are until you try to check 7 bags. We also had some problems fitting everything in the suitcases without overflow but it all managed to fit somehow. We went ahead and got rid of anything that wasn't in the suitcases.

It was 5:45 and we were running late. However, we had to drop off one more set of stuff at a friend's house before going to the airport and that's where we were at this time. It was quick and we were done in under 5 minutes. Next up, the airport!

We dropped off the rental car and prepared took our things to the terminal. Then we got in our first line. We needed to check our bags before heading to security. But things were getting tight since our flight was in an hour. But we hoped that all would go well.

20 minutes later, we were still in the first line. It wasn't long but it was incredibly slow moving. I began to get more worried. We still had to make it through security and get to our gate.

Sadly, 14 minutes later, we missed the cutoff time to check our bags. Which means we'd also be missing our connecting flight. So now we needed to get to Miami and wait for the next available flight to Barbados. We set up to head on the 6:00 flight to Miami and then go to Barbados on Wednesday (the 6th). So for now, we hung out at the airport and did some work. I decided to browse the internet for 3 and a half hours instead of doing my work. Especially since I'd still have another 6 before the flight and all day tomorrow. The procrastinator in me was finally getting time to shine.

After avoiding getting up for the past 4 hours, I finally decided to go hunt down some lunch. There were a lot of options but I ended up settling for Panda Express and getting some lo mein. It was good but I started to feel much sleepier.

So I slept. For a solid hour actually. However, we had to go and check our bags so I had to wake myself up and get going. Next, we got to everyone's favorite part of the airport: security. We managed to make it through without too much trouble (although we thought we lost a passport for a little bit) and got on the monorail to the gate.

Around 4 in the afternoon, we were waiting at the gate. It wasn't the most exciting thing ever but since our flight wasn't boarding for another hour and a half, I decided to entertain myself by watching videos about the Salem Witch Trials. I was little concerned about not having much footage for my vlog, but there wasn't much I could do so I just relaxed.

We finally boarded at around 5:50. The flight was only 39 minutes and was pretty good. We picked up our bags at 7:27 and then checked into the hotel airport. We hunted around and eventually settled down with some Subway for dinner. I played some games, watched a documentary about the election, and then went to bed.

November 3, 2020

After getting to sleep in, we decided to head on an adventure to the Sawgrass mall in Broward County just after lunch. But in order to do this, we had to get on the Tri-Rail. My family wasn't convinced that I was paying attention to my surroundings on the trip so they put me in charge of finding the train. I'm geographically challenged so it was a new experience for me but I managed to find it after a bit of walking.

We rode the Tri-Rail from the MIA station to Ft. Lauderdale station. The entire leg was about an hour. After we got off, we took the bus to Sawgrass Mills, one of the top 10 biggest malls in America. Then we had second lunch and visited one of my favorite stores, It's Sugar. It's like a candy store and gag shop rolled into one.

Then we ended up having to get contacts from America's Best around 6 and then rushed back to the bus stop and head back to the Tri-Rail station. We got back to the hotel by 9 and I went to bed around midnight. This was my final day in America and to be honest I didn't think too much about it. I knew I had a full day on Wednesday, so I tried to get as much sleep as possible.

Next: Quarantine in Barbados Series